The Harvest! (Ii, 6, Heart)

The theme for the 11th week of school and second week of November was "The Harvest". We continued our Letter of the Week study, with the letter I. This week we also focused on the heart shape, and we kept going on our number study with the number 6!

This week we read: Possum's Harvest Moon by Anne Hunter
                                        Pumpkin Town!  by Katie McKy
                                        From Seed to Pumpkin by Wendy Pfeffer
                                        Pumpkin Soup by Helen Cooper
                                        The Seasons of Arnold's Apple Tree by Gail Gibbons

Our question of the week was "What is one word to describe you?" This is always definitely a fun and interesting question to ask.

The shape of the week: heart was fun to talk about.  We also practiced drawing hearts in the air, and made a heart by putting our two hands together. The children worked on their fine motor skills and shape recognition by coloring shapes. I made this sheet myself based on recognition sheets that we have already done.

For our song this week we sang "I'm a Little Heart Fish" from Preschool Express.

"I'm a little heart fish in the sea,

I have a heart tail that helps guide me.

when I'm feeling friendly I start to blow,

Tiny heart bubbles...up they go!"

(C) 2001 - 2011 Jean Warren www.preschoolexpress.com

For the number of the week: 6 we started off by counting to and backward from six. 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 six. 

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 6. 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 theme "The Harvest", we had a lot of fun talking more about the changes happening outside from a different perspective.When we talked about Falling for Fall, we talked about the changes we can see around us. Talking about harvest time, we got to talk more about what those changes mean.

For our class bunnies, Patches and Daisy, we harvested them a feast from outside of leaves, sticks and dandelion leaves from our playground, and parsley and tomatoes from our school garden.

We sorted these little cards that I made of the lifecycle of a pumpkin, all the way from planting the seed to getting the large orange pumpkin. In small groups the kids put the cards in order, and they were really proud of themselves! =]

We made Pumpkin Moon Sand for our sensory table! I found the recipe on Pinterest here, and the kids love it. It smells sooo good! Mine did not come out nearly as smooth as it looks in the picture, and I'm not sure why, but my kids still are having a lot of fun with it!

I have small cookie cutters for my side business... Shameless plug time, I make delicious dog treats. Check us out! Jakks in a Box! and I brought my Autumn themed cutters so that we could paint with them. There is something about cookie cutter painting that I just love!

The letter of the week: I activities that we worked on this were were Interesting! We Sang "All the Leaves are Falling Down" that I found at Preschool Express. We sang it to the tune of "London Bridge"

All the leaves are falling down, falling down, falling down.  (Imitate leaves falling down)

All the leaves are falling down, it is Fall.

Take the rake and rake them up, rake them up, rake them up.  (Imitate raking up leaves)

Take the rake and rake them up, it is Fall.

Make a pile and jump right in, jump right in, jump right in.  (Children jump forward)

Make a pile and jump right in, it is Fall.

(C) 2001 - 2011 Jean Warren www.preschoolexpress.com 

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 "I" insects in the bug box. All the other letters? I think they have to find a different home!

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 used our ink pads and crayons to make fingerprint insects.

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

I found this worksheet with a Sesame Street theme and I love it! The children have to say what the pictures are and decide if its a long i or a short i sound.

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 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 watched a video first about a young boy making his first Igloo. I also found this video, whitch was much more in depth. This started such a great conversation about igloo building, and my class is really hoping that this coming winter brings a LOT of snow. After this, we also made igloos with blocks of snow (aka, white squares on blue paper).

The children turned a capital letter I into a insect. 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.

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.

I made a cube of cardboard and glued pictures of "I" things one each side. The children say "Inch Worm, Inch Worm, 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 I. Here is what we thought of!

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

Turkeys, Pilgrims, and Native Americans! (3-7)

Our theme for the third week of November, our theme was "Turkeys, Pilgrims and Native Americans".

We read this week: Red Fox and His Canoe by Nathaniel Benchley
                               The Thirsty Moose by David Orme
                               1 Little, 2 Little, 3 Little Pilgrims by B.G. Hennessey
                               Thanksgiving Cats by Jean Marzollo
                               The Very First Thanksgiving by Rhonda Gowler Greene

Our question of the week was "What one thing would you bring on the Mayflower with you?"

