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!

Our Feelings (C, Triangle)

Our theme this week was "Our Feelings" and we focused on the letter Cc and the shape triangle.

We read this week: Corduroy by Don Freeman
                               Curious George Goes Camping by Margret and H.A. Reys
                               The Cat in the Hat by Dr. Seuss
                               The Pout Pout Fish by Deborah Diesen
                               The Pout Pout Fish in the Big Big Dark by Deborah Diesen

Our question of the week was "What is something that you're not so good at?" We talked about not being good at something is not always a bad thing, that with practice we can always get better. Some children raised their hands multiple times to tell me things. I love when we get a great discussion going like that.

In the beginning of the year I always like to have the students practice tracing and writing their names.  I found this great website that lets me put in the words that I want them to practice. I choose the largest text and it gives three lines of tracing and one where they have to write the letters on their own. I like to do this activity a few times a year and keep them in their portfolios to see the improvement in their writing over the course of the school year.

For our theme of the week, we talked a lot about our different feelings, why we feel them and how to deal with them.

We made "Happy Cards" I found the idea at this blog. The kids loved getting smiley faces painted on their hands. After they made their hand prints, I asked them to tell me "Things that make me smile"and I scribed what they said.

 We made water color relief sad faces. They used white crayons to draw sad faces on white paper. Then they used blue watercolor paint to make the faces "appear"! They loved the "magic" and it got us talking about why blue is a color associated with sadness.

We made our own class feelings book. In the same idea as those emotion posters, we practiced making happy, sad, mad and worried faces. Then I took their pictures for each child with each face, then turned it into a book! I got the idea from a blog online that I know can't find :(.

I cut out circles in different colors (blue, orange, red and green) and we talked about what happy, sad, mad and worried/scared faces look like. Then I asked them to make each circle into one of those faces. I let them decide which colors to make each face.

We talked a lot this week about the shape triangles. We sang the song:

"Triangles, triangles, triangles I see,

Count the points and count the sides,

Count them 1,2,3

Triangles triangles, just for you and me,

Count the points and count the sides,

Count them 1,2,3!

-Found here, to the tune of 'twinkle twinkle' 

The kids practiced drawing triangles with this cool worksheet of triangles and squares, which I found here. We also worked on recognizing triangles among of other shapes.

For our letter activities, we used our handwriting sheet for the letter C, 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 C.

From one of The Mailbox books, I got the idea of having the students make a "C Collection" book. 

We turned C's into Caterpillars!

We also made Crocodile Puppets!

For our alphabet wall we made clouds of white paint on blue paper. I showed the kids examples of the three main kinds of clouds (Stratus, Cumulus and Cirrus). We talked about the differences, where they are and what they look like. Then each child got to make their own cloud.

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

Our list for words beginning with C's was very impressive. Here it is!

Up next week: The letter Dd, the number 1, rectangles and "Being Healthy".