Math!

The theme for the third week of August was "Math!". The children are having so much fun in our "summer camp" this year!

This week we read: 1-2-3 Peas by Keith Baker
                                       Animalia by Graeme Base
                                       Little Green Peas by Keith Baker
                                       Miss Nelson is Missing by Harry Allard
                                       LMNO Peas by Keith Baker 

The older children that join my class for Summer Camp do not nap during rest time. They have time in the gym in a small group while my class does. To keep them working on their skills, I make them  packet to bridge their grades.

The games that we played this week at morning meeting were so fun!

"Pass the Vader" is a fun game. It's just like Hot Potato, except we do it with a small stuffed Darth Vader that children gave me this past Valentine's Day. Love it!

We played "Find the Clothespin". I found this game on KindergartenSmorgasboard, and I thought it just sounded so fun! While the children are not peeking, I hide a clothespin one myself, on a child or somewhere close around us. When they look for it, they can't yell out where it is, they put their finger on their nose! They have so much fun searching.

We played "Crocodile Snap". I found the idea for this game last year and adapted it to be my own. I turned a box into a crocodile with bulletin and construction paper, then filled it with little cards that have a letter, number or shape on them. The children have to reach into the crocodile's mouth (while he's sleeping of course), pull out a card and name what's there. Also hidden in the belly of the crocodile though are SNAP cards (the crocodile wakes up and SNAPS his mouth shut!). Once we pull three SNAP cards, the game is over!

We played "1,2,3" which we have played before and is definitely a fan favorite! We stand in a circle and each child says 1,2 or 3 consecutive numbers starting with 1 up to 9. So for example: "1,2,3" "4" "5,6" "7,8,9" and the next child who would have to say 10 sits down and is out of the round. Then it starts back at one. My class really loves this one, and usually if we play it in the morning, I will hear them in centers or at their lunch tables playing their own facilitated versions of the game.

We played "Alphabet Catch" with a beanbag. We toss the beanbag around the circle and the kids have to say the next letter in the alphabet. If they drop it, we have to start back at the letter "A". This game helps us work on our communication, because the children have to let the person know that they are going to toss it to them!

The special activities this week were a blast. Bubble day is quickly turning into a favorite. This week we just had a good time running around and blowing bubbles.

Since we are the oldest in the school, our class took over the little school garden. We spent time weeding it. It seems that our store bought plants are surviving, which is great! We've started to get some blossoms, so that is definitely promising!

Every Wednesday my class has sprinkler day. This is always a fan favorite. The children wear their bathing suits and water shoes, run around in a sprinkler outside, and play in a water sensory table. It really helps beat the summer heat!

Exercise is very important, so I thought it would be fun to have some kind of special exercise activity. This week, we had a number relay! I put numbers in a bucket that the children had to run to and name, and then run back to the group. We had fun running and doing different kinds of movements.

I LOVE having a movie day in the summer. It gives the kids a chance to relax, wind down and just enjoy themselves. Plus we have snacks and make it feel like the movie theater... who doesn't like going to the movie theater? This week we watched Meet the Robinsons. 

Our question of the week was "What do you love about the summer?"

For our theme "Math",  we did some neat math activities. The class made bingo marker patterns.

Check out our sensory table!

Using pattern blocks I made pictures of different animals and objects. I put out the blocks and my pictures and let the class explore them, making the pictures and their own.

I cut out shapes from paper and the class sorted them. If I can find where I found these materials, i will post it here!

Using Unifix cubes the class made pattern and color towers.

I made a memory game with index cards and stickers. The children had to practice their counting whenever they flipped over a card, to try to find the match.

We sang "Numbers Marching In" from here.

"Oh, When the numbers march right in,
Oh, when the numbers march right in.
We will count them one by one,
When the numbers march right in.

Oh, one-two-three and Four-five-six,
And Seven-eight and nine and ten.
When we finish all our numbers,
We will count them once again."

For our seventh week of the  study "Buildings" we had a lot of fun. We reviewed the different things that go on inside them. They each made a flip page project about their house. On the top fold they drew the outside of their home, and on the inside they drew a room(s) that is in their home. I found it here!

With empty cardboard boxes, we made a box city! Over a few days we set up the city, deciding what kinds of buildings we would make, how to decorate them and where to put them. So much fun!

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

Transportation! (G&H, 27, Pink, Pentagon)

The theme for the last week of April was "Transportation!". Since we finished our Letter of the Week study, we are now reviewing our letters! This week we reviewed letters G & H and continued our number study with the number 27! We have gone through our shapes and colors once, so from now until graduation, we will talk about two each week and do some small review activities. We worked this week on pentagons and pink.

