Weather! (U, 18, Orange)

The theme for the final week of February was "Weather". We continued our Letter of the Week study with the letter U. This week we continued talking about colors with the color orange, and we kept going on our number study with the number 18!

This week we read: The Rain Came Down by David Shannon
                                        Bear's Busy Year by Marcia Leonard
                                        Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs by Judi Barrett
                                        Little Cloud by Eric Carle
                                        Bear Feels Scared by Karma Wilson

Our question of the week was "What is your favorite weather?"

The color of the week: orange was a lot of fun to explore.  We talked about things that are the color orange and went on a hunt around our classroom to find things that are orange.

We sang "We Love Orange" to the tune of 3 Blind Mice.

"We love orange,we love orange,
Yes we do, yes we do,
Crunchy carrots so good to eat,
Juicy oranges oh so sweet,
Pumpkins ready for trick or treat,
yes we love orange."
I got it from here!

(C) Jean Warren www.preschoolexpress.com

For the number of the week:18 we started off by counting to and backward from eighteen. They love doing this every day and when we get to the end of counting backward, they all scream blast off!! ;) The kids also practiced writing the number and word for eighteen. 

When I started in my class, I found a page like this from education.com, so I made my own for the number 18. The children have to practice writing the number and then color in that number of squares. It's a great way to introduce graphing and helps them to work on their one-to-one correspondence.

For our theme "Weather", we became meteorologists! In the sensory table I made soap clouds out of Ivory Soap (microwave for about a minute until it gets puffy.) The children had fun breaking it apart and making dust. PSA: Ivory soap dust floats in the air and makes everyone cough! So I added some water into the dust to make a fun soapy water sensory table. The next morning, it mysteriously turned into a very slimy consistency. We played with it like this for a bit, and then I added some more water to loosen it up.

We painted clouds using shaving cream and glue. When it dries, it stays puffy the way that they painted it. I can't show you the final projects because this is something we will be putting into our Eric Carle themed art show in April, but here's a preview!

With colored water, pipettes, a glass jar and shaving cream, the kids made it rain! Each child had a pipette and one color of water. They squeezed their color into the shaving cream "cloud" until the could because full and began to "rain" down. They were so excited when they saw their color start to rain down from the cloud!

I thought that the coolest part of  this project was that the final "storm" looked different for each group. Awesome!

The letter of the week: U activities that we worked on this week were ultra cool!! 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 place the "U" fish in the underwater tank.  All the other letters? I hope there's another tank somewhere around here!

From this Alphabet on Parade book, I got the idea to have the kids practice the concepts of "over" and "under". I drew and umbrella and 12 small pictures for them to cut out and glue either over or under the umbrella. I let them pretty much do their own thing on this project and then tucked it away in their portfolios.

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

As we work through the alphabet, the children make projects to go on  our "alphabet wall". It's a very fun way for the class to see the alphabet in a new way. This week we made sea urchins. The children crumpled and glued tissue paper onto white circles.

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.

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 U into a unicorn. 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.

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!

My kids did a great job of turning shapes into an underwater picture! I cut out the different shapes for them ahead of time, they picked three, and then let their imaginations run wild! It came from this Letter of the Week book.

From Sounds Like Fun, I got the idea to buy little paper party drink umbrellas and say different vowel sound words. Anytime they hear a long or short u sound, they had to put up their umbrellas! So fun. Bonus, they got to keep the umbrellas and were thrilled!

I found these short videos about "u" animals that we watched through the week. There was one about sea urchins. They went nuts for it! The kids really enjoy when randomly throughout the day we take a break to watch an animal video.

We also made a class book about people that wear uniforms. We brainstormed a list together, and then each child got to pick what they wanted to make their page about.

I made a cube of cardboard and glued pictures of "U" things one each side. The children say "Unicorn, unicorn, 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 for the letter A, 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 U. Here is what we thought of!

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

Types of Art (U, V, W and 1-5)

Our theme this week was "Types of Art" and we focused on reviewing the numbers 1-5, and the letters U, V and W.

