Presidents!

I must apologize, apparently I did not take very many pictures this week!

On Tuesday this week we came back down from outer space to celebrate Presidents' Day. We watched a short video that told a little bit about Washington and Lincoln and then made crafts for each one. The kids thought it was hilarious that Washington wore a wig and loved making wigs of their own for him.

We made masks for President Lincoln, complete with his beard and hat.

On Wednesday we finished our planets flip book and practiced sorting as they identified things that were a planet and not a planet. I was so impressed by how well they all did! I expected them to be tripped up by the sun, but they knew it wasn't a planet without any help from me!

We also had a little extra fun on Wednesday playing Uno Moo at centers time and freeze dance at the end of class!

Friday we started talking about rockets and astronauts. I found a short video on YouTube (Found here) of a rocket launch. The kids could have watched it over and over again for the entire class time and been perfectly happy. We watched it a couple of times and they were not happy that we had to stop! However, we had a rocket that needed painting. We are continuing work on a rocket that the kids will be able to play in when they come to class on Wednesday. They painted it on Friday, which was quite the undertaking! They also made pictures of rockets out of their names. It was great practice to solidify the spelling of their names. They all know how to write them, but spelling them turned out to be a little tricky!

Valentine's Day

I love Valentine's Day. It is such a fun holiday to celebrate at school!

We spent both Monday and Wednesday this week doing fun Valentine's activities. One of the favorites was our Valentine's monsters. They took us both days to put together and gave the kids practice in cutting, folding and gluing. They turned out super cute!

On Wednesday we celebrated Valentine's by decorating sugar cookies, making Valentine's for our Moms and Dads and had some fun with Valentine's patterns.

Friday was back to our regularly scheduled learning. We talked about things that start with the letter T. The kids are starting to be able to identify beginning sounds pretty well and are able to come up with a few words that start with our letter of the week without my help! This week we also practiced writing by copying some of the T words we talked about.

We also started talking about planets today. The kids all worked together to make a model of the solar system out of playdough. I love how tiny they made the first four plants. They were so fascinated with the sizes of the planets when we learned about them! They did a great job of representing that in their playdough. We also starting making flip books about the planets that will be coming home soon!

If you haven't done it yet, take some time to go out and look at the night sky with your child! See the newsletter for resources to help you identify the things you see.

Into Outer Space

This week was the start of our exploration into outer space. It has been so fun to learn about all those things up in the sky. I checked out tons of books on space from the library and the kids have been learning so much by just looking through them and asking me questions about the things they see. Aren't books amazing? You don't even need to be able to read to learn from a good book.

We started out close to home with the moon. We talked about the surface of the moon and then made our own bumpy moons by gluing pasta and beans onto paper plates and then covering them in foil.

This was one of my favorites!

We also talked about the phases of the moon and made flip books. It was some awesome practice in cutting, gluing and following directions. They all did such a great job.

On Wednesday we talked about the sun. We learned a little about how hot the sun is and how it affects us here on earth. For a little demonstration, we finger painted with sunscreen! After our papers sat outside for a few days, the sun faded the areas of the paper that weren't covered in sunscreen.

We also got in some fine motor skill practice making sun catchers. The students drew pictures on their papers and then used a toothpick to poke holes along the lines of their pictures.

When they're hung on the window, we could see the sun shining through the holes!

On Friday we were able to start learning to skip count. This is something that we already do everyday during calendar, so the kids caught on really fast. We made piles of 10 beans and then used skip counting to find out how many we had. We also had some practice trying to write the numbers we use when counting by 10.

We then continued our exploration with the stars. We talked about what stars are and then learned about constellations. We read a couple books that told us stories of some of the constellations and used the iPad to look at the constellations that were in the sky at that time.

One of the constellations we learned about was Pegasus, so we made a magic trick to take home to help us remember the story of Pegasus. The kids also got to use their creativity to make their own constellations. They came up with some great ideas! We had a house, a truck and a scorpion, just to name a few!

Remember to send Valentines and something for the kids to collect their Valentines in to school tomorrow. We can't wait for our Valentine's day party!

Boats and Groundhog Day

On the last day of our transportation unit, we talked about boats. We had a great time with this activity. We learned about halves as the kids folded each shape in half and then put them together to make a boat!

Friday, we brought back a favorite center that hasn't been done for a while. We played charades! We made a list of words that start with R and then the kids took turns acting them out and letting the other kids guess which word they had picked.

We also got to learn about Groundhog Day! We started out with a scavenger hunt to find our snack. Each clue told a fact about groundhogs and gave the kids a task (eating a vegetable like a ground hog, trying to whistle like a groundhog, etc.), at the end, they found a groundhog waiting for them to eat!

Curious George helped us learn a little more about Groundhog Day as we watched a clip from the episode "Whistlepig Wednesday". The kids loved to see the groundhog doing the things we had just learned about in the scavenger hunt. To finish our day, we made our own groundhogs peaking out of the ground and made our own predictions as the whether he would see his shadow!