Bees, Worms and Ants

Our alphabet caterpillars are finished! The final pieces stayed here to dry and will come home on Monday. Thank you so much for supporting this activity by hanging them up at home! The kids have gotten more and more excited about it as the month has gone on because they can't wait to hang up more circles at home.

On Monday this week we learned all about worms! We learned about how they moved and practiced moving like worms ourselves. It was pretty hard! We also had a little bit of fun painting with worms! 

On Tuesday we learned all about bees. We talked about how honey is made and watched a clip of bees making honey on "The Magic School Bus". (They have some great episodes about bugs!) We had tons of fun in class learning about rhyming words and playing "Flee from a Bee". I hope you've had a chance to play that one at home and look for more -ee words. Learning rhymes is an important step in learning to read!

Friday was all about ants. We talked about how ants work together to build their amazing tunnels and to carry heavy food back home! After that we worked on more rhymes by playing Ants on the Pants. Encourage your child to look for more -ant words!

Spiders, Passover and Easter

On Monday this week we got to learn all about spiders. We also took the opportunity to review the letter S as we played Sneaky Spider!

Another fun activity we did was spider web walking. I scattered letters around the web and the kids had to go find their assigned letter without falling off the web and without stepping on any of the spiders.

On Wednesday we paused our bug studies to learn a little about Easter and Passover. We read lots of stories and talked about our family Easter/Passover traditions. One of the kids' favorite things was Matzoh Man. He danced and sang a fun song that they found hilarious!

After that we decorated bags and went on our own Easter egg hunt. A few