(To be honest... I'm not really sure what I was going for here. My kids wanted to know if our theme was "Hair") =/

We read this week:  Duck and Goose by Tad Hills
                                Yertle the Turtle by Dr. Seuss
                                The Sneetches by Dr. Seuss
                                Little Hoot by Amy Krouse Rosenthal
                                The Day the Crayons Quit by Drew Daywalt

Our question of the week was "What is your favorite kind of art?" We went over the different kinds of art projects that we have done before they gave their answers.

For our theme of the week, we started to prepare for graduation! This makes me both happy and sad at the same time. But, time keeps marching and so do we! We started to work on their class shirts for graduation. It's a very simple design but they turn out so cute last year, that I knew I wanted to do them again! We used simple white t-shirts and different colors of fabric paint. I have each child do their hand-print in a different color (we had some repeats this year, but on their side of the shirt they were the only ones with that color.) This is a bit time consuming, so we did it over the course of 4 days.
(The fabric paint doesn't last very long on the hand, it's really only good for one handprint. For each shirt I had to repaint their hand) They were really good sports about it.)

After the paint dried, I wrote their first names on their handprints in Sharpie. Some of my kids from last year still wear their shirts and they held up nicely!

Then we talked about some of the different kinds of pictures that you could make; landscapes, portraits, still life and self portraits. Then they drew and colored self portraits.

And they also painted self portraits.

We made collages that I'll talk about more in the "our numbers" section below. =]

For their journals this week, we went back to the beginning page where I had them write "My name is...." and draw a picture of them selves. (Wow, we did a lot of self portraiture this week!) Now their journals have a nice introductory page!

Our song of the week was "I'm a Little Graduate". Time to start practicing for Graduation! (Only three weeks away!) We sang this song last year, and to be honest, I'm not sure where I found it. We sang it to the tune of "I'm a Little Teapot".

"I'm a little graduate, Aren't you proud of me?

I know my numbers and ABC's.

I made lots of friends and had fun too,

Now, I'm off to the big kid school!"

For our numbers, we made those collages that I talked about! I gave each child the numerals 1-5 and pre-cut pictures that correspond. I handed them each their little packet and asked them to color their pictures first, then to glue them on their construction paper. We talked about how with a collage, you can really put them on the paper however you want. I showed them mine, where I grouped the numbers together. Some kids talked about lining them all up, some grouped them like me, and some just made a fun jumbled collage! This was fun project because they got to make it their own and they practiced their counting. Believe me! They sure knew if I forgot to give them one of their picture! =]

From Alphabet, Colors, Numbers and Shapes, I found this great worksheet for practicing counting and one-to-one correspondence.

And I also had a handmade worksheet like that too.

For our letter activities, we reviewed writing and finding the letters that we are talking about; U, V and W. These pages came from Letters for Little Learners.

The letter of the week books have pages that you can make into a book. I picked from both to get my "favorites". Each week, we work on some of these pages, and each child at the end will have an alphabet book. I like to do these pages, because not only do they get more practice writing the letter, but they also have to finish the sentence on the page, which is really cool. It gets them thinking!

This week the "U" page came from Book 2, the "V" page came from Book 1, and the "N" page came from Book 2.

We also worked more on recognizing our review letters in the tongue twisters from Alphabet and Counting. We used this book to turn our letters into fun animals, but on the pages is also a little tongue twister. I printed it large and made a picture, then laminated them with contact paper. Using wet erase markers, we take turns finding the letters that are hidden!

We kept working on our sight words! Every morning we go over around 10 of them. Once we've mastered them, they will go on our sight word wall! So exciting! We're working our way through the 220 Dolch sight word list.

Happy Birthday, Dr Seuss! (and Me!) (U, 18, Orange)

Our theme this week was "Happy Birthday Dr. Seuss" and we focused on the letter U, number 18 and color orange.

