Feelings! (Bb, Circle)

The theme for the 4th week of the school year was "Feelings". We continued our Letter of the Week study, with the letter B. This week we also focused on the circle shape.

This week we read: The Pout Pout Fish by Deborah Diesen
                                       The Story of Ferdinand by Munro Leaf
                                       Stellaluna by Janell Cannon
                                       The Very Hungry Caterpillar by Eric Carle
                                       Brave Horace by Holly Keller

Our question of the week was "What is something that you are really good at?"

The shape of the week: circle was fun to talk about. At our morning meetings, we would talk about the shape and things in real life that are the circle shape. We also practiced drawing circles in the air. The children worked on their fine motor skills by tracing circles, and reviewing our square shape from last week. I found these worksheets on Kidzone.

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

For our song this week we sang "This is a Circle". I've seen this song all over (and other shape variations) so I'm not exactly sure where to give the credit. =/

For our theme "Feelings", we made a book! I took pictures of each child in my class making happy, sad, mad and scared faces. Then I put them all together into a book! The funniest part was scared, most of them thought I wanted them to SCARE ME! They were terrifying!

Each child told me things that made them happy or made them smile, and I scribed it onto their Happy Card. (That's whee I got the idea!) Then I painted smiley faces on their hands and they made hand prints.

We talked about being sad while we were making watercolor relief paintings. With white crayon, the children drew sad faces all over their paper. Then they used blue watercolor paint to make it appear. They were thrilled with the "magic".

The children drew 4 different 'feeling' faces on cut out circles and glued them onto a strip of black paper. while they made the project we talked about why we think our faces make certain expressions when we have different feelings.

We also did some yoga that helped us talk about being calm when we're upset or angry.

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

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 load the boat with all the "B" cargo. Everything else had to be left behind for other ships.

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 butterflies! Using different color watercolor pain on white coffee filters was a fun way for the children to start experimenting with color mixing. After they dried, I scrunched the middle with half of a pipe cleaner and used the ends to make antennae.

Using a bee template that I found here, the children colored, cut and glued a bee! We did this project the same day that we read Ferdinand, and we extended our conversation about that part of the book.

The children turned a capital letter B into an bee. 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.

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!

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 "B" things one each side. The children say "Bumble bee, Bumble bee, 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!

I gave the children a square of brown paper, a strip of black paper, scissors, crayons and a blank white paper. I then gave them the task of creating a boat.. and they blew me away! This is one of my favorite kinds of projects to do because it is completely up to the child for how to make their boat, the kind of scene, etc. 

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

We celebrated a birthday this week!

and we celebrated Rosh Hashana with some apples and honey to bring in a "sweet new year."

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

Welcome to the School Year! Building a Classroom Community

The theme for the first week of school was "Building a Classroom Community". I wanted to really get to know my class and let them get used to the room and to our daily routine, so we focused on becoming friends and some fun activities.

This week we read: Llama Llama Misses Mama by Anne Dewdney
                                        Splat the Cat by Rob Scotton
                                        Miss Nelson is Missing by Harry Allard
                                        A Book of Friends by Dave Ross

Our question of the week was "What was your favorite thing about the summer?"

For our song this week we sang "The Wheels on the Bus". It was fun to let the children pick what parts of the song to sing each time.

The activities that we did this week really helped us to become a tight classroom community! Everyday we went over class rules that the children helped make. We sat in a group and I asked the children what they thought some rules to keep us safe and happy in the classroom might be. I fit in my own too! We also took tours of the classroom so that the children get used to where the centers are.

We played "Just Like Me" to help get everyone comfortable with each other. I start by modeling with a few statements, i.e, I like vanilla ice cream. If a child also like vanilla ice cream, they stand up and yell, "just like me!" After I model a few statements like that, each child has a chance to be the leader. It's so cool to see them thinking about what they want to say!

The kids drew "first day of school" pictures. These are fantastic to throw in their portfolios! I have mostly blank piece of paper that on the bottom says, "I drew this on the first day of school!" and the children can draw anything that they want. It's an easy project for them to complete, and it also lets me see how the kids draw, and how they hold the crayons.

To help get the children playing with each other we used puzzles and treasure boxes to partner play with. They get to take turns choosing what they play with and work/play with new friends. To learn more about my treasure boxes and other ways they can be used, check out this post from last year!

