Police Officers and Thanksgiving

This week we got some practice with the shapes and colors that we've already learned. The kids put this puzzle together and did an awesome job. There were even some shapes that we haven't learned about (octagons, pentagons) and they were great at figuring it out.

On Monday we finished up our 'People In Our Neighborhood' unit by learning about police officers. We had another special visitor come to talk to us about his job as a police officer. It is one of the funnest jobs to learn about because they have so many cool tools to use!

Wednesday was all about Thanksgiving! We did some fun Thanksgiving crafts and learned a little about the first Thanksgiving.

We had our own little Thanksgiving with some of the foods they might have eaten at the first Thanksgiving.

We also made turkeys and talked about what we are thankful for. I loved the things they came up with. These kids make me smile and I am certainly thankful for them!

Pilots and Doctors

This week was all about the letter L. We love this letter because it's such an easy sound to make and so many great words start with L! I also discovered this week that Sesame Street has created podcasts for every letter of the alphabet. We watched the letter L one today and it was fabulous. The kids were singing the song from it for the rest of class.

On Wednesday we learned all about pilots. We did a little pretend play and took turns being pilots. They, oh course, had to add the chairs on the side so the airplane could have wings. I loved some of the places they decided to fly to. My favorite was New York, so they could freeze into icicles.

After that we learned how to make and fly paper airplanes!

The kids also made collages of places they would fly to if they were a pilot. This turned out to also be a really great geography lesson as we talked about the places in the pictures they were cutting out!

Today during centers we broke out some puzzles. Learning and fun all at the same time!

We also learned about doctors, nurses, radiologists and other people who help us stay healthy! Really, at 3-4 years old, they all count as doctors. We even had a special visitor today! She talked to us about her job as a radiologist and showed us some really cool x-ray pictures. She also helped the kids make fish x-ray pictures that turned out super cute!

Firefighters and Dentists

Thank you parents for bringing your kids to the fire station on Wednesday! It was so much fun to see everything (especially the truck :) ) and to learn a little bit about fire safety.

After we got back from class we learned about the letter k and talked more about fire safety. We talked about 'stop, drop and roll' and did a fire drill so that the kids will know what to do if there is ever a fire here at school. If you have not done a fire drill recently at home, please take this time to do one and make sure you have a family meeting place outside the house!

Friday was all about dentists! During centers we spent some time doing a few dentists themed activities that reviewed the alphabet and helped us practice our handwriting.

We also learned about how to take care of our teeth by brushing and flossing!

Of course, we also had some fun painting teeth,

and making our own mouths! These mouths were such a great activity. The kids got to practice their fine motor skills by breaking the styrofoam into pieces and gluing them on. After that was done we talked about estimation and the kids got to estimate how many teeth were on their mouth. Then they counted to see how close their estimate was!

Construction Workers, Teachers and Mailmen

We have been putting more tools in our tool belt this week as we learned about some different people in our neighborhood.

Monday was about construction workers! The kids played with Legos during play time to get in the spirit!

During class we talked about the tools that construction workers use and the different things they can build. We then did some building of our own! My original plan was for them to build buildings, but they all wanted to make robots. I am all for letting them use their own creativity, so robots it was!

On Wednesday we talked about teachers. We read some books about teachers and talked about the different kinds of teachers there are. The kids each took a turn being a teacher and teaching all of us something that they know about. We learned some karate moves, a princess dance and a spinning trick.

Friday was about mailmen! We started by writing letters to our favorite Disney characters, getting it in the envelope, getting the envelope ready to go and walking it down to the mail box. Hopefully they will write back to us soon! We also wrote letters for the kids to send to whoever they would like. It could be a grandparent, cousin, friend, whoever they want! It was also a nice mini assessment of where their writing skills are at. We definitely still have work to do but I am seeing a lot of improvement from the beginning of the year!

We also worked on numbers on Friday. One game we played is pictured below. The kids counted the items in the bag and then found the number that matched.

Halloween!

This week has been all about the letter i and Halloween! 

On Monday we learned about things that start with the letter i and made decorations for our Halloween party.

Wednesday was our party and we had so much fun! We played games like bingo and pin the spider on the web, painted pumpkins, made pictures and ate treats! I love seeing all their cute Halloween costumes!

Friday was the first day of our new unit, "The People In Our Neighborhood". We talked about grocers today. We talked about some of the tools that grocers use, such as scales and cash registers, and then turned the classroom into our very own grocery store. The kids sorted all the foods so that similar items were shelved together and the took turns being the shopper, the cashier and the bagger.