We read this week:  The Cat in the Hat by Dr. Seuss
                               The Cat in the Hat Comes Back by Dr. Seuss
                               One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish by Dr. Seuss
                               The Lorax by Dr. Seuss
                               Green Eggs and Ham by Dr. Seuss

Our question of the week was "Who is your favorite Dr. Seuss Character?" We've read some Dr. Seuss already this year, so I quickly reminded them of the different characters that we have met.

For our theme of the week, we had so much Seuss-y fun. On Youtube, I found some of the original movies, so we watched The Sneetches (beware- they say "stupid" which prompted a discussion about not-nice words), and The Zax. I saw that there are also the original cartoons of Green Eggs and Ham, and Horton Hears a Who. We also watched The Lorax, and Horton Hears a Who. We stopped centers a little early and split each movie into 40 minute sittings before lunch. the kids LOVED the special movie treats.

The kids were so great and really enjoyed celebrating my birthday AND Dr. Seuss's.

We balanced like The Cat in the Hat. It was fun to have them try balancing on one foot while doing all sorts of silly things with their hands. We jumped and hopped on one foot, and even tried to dance!

The kids each decorated a Cat Hat with crayons and tissue paper. I love the individuality!

After reading "One Fish, Two Fish..." we went alphabet fishing! I love when I get to use a project more than once. It makes all the time making it so much more worth it! I wrote the capital and lowercase letter on each fish, and when the children "caught" one, they had to tell us what letter it was and think of a word that starts with it.

Each child got to paint a Truffula tree for our class mural. I even made a vine while getting it ready!

We made and ate green eggs and ham!! It was so fun!

The Cat in the Hat even came to visit with us!

We talked about the color orange, and we sang "We love orange"

"We love orange, we love orange,
yes we do, yes we do.
Crunchy carrots so good to eat,
Juicy oranges, oh so sweet!
Pumpkins ready for trick-or-treat,
we love orange."
 (C) Jean Warren www.preschoolexpress.com
I got it from here!

When we focus on a color I love to do "color hunts" in our classroom. Each child takes a turn to walk

around the classroom and bring back something that they found that is orange. Here is what we found. 

When we worked on our number activities, we practiced writing the number and word for the number 18.

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.

For our letter activities, we used our handwriting sheet for the letter Uu from this book.

The students wrote in their journals for the letter U. It's really cool to see the children thinking about what they want to put in their journal. They love these books and always want to go through them when they're finished writing for the day.

We turned a U into a Unicorn! This book is great.

This book has great pages for helping the kids work on the letter recognition of both the capital and the lowercase versions of the letter, and they are always a little different, which is great!

My kids did a great job of turning shapes into an underwater picture! I cut out the different shapes for them ahead of time, they picked three, and then let their imaginations run wild! It came from this Letter of the Week book.

From this Alphabet on Parade book, I got the idea to have the kids practice the concepts of "over" and "under". I drew and umbrella and 12 small pictures for them to cut out and glue either over or under the umbrella. I let them pretty much do their own thing on this project and then tucked it away in their portfolios.

From Sounds Like Fun, I got the idea to buy little paper party drink umbrellas and say different vowel sound words. Anytime they hear a long or short u sound, they had to put up their umbrellas! So fun. Bonus, they got to keep the umbrellas and were thrilled!

For our alphabet wall we made urchins! (I know it's a bit of a stretch, but the kids went with it and loved it. That being said, I had to make an ocean portion of our wall, which will come in handy when we make whales!

Here are the words we came up with this week!

I was not the only birthday we celebrated this week. Yum!

I know I put a lot of updates on here about our pumpkin plant from the Halloween post, but it has not yet ceased to amaze me with it's growth! We are still getting new shoots... and this week, we got our first blossom!!! Really for a project that was so easy to do, the kids just filled the pumpkin with dirt and as they started to decompose I planted them under dirt, we are fascinated every day!

Up next week: "Shamrocks" and a focus on the letter Vv, number 19, color green and circle shape.