For our theme of the week, we discussed Pilgrim and Native American life. We focused on how they lived and what their homes and villages were like.  The kids had fun deciding
which life they would rather live.

We made strawberry juice using strawberries, water and a little bit of honey. The kids got to squish up the strawberries and watch as the juice developed. Everyone tried it, which I was super proud of, and about half of them wanted more!

The kids also worked on coloring their Thanksgiving placemats. Our director got them for all the kids from Oriental Trading. The kids loved them because they were like giant coloring pages.

We sang "Indians and Pilgrims" to the tune of "Row your boat" which I found here.

Beat, beat, beat the drum.

Beat it loud and clear.

Tell the Indians everywhere,

That hunting time is near.

Cut, cut, cut the logs,

Make them long and short,

To help the Pilgrims build a house

A warm and friendly fort.

One of our amazing teachers in the school brought in a special guest for the kids to see. They voted and decided that his name would be Giblet.

We did not talk about a letter, number or shape this week. In preparing for parent teacher conferences, we worked on portfolio assessments. We went over numbers 1-30, all the shapes, patterns and the alphabet, lowercase and capitals.

Each day we did an activity that focused on a letter, 3-7.  I got these activities from this book. The kids had to color three of each item in a group.

They did a number 4 color by number.

Colored 5 of each flavor of ice cream.

Color by number for 6.

They had to draw 7 apples on a tree. (I didn't get a picture. =[)

Our class had two birthdays this week! We love to celebrate in my class.

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 "We Are Thankful".

Farm Animals! (I, 6, Heart)

Sorry I'm a little behind on posts, life has a tendency of getting in the way every once and a while. =]

Our theme for the first week of November was "Farm Animals" and we focused on the letter Ii, the number 6 the heart shape.

We read this week: Humphrey's Farm Adventure by Igloo Books
                               Duck for President by Doreen Cronin
                               Little Oink by Amy Krouse Rosenthal
                               The Very Busy Spider by Eric Carle
                               Barnyard Banter by Denise Fleming

Our question of the week was "What would you grow on your farm?"

For our theme of the week, we danced the chicken dance, sang "Old MacDonald" and pretended to be different farm animals with a game of charades.

I painted a picture of a farm scene with no animals and hung it up on the wall. The kids were all very intrigued as to what we would be doing with it. Well, we turned their hand prints into farm animals. I love this craft. They get to choose what animal they want to make, we paint their hand and with some eyes, ears and a mouth we have a farm animal! The kids and the parents love when this mural is hanging on the wall. =]

We talked a lot this week about the shape heart. To the tune of "I'm a Little Teapot" we sang,

I found it here! 

I drew hearts, triangles and circles and asked the kids to color each shape it's own color. They did a great job with it!

When we worked on our number activities, we practiced writing the number and word for the number 6.

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 Ii 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 I.

We turned an I into an Insect! This book is great.

I found this worksheet that has words with different vowel sounds. The kids have to color the pictures that have the short i sound in them to make the fish. I did this in small groups and gave each child a choice between a word that did or didn't have the short i, then the group would color the short i word that was picked.

We watched a short video that I found of a young boy learning how to make an igloo. The kids really love this one. Then I gave them a blue piece of paper, white squares that I cut out ahead of time and a glues stick. We talked about how the boy built the igloo, how he layered it from the bottom, how it has a door, a curved roof, and then set them free to create their own.

We played a category game and sat in a circle naming different ice cream flavors. Next time I do a category game I'll write down all of the things we come up with so that they can see it.

We practice cutting with "The Insects are In" The kids had to color the insects, cut them out and put them "in" the right container.

For our alphabet wall we made fingerprint insects.

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

Here are the words we came up with this week!

We had a special visitor come this week. A local girl scout made display boxes for our school nature trail and came to talk to my class about the different things that we could put in them. She gave us deer bones, tree cookies and we even got to meet a baby box turtle! She talked to us about worms, foxes, chipmunks and different kinds of trees.

Another teacher and I went out to the nature trail the next day and put some of the things she donated in the displays. (We also added some things that we found in the woods :])

Up next week: The letter Jj, the number 7, star and "The Harvest".