Leprechauns and The Coastal Zone

Welcome back! I hope everyone enjoyed their break! 

This week started out with lots of fun on St. Patrick's Day. Some Leprechauns even visited and hid shamrocks all over the place for the kids to find. We had a good time making our rainbow hats, dancing to Irish music and using shamrocks to work on the alphabet and numbers. Thank you to everyone who took the time to finish up those activities with their kids at home!

On Wednesday we got to learn about the letter X with a treasure hunt. We searched for the X that marked the spot by searching for words that ended with x along the way. 

We also learned about the coastal zone this week. We talked a lot about octopuses and the ways they hide and hunt for food. We also worked on our fine motor skills with these octopuses! They were lots of fun to put together. 

Dr. Seuss and the Intertidal Zone

We started last week off with Read Across America. We celebrated Dr. Seuss's birthday by reading some of his stories and some of our favorite stories. We also did a few activities to go with his books. 

The rest of the week was dedicated to learning about the letter W and the Intertidal Zone. I hope you've had a chance to do the Wiggle Dance and talk more about the letter W at home! 

We had so much fun looking at pictures of tide pools and learning about the animals that live there! On Wednesday the kids got some numbers practice and scissor practice as they built their own crabs. 

On Friday we talked more about the animals in the Intertidal Zone and also talked about story telling. The kids worked together to write this story:

"Freddie the octopus liked to swim and eat fish. Freddie ate his dinner to get him healthy. Then he saw five of his friends. He played games with them. They played freeze tag. Then Freddie left.He went to get more fish and be healthy. Freddie pretended to be a statue. Then he bonked his head on a rock because it was so dark. He found more food."

Some of the kids were not satisfied with that ending and wanted to keep going but we were out of time! A good follow up activity at home would be to help your child write their own story. They could even illustrate it afterward. If you get a chance to do this, please send their story to class for show and tell!

Have a wonderful spring break and I will see you all again on the 17th! (St. Patrick's Day, remember to wear green!)

Planets and Stars

This week the kids were able to get a little more acquainted with text as they searched for the letter v in this story. There were a lot of them and it was hard work!

We also learned about the planets and about stars this week.

We learned a little about each planet and then made a playdough model of the planets. This kids did great at making some of the planets little and some of them really big!

As we learned about stars, we also talked about constellations. If you haven't had a chance yet to look at the stars with your child, please take the time to do that with them! Point out some of the constellations that you know! If you don't know many, check out the Sky View app (the free version works great). We had a chance to use that in class on Friday to locate some planets, the International Space Station and the Hubble Space Telescope. We even did a little star gazing during the day!

The kids also got a chance to make their own telescope that allows them to look at the stars anytime they want.