Falling for Fall! (Ee, Oval, 2)

The theme for the 7th week of the school year was "Falling for Fall". We continued our Letter of the Week study, with the letter E. This week we also focused on the oval shape, and we kept going on our number study with the number 2!

This week we read: Little Owl's Night by Divya Srinivasan
                                       Little Raccoon Learns to Share by Mary Packard
                                       The Seasons of Arnold's Apple Tree by Gail Gibbons
                                       Fletcher and the Falling Leaves by Julia Rawlinson
                                       Oliver Finds His Way by Phyllis Root

Our question of the week was "What does Mom do at work?"

The shape of the week: oval was fun to talk about. At our morning meetings, we would talk about the shape and things in real life that are an oval. We also practiced drawing ovals in the air. The children worked on their fine motor skills by tracing ovals and squares to make a man's face. I found this worksheet on Kidzone.

The children also worked on their oval recognition. I got this page from The Original Summer Bridge Activities, for PreK-K.

For our song this week we sang "This is an Oval", I found it here.

"This is and Oval, this is an Oval,

How can you tell? How can you tell?

It is long on one end,

And short on the other, 

It's an oval, it's an oval."

For the number of the week: 2 we started off by counting to two and backward from two. The kids had no problem with this one. ;) The kids also practiced writing the number and word for two.

The children used a key with the number 2 to color in a picture of a penguin. This was great because the kids were able to do this with very little to no help, and they were so proud of themselves when they finished!

In some papers in my room I found a random number page like this from education.com, so I made my own for the number 2. The children had to practice writing the number and then color in that number of squares. What a great way to really introduce graphing and what a great way for them to work on their one-to-one correspondence.

For our themes "Falling for Fall", we found leaves outside and made leaf rubbings!

The kids painted with fall colors and made fall leaves. They also glued ripped paper and oats to make their own acorns! We put these on our autumn tree mural in our classroom to get into the seasonal mood.

We went outside and collected leaves from the playground, and talked about different ways that we could sort them. They decided that they wanted to sort by color, so we did!

While we were outside we also went on hunts for acorns. This was so fun, they wanted to keep going forever!

I love this project. I gave the kids a rectangle of brown construction paper, white paper, scissor and glue. They cut their tree and glued it on the paper however they wanted. Using q-tips to paint, they made dot trees. they are each so unique, which is why I love them.

The letter of the week: E activities that we worked on this were were Excellent! I created envelope games for each letter of the alphabet. I adapted them from activities from Mailbox Letter of the Week projects, both book one and two. The children had to put the "E" objects in the Elf's house. All the other letters? No admission!

The book Sounds Like fun, Phonemic Awareness has great phonics activities for the alphabet. For the letter E, the children have to cut out and glue the words that "Begin like Elephant". Together we talked about the beginning sounds of the words, and then they work on their fine motor cutting skills.

We practice and work on our handwriting for each letter as well. The Original Summer Bridge Activities, for PreK-K has great handwriting practice sheets. The kids trace and write the letters and then have a little phonics practice at the bottom.

From a Letter of the Week Mailbox book, I got the Elephant Exercise song. We swung our trunks, stomped our feet, flapped our ears and shook our tail.

From the book Alphabet, Colors, Numbers and Shapes, the kids practice letter recognition AND direction following. Some weeks certain letters have to be colored specifically and sometimes it's up to them. I love these!

We continued to work on our Alphabet Wall. In the classroom I taped up two trees. As we work through the alphabet, the children will make projects to go on the wall. It's a very fun way for the class to see the alphabet in a new way. This week, we made eagles! We also watched a few videos of eagles so the class could see what they look like.

Each child has a journal that they write in every week. When we focus on a letter, they write for that letter. On shorter weeks and during our review later in the year, they write to the theme. This is such a great way to get children excited about writing and reading. I start the children out by tracing, and once they are comfortable and controlling the crayon well, they move onto copying.

The children turned a capital letter E into an elephant. I got the idea from the book Alphabet and Counting from Twin Sister Productions. They give tips for how to make it a glue and paste projects, but I like to give them crayons and the challenge to add the parts of the animal to the letter. It opens up room for more conversation about the shape of the letter AND the features of the animal.

I made a cube of cardboard and glued pictures of "E" things one each side. The children say "Elephant, Elephant, what do I see.... I see a ____ looking at me!" They roll the cube and fill in the blank. This idea came from a Mailbox activity book, and let me tell you, it was a hit!! They loved it!

During the week we made a list of words that begin with the letter e. Here is what we thought of!

 Leave a comment below and let me know that you stopped by!

The Harvest! (J, 7, Star)

Our theme for the second week of November was "The Harvest" and we focused on the letter Jj, the number 7 the star shape.

We read this week: The Seasons of Arnold's Apple Tree by Gail Gibbons
                              From Seed to Pumpkin by Wendy Pfeffer
                              Pumpkin Soup by Helen Cooper
                              Oliver Finds His Way by Phillis Root
                              Possum's Harvest Moon by Anne Hunter

Our question of the week was "What is one word to describe you?"This was such a TOUGH one! We got through it though and most of the answers are pretty accurate for my class this year.

