Play

Play is very important to children. Children learn so much through play! Although most of our day is spent in more teacher directed learning activities, we always make sure that free play is included in our day as well. I love listening to and watching the children play. They are so creative, and for the most part, are good problem solvers. They are really good about including everyone who wants to play.

The afternoon class is really into Cars. There just never seem to be enough Lightning McQueen cars to go around. I think we have 6 of them, and I think we could use more. The afternoon class often plays various games with the characters from Cars 2. I recently added a Francesco Bernoulli and a Finn McMissle, and they have been very popular.

I also loved this picture of some of the other students in the afternoon class. Paige made up a silly game with the wooden blocks. Vivian, Kazia, and Corbin were enjoying it as well.

The morning class loves to play "Protect the Tiger" or "Protect the Princess" depending on the day. I will have to take some pictures of them soon!

Hibernation, Nocturnal Animals, and Letter Uu

The morning class in their "Bear Cave."

What a fun week! The students seemed to really enjoy learning about hibernation and nocturnal animals this week. On Tuesday, we talked about hibernation. We learned what hibernation is, and then named some of the animals that hibernate. We learned that some of the animals sleep the whole time, and it would be very difficult to wake them. Others wake up periodically to eat, and they would be easier to wake, like bears.  We practiced "hibernating" like both kinds.

We read "Going on a Bear Hunt" and made bear caves. Some of the students wanted to put snow (aka cotton balls) around the opening of their caves, some did not.

For letter Uu, I wanted to do something besides a paper craft. I really didn't think umbrellas made from paper would be very exciting. (Letter Uu is hard for crafts, in case you were wondering...) Anyway. We played a fun balloon game trying to keep the balloon UP. Each child got his/her own balloon, and then we practiced hitting the balloon up in the air, trying to keep it there. We also got out the parachute and put them up in the air. And we only popped two balloons! Miracle! I hope they remember "U is for up" not "balloon."

On Thursday, we learned about nocturnal. We learned that nocturnal animals are awake at night, and sleep during the day, and because of this, they have some special skills. We learned that their eyes make it easier for them to see at night, but they also rely a lot on their hearing.

We had a blindfold (and moved all the tables) and the students listened for the teacher or another student, and then had to "find" them.

Tyler T. 

Harold and Corbin

Homes, Day 2

On Thursday of last week we talked about Animal Homes, or Habitats. We looked at pictures of all the different animals I had printed out, and the different habitats--people home (for pets), rainforest, ocean, African grassland, and tundra. Together we sorted a few of the animals into their correct habitat, and then they each got a few turns to put animals in their habitats.

I had printed out pictures of a bunch of different animals, and then they got to choose an animal and draw it's habitat, then paste the picture of the animal in the drawing. (The afternoon class ran out of time and didn't do this.)

This picture shows Corban and Lexi with their habitat project.

The students are making a number book, so we do a page for each number, so there won't be a lot of math papers coming home between now and then. I will put a picture of a page from the number book in the post about this week.

Homes, Day 1

Tuesday, Jan. 17 we talked about houses, specifically different kinds of "people" houses. I showed the students pictures of different houses from around the world, everything from a high rise apartment home, to a hut in Belize, and a house on stilts. We talked about some of the different things that these homes had, like the number of bedrooms, where the bathroom might be, etc...

Then I gave each child a blank piece of paper and told them to draw their dream house. I had shown them a picture of a house in Arizona that had a pool in their backyard, and apparently lots of students thought that was pretty cool, so you can see that lots of these drawings have a pool. Treehouses were another common theme.

My favorite part of these pictures is the stories they tell about it. "Treehouse with 3 windows, but don't get in here because there's spiders." "This is my mom and me on top of our castle." Children are natural storytellers.

That day we also started learning about number 2. I am really trying to help the children learn that "nothing" has a number--it's zero. So I had each child come up to the front and hold their empty hands out. Then I said, "How many is in (child)'s hand?" At first they usually said, "none" but then they started to catch on. Then we went on. We have also been counting to 30 everyday. We clap each time we count, to help them get used to the one-to-one correspondence.

December, January Catch-up!

I am seriously so sorry that I am so behind in blogging! I am going to do a quick catch-up post, and hopefully do better from here on out.

*I apologize about the lack of pictures!*

We loved our Gingerbread Guy/Girl week! We read several different Gingerbread stories. Tuesday we read a tradtional Gingerbread story, and then moved on to Gingerbread Baby (Jan Brett), Gingerbread Cowboy, Gingerbread Girl, and my new Gingerbread book for this year--Gingerbread Pirates. The students liked the different "twists" on the story, and you can see that Gingerbread Baby and Gingerbread Pirates was their favorite. I love Jan Brett--her illustrations are amazing! The students liked making their gingerbread cookies. A HUGE thanks to Kiley's mom, Colleen for making all the cookies. Also, thanks to Lexi's mom, Amanda, and Ava's mom, Erin, for helping us that day.

I hope everyone liked their Christmas presents. The students enjoyed making them, and that's the most important thing! They took great pride in putting the candle in and wrapping the present. I didn't get any pictures of our Christmas song/program, but thanks so much to all the parents who were able to come to that! I think it's a great thing for the students to learn to do that. The afternoon class didn't get to make their Christmas trees at school, but hopefully it was fun to make those at home. Afternoon class spent that time making a going away present for Lilli, who moved. Paige will now be coming to afternoon class. The last picture is of Britton. He really enjoyed making his Christmas card for his parents. I love seeing students get really into a project.

These pictures are from the first week of January. I couldn't believe there was no snow! I even bought fake snow to do some snow activities with, but when we mixed it up, it had a really weird consistency, and the morning class decided they didn't like playing in it, so we decided to just save the snow activities and we'll bring in some real snow when/if we get some!

The students did a cut and match letter review sheet. They did great! I know it seems simple to you, but it is a true stepping stone for them to be able to match the letters like that. For letter S we made snowmen. They enjoyed decorating the snowmen however they wanted. The bottom picture is of our bulletin board we made. So cute!

This last week I seriously forgot to take a single picture! Bad! I'm sorry. We spent time learning letter Mm and reviewing our other letters. We also started making number books. These will not come home until they are all finished--after number 10. For music, on Tuesday we listened to samples of different music and talked about how it made us feel, and then we danced to some of the music. Some of the samples I used were Jack Johnson ("Upside Down" from Curious George), Jon Schmidt ("Last Lullabye--Thomas's song" and "First Run"), Taylor Swift ("Never Grow Up"), Raffi ("Shake my Sillies Out"), and a South Pacific Island group ("Abebe"). It was interesting to watch--the music instantly affected them--they could tell exactly how it was meant to make them feel. We also did the Hokey Pokey. On Thursday we talked about beat and practiced making a beat and using a drum. (You are welcome for not sending one home!)

I think I'm caught up now! Enjoy!