Forest Animals

This week we learned about animals that live in the forest. We talked a lot about the foods they eat and how they live. 

On Wednesday we talked about deer and made our own deer with our hands and feet!

Friday was all about bears. We learned a little about hibernation and talked a lot about baby bears. 

We also had some of our own bear visitors in class! It was so fun to have the kids' teddy bear friends with us. We learned the song "Teddy Bear Picnic" and had a picnic with our bears. 

The kids also (all on their own) set their bears up to have their own class!

Of course, you have to be in disguise to go to a teddy bear picnic, so we made our own masks so that we could sneak in!

Arizona Animals

This week we learned all about animals that live in Arizona.

On Monday we talked about woodpeckers. We made bird feeders to put in our yard. We practiced being woodpeckers and tested what surface around our classroom made the loudest tapping noise.

We also learned about how woodpeckers get their food out of a tree or cactus and tried it ourselves by getting beads out of play-dough.

On Wednesday we read a book called "Cactus Hotel" that talks about a lot of animals that live in or around the saguaro cactus. After we finished, we each made our own cactus hotel.

On Friday for centers we pulled out numbers bowling! Each child draws a card with a number on it and then uses the call to knock that number over.

We also learned about coyotes and roadrunners. We had fun getting outside and practicing running like roadrunners. We also learned how to do a relay race. It's a hard thing to wait your turn and run at the right time!

Pets

This week we focused on the letter O. This is a fun one because the kids usually know it already, so we get to do some extra things with it and work on the rest of the alphabet.

One fun thing we did was a game called "Alphabet Explorers" The kids were given a letter and had to find the card that matched around the room. I love this game because the cards show pictures of things that start with the letter for kids who are ready for that, or they can look at the word that is written there or flip the card over to just see the letter on the back. It allows each child to work at their level.

We also learned about pets this week. On Monday we brainstormed what kinds of animals can be kept as pets and discussed what makes a good pet.

We also learned about cats and dogs and how to take care of them! The kids each chose a dog and cat to take care of for the day and went around the room to different stations to wash, brush, feed and play with their pets.

On Wednesday we learned about pets that live in cages and had some special visitors. Speedy and Roo, the gerbils, came to visit and show us what pets who live in cages do all day. The kids had lots of fun watching them!

We had lots of fun practicing our fine motor skills by making some cages of our own. It was hard work to remember which hole to go through next!

On Friday, we spent lots of time on shapes, rectangles in particular. The kids made pictures out of rectangles and I was so impressed with how creative they were! We had a turtle, a gate, a wolf shadow, a person and some letters.

The picture of the turtle was probably inspired by our other topic for the day and out visitor, Myrtle the Turtle! Myrtle is a snapping turtle, the kids loved watching him pull his feet and head in and out of his shell. Myrtle also helped us learn about how to take care of a turtle.

We got to make some of our own turtle shells using our math skills. We made the ridges on the turtle's belly with numbers, that the kids had to put in the right order, and made the pattern on their backs with our own shape patterns. Patterns are hard work and they all did a great job.