We walked on our school's nature trail in the woods. All of the new children to the school LOVED it! Since our school is so connected to the outdoors and we are always looking at and talking about the seasonal changes that we see, I started us off by asking the children to look for different color flowers as we walked down. They were so excited when they saw purple, white, pink and yellow.

At morning meeting one morning we played body drumming, another game that helps the children become comfortable leading the group. I model 3 or 4 different motions, like patting the knees, clapping, snapping, and stomping while the group follows the change of the motions. Then any child that would like a turn (I do not force children to do something like this if they really don't want to) leading the group.

The children made paper plate snakes. Such an easy and fun activity. Either the teacher or the child draws a spiral on the plate, and then they color it however they choose. When they are finished coloring, they cut along the spiral that they drew, and voila! A snake!

I traced the children's hands and they colored them in. Again, a simple project to help the children get used to coming to the table to do projects and following directions.

We played "I Have, Who Has" with colors. We played a few times because the kids loved it. I have these games on hand that I made simply out of index cards. I have a shape and alphabet version as well.

The children made lions out of paper plates. They drew faces and the manes, and then growled for me!

We also played Simon Says.

We had a great first week of school, how was yours? Leave a comment below and let me know that you stopped by!

The Pumpkin Plant (a year long project!)

Probably my favorite thing from this past school year, was our year long Pumpkin Project. I had found the idea to "plant" a pumpkin from this blog.It was so fun to have this growing in our classroom and the class LOVED watching the growth and changes in the plant. I posted periodically about this project over the year, but I thought it would be great to see it all in one place.

WEEK 1:
Just put dirt in the pumpkin and let the seeds sprout. Genius! I cut the pumpkin open and we talked about what was in there, what it looked like, what they thought about the inside of the pumpkin. Then they each got to put some dirt in the pumpkin... and we're just waiting for a sprout! (All that day they kept coming to tell me that we didn't have anything growing yet. I don't think they really believe me that it's going to take a couple weeks. =])

WEEK 3: There was nothing more fun than coming in each day to see if anything had changed in our pumpkins. This week we finally saw a sprout!

WEEK 4: The original sprout got so tall quickly and we had some more popping up!

WEEK 5: Right before the long Thanksgiving Weekend, I noticed that the pumpkins were starting to get soft on the bottom and sides, so I decided to plant them under some dirt. They were sprouting like crazy.

WEEK 10: I had been regularly watering the plants, and unfortunately we had a little bit of a set back when the first batch of sprouted plants died. They seemed to mostly come from one of the pumpkins, and then the other one began to sprout! On these sprouts we also got to see the first real pumpkin leaves. Very exciting!

WEEK 15: The pumpkins really started to comeback strong after half of the sprouts withered away.

WEEK 18: The pumpkin plants had been growing steadily and were doing really great. This week we had noticed that there were little "bud pods" and the kids could not wait to see what they would become.

WEEK 19: The pumpkin plants had been growing like crazy and were quite full of sprouts, and we were still getting some sprouts. We learned that the flowers can be either male or female. The male flowers are on the end of just a long vine, and the female flowers have that small little ball at the base of the flower (what becomes the pumpkin).

                                                 

WEEK 26: Our school does an art show every year, and this year's theme was "In the Garden". One of my class's projects for that was to paint pictures of our amazing pumpkin plant.

                                                

WEEK 28: The pumpkin plant had really been thriving and had filled out their container. I wanted to make sure that they could grow more, so I moved them outside into the school garden!

                                         

WEEK 30: The pumpkins took to outside really well! They basked in the sun and flourished!

WEEK 33: It seemed like everyday I looked at the plant outside it just got bigger and bigger. Some of the leaves were so large that they were bigger than my head. Incredible!

WEEK 34: A baby pumpkin!!

WEEK 36: The main part of the pumpkin plants unfortunately became infested with some sort of bug and was starting to rot. Most of the plant had to be pulled and I was only able to leave a few of the sprouts in the ground. At that point there were two pumpkins on the vine.

WEEK 45: I didn't do anything with the pumpkins, because I heard that the pumpkins might keep ripening, even off the vine. I waited as long as a I could (until I noticed that the stem was starting to get a little moldy). It turned orange! Even the little one started to change to orange.

I wanted to cut the pumpkins in half, because one of our projects during Halloween week was to talk about the parts of the cross section. 

The pumpkin was still good so I saved some for the bunnies and my rats (they'll be psyched!) and I was able to save most of the seeds from the large pumpkin. Not sure what I'm going to do with them yet... Maybe plant some more pumpkins? =]