This week we read: How to Make Apple Pie and See The World by Marjorie Priceman
                                        Polar Opposites by Erik Brooks
                                        Steam Train, Dream Train by Sherri Dusky Rinker
                                        I Love Planes by Philemon Sturgis
                                        Curious George Takes a Train by Margret & HA Rey

Our question of the week was "Where do you want to go on vacation?"

To review the color pink we talked about things in real life, at morning meeting, that are pink. The kids also colored pictures of pink things. I found these pages on pinterest, and I love the concept! There wasn't one for pink, so I made my own! My general rule of thumb is that if the children can explain to me their reasoning for coloring an object, then I am all for it!

To review the square pentagons the children practiced recognizing the shape and colored pentagons. I created this little picture full of the shape. They needed to color the pentagon houses pink and then the rest of the picture!

For the number of the week:27 we started off by counting to and backward from twenty-seven. 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 twenty-seven. 

When I started in my class, I found a page like this from education.com, so I made my own for the number 27. 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 "Transportation",  we did my favorite project of the entire year! I turned a white shower curtain from the dollar store into a map and the children colored it in over the course of a few days! Then we had it to use as a unique playmat!

While walking in line all week, we pretended to be a train!
The children also colored specific shapes in a picture of a train. I kept this to tuck away in their portfolios.

We sang "The Wheels on the Bus."

I wrote the letters in each child's name on colorful squares, which turned into cargo on their name trains!

We played "Red Light Green Light" while outside on the playground.

The children each made a straw rocket, and then we raced them! These were definitely a class favorite!

In their journals, the children wrote about somewhere that they would like to take a train to.

While reviewing the letter G and H, we are really focusing on practicing writing, having good control over letter formation, and having a solid knowledge of the letter sounds.

My children that are moving on to kindergarten next year, are working on sight words and this worksheet from Confessions of a Homeschooler are amazing! They challenge the children to think of the word in a new way and get creative. This week they worked on the word "go".

I created envelope games for each letter of the alphabet that we played the first way through the alphabet. My children that are staying with me another year played these again to work on their letter sounds.

We reviewed writing and finding the letters that we are talking about, G and H. The pages for my younger group came from Letters for Little Learners, and I found these more advanced worksheets for my older children from education.com.

The book Alphabet and Counting that we used used  to turn our letters into fun animals, also has cute little tongue twisters for each letter. I printed them large and illustrated them, then I laminated them with contact paper. Using wet erase markers, we take turns finding the letters hidden!

On their own, they searched for the letters as well!

The letter of the week books have pages that you can make a book into. I picked from both to get my "favorites". Each week, we'll work on these pages, and each child will end up with an alphabet book at the end of the year. 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!

There is a 15-20 minute span of time while the children are waking up from our rest time and afternoon snack. During this time, we talk about what they will be doing in the afternoon with their afternoon teacher, and what we did in the morning. We also spend some time learning about animals through videos. This week we watched one, two, three, four, five videos about hamsters. The class could not get enough! We also watched one and two about hedgehogs, hippos, hyenas, horses, hummingbirds, gorillas, goats, gerbils, geckos and one, two, three about giraffes.

I made an "I have, who has" game filled with G and H things. I love this game because once it starts, the children completely direct it. I love seeing them help each other and play with each other.

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

Around the World

This week we went "Around the World" and it was so much fun!!

During summer camp, one day a week we do yoga as a school with a child-centered yoga DVD. The kids really love it. We also have a splash day where the kids bring their bathing suits and we put out water tables and a wiggly sprinkler. It really is so much fun.

I have some older children that have joined my class for the summer. While my kids are having their rest in the middle of the day, these children have extra play time out of the room and they also work on some practice sheets that I got from the Summer Bridge Books for K-1 and 1-2. They are great worksheets to keep the older kids practicing their skills over the summer! I love the Pk-K book and I use it through out the year for their letter worksheets.

This post is going to be written a little bit differently, as I'm going to organize the pictures and projects by each country that we visited. I found these "passport stamps" that I put in my class's journals for each day that we traveled, and the older kids filled in a passport page each day and wrote a fact about the country.

We sang the song each morning"I'm an airplane" and pretended that we were the airplanes flying to our destination.

"I'm an airplane, I'm an airplane
Flying up into the sky.
Flying higher, Flying higher
As I watch the clouds go by.
I'm an airplane, I'm an airplane
See me flying all around.
Flying lower, flying lower,
Till I land down on the ground."