For our theme of the week, we discussed as a whole group what a harvest is and the kinds of things that get harvested.


I drew pictures of the different stages of a pumpkin vine. After we read "From Seed to Pumpkin", I called small groups to come over and challenged them to put the cards in order from start to end. When the cards were put in the wrong order it was so great to hear them talk through what had to change and why.

I dyed some pumpkin seeds with vinegar and food coloring (my kitchen still faintly smells of vinegar =]) and challenged my kids to sort them onto the pumpkins that said the color. They then had to count how many of each color seed they had and write the number next to the pumpkin. We then tried to glue the seeds on, but they just popped off after the glue dried! So i had to use tape, not as pretty, but just as functional.

We painted with pine cones.

And had a great time outside "harvesting: leaves, sticks and acorns."

We talked a lot this week about the shape star, and we sang "Twinkle Twinkle."

"Twinkle, twinkle, little star,

how I wonder what you are.

Up above the world so bright,

like a diamond in the sky.

Twinkle, twinkle, little star,

how I wonder what you are."

I drew stars, hearts, triangles and circles and asked the kids to color each shape it's own color. I was so impressed with how well they did!

When we worked on our number activities, we practiced writing the number and word for the number 7.

I made these worksheets that reinforces the one to one concept. The kids practice writing the number and have to color a square for each picture that they see. (I forgot to take a picture =[)

For our letter activities, we used our handwriting sheet for the letter Jj from this book,  and the sheet that helps work on letter recognition that I got from this book,  The students also wrote in their journals for the letter J.

We turned an J into an Jaguar! This book is great.

The kids jumped like jumping jelly beans to music. Super fun and a great way to get all that energy out.

Speaking of jelly beans, I gave the kids each 7 jellybeans (our number of the week) and they had to color the jelly beans on their paper the colors of the real ones they had. Love that one-to-one correspondence practice. The best part? They got to eat them after they colored them!

 I have a few kids with nut allergies, so i sent their jelly beans home with the nutritional information panel. Better safe than sorry!

The kids practiced their coloring and cutting skills to make this awesome booklet that tells all the different places that a jet flies. This is from this Mailbox book.

For our alphabet wall we made jets!

Here are the words we came up with this week!

Here's an update from our "planted" pumpkins! We planted them the week of Halloween, and we got a sprout!!

Up next week: Number review week and "Native Americans, Pilgrims and Turkeys".

Falling for Fall! (F, 3, Octagon)

Our theme this week was "Falling for Fall" and we focused on the letter Ff, the number 3 and the shape octagon.

We read this week: Fletcher and the Falling Leaves by Julia Rawlinson
                               The Frog Prince (Classic Fairy Tale)
                               The Frog Prince Continued by Jon Scieszka
                               One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish by Dr. Seuss
                               Bread and Jam for Frances by Russell Hoban

Our question of the week was "What is one reason you like the Fall?"

theme of the week, we talked about and did activities that highlight some seasonal changes that happen in the fall.

We made a fall themed tree using paint and Q-tips. I like to let my kids create their own art. so they even made their own tree trunks! (great cutting practice!!) I saw this done on this page.

We made fall wreaths with fall colors. We used orange tissue paper, red and brown construction paper and yellow feathers. This project let us talk about why we associate the colors with the season.

We had fun collecting leaves from all around outside and then sorted them by size, and then by color.

Using those leaves that we collected, we then made leaf rubbings!

I made a new mural for our library center and the kids made acorns! I drew the outline of the acorn on brown construction paper. Then they glued torn up brown paper bags fro the "cap" and we glued on oatmeal for the bottom.

We talked a lot this week about the shape octagon. I couldn't find a song that I really liked, so I wrote my own modeled on the ones that we've already done..

"This is an octagon, this is an octagon,

How can you tell? How can you tell?

It had 8 sides,

And looks like a stop sign, 

It's an octagon, it's an octagon."

The kids practiced recognizing octagons.

When we worked on our number activities, we practiced writing the number and word for the number.

I made these worksheets that reinforces the one to one concept. They kids practice writing the number and have to color a square for each picture that they see.

For our letter activities, we used our handwriting sheet for the letter F,  and the sheet that helps work on letter recognition, both are from books that are mentioned in the "All About Me" post. The students also wrote in their journals for the letter F.

 
We went "fishing for F's". On cutouts of fish I wrote letters A-F. I put a paperclip on each fish and the kids used a fishing pole with a magnet on the end to catch a fish! They had to name the letter they got. If it was and F, they got to keep it, and if it was a different letter they had to "throw it back in".

We danced the Hokey Pokey, pretending that we were foxes (bushy tails, pointy ears, paws) Love it!

We turned F's into Fish.

For our alphabet wall we made fish that we finger painted.

And with the F addition, our wall now looks like...

I didn't realize until now that my little  pond looks a little bit like Texas...

We got into a competition with the older class for who could think of more words.. by the end of the week both classes tied! It was an awesome job done by both classes. Our list for words beginning with F's was awesome. Here it is!

Up next week: The letter Gg, the number 4, hexagon and "Creepy Crawlies".