I found it here.

When the song was over we "landed" in the country of the day and went to our foreign classroom in front of the our class whiteboard. I made a plane ticket for each flight that we took, a copy of the flag of the country and some facts that we talked about. Then we would open the discussion and the kids would tell me what they wanted to know about the country (and then I would look it up for them!)

Monday: Spain
When we got to Spain, we read the story Ferdinand by Munro Leaf. We talked a bit about facts that I found about the country from ScienceKids.

 

One of my student's parents visited Spain and was generous enough to share some pictures with us. She was our Ambassador! (The kids got really into it when I really got into the role of traveling. It was like our class had kind of an inside joke for the whole week!)

I put these two pictures in the art center, and for our project we made paper plate shakers and danced while listening to Flamenco music.

Tuesday: China
When we got to Spain, we read the story The Story About Ping by Marjorie Flack. We talked a bit about facts that I found about the country from ScienceKids. Writing the words in Chinese was pretty cool, the kids thought it was so pretty and we talked about writing in that style instead of our alphabet. My Director was our Ambassador, as she traveled to China to teach and showed the class pictures of her adventures.

I put these pictures in the art center and we used water color paint to create paper fans.

Wednesday: Italy
When we got to Italy, we read the story Strega Nona by Tomie DePaola. We talked a bit about facts that I found about the country from ScienceKids.

 The lovely parent who shared pictures of Spain with us also had pictures of Italy which the kids loved to see. They asked a lot of questions about ruins and asked if there were any that they could see around where they live. The pictures also sparked a conversation about volcanoes and that people live near them.

 I put a picture of the flag and the Leaning Tower of Pisa in the art center.

 For our project we made stained glass windows! I showed the class pictures of stained glass on my iPad, and using construction, tissue and contact paper. They turned out so cool!

The younger class made little pizzas!! I'm definitely going to have to remember that for next year.

Thursday: France
When we got to Italy, we read the story Madeline by Ludwig Bemelmans. We talked a bit about facts that I found about the country from ScienceKids. I brought my iPad again that day and we looked at pictures of the Eiffel Tower, the Mona Lisa and the Louvre.

 In the art center I put a picture of the flag and the Eiffel Tower.

 We made collages about France using the colors of the flag in different materials and small pictures that I found online. I used the crown, the Arc de Triumph, the Eiffel Tower, a picture of France and a man on a bike. Some kids questioned me on the man on the bike, and we talked about the Tour de France race.

Friday: Poland
When we got to Poland, we had a special Ambassador waiting for us. One of my class parents, who has family in Poland and has visited there brought in pictures, stories and special treats!

 The movie theater in Poland was originally going to be playing Mulan, but due to world events, they changed their movie to Aladdin. (RIP Robin Williams)

 Wycinanki is the art of paper cutting in Poland. We made our own paper cuttings!

Morning Meeting Games
"The Weather Changed" is a fun game. The kids decide on movements for 5 different weathers before we start. I start as the Weather Person and go through the different weather, while we change the movements. Then the kids get a turn as the weather person!

We played "Body Drumming". Using only our bodies, we do different motions to make sound and rhythm. I model first and either make a pattern for the children to follow or I have them follow a sequence of 3 or 4 motions. Then I will pick a few children to be the leaders. I love this activity because it's something a little different, you can't get "out" and it's fun to see them trying to focus on when the motion is going to change.

"Pop!" is a really fun game, and definitely a favorite. We stand in a circle and each child says one number as we go around. But each round there is a pop number. Instead of saying that number, you POP! the person that would be next, out. We work very hard on having good sportsmanship, and the kids have fun even if they're out because they know they get to play again in the next round!

We played "Alphabet Catch" with a beanbag. We toss the beanbag around the circle and the kids have to say the next letter in the alphabet. We started tossing it to the person next to use, once the kids get more comfortable with the game we'll stand in a circle and toss the beanbag across to friends.

We played "Crocodile by the Lake". I found the idea for this game last year and adapted it to be my own. I turned a box into a crocodile with bulletin and construction paper, then filled it with little cards that have a letter, number or shape on them. The children have to reach into the crocodile's mouth (while he's sleeping of course), pull out a card and name what's there. Also hidden in the belly of the crocodile though are SNAP cards (the crocodile wakes up and SNAPS his mouth shut!). Once we pull three SNAP cards, the game is over!

That's all for now! Leave me a comment please if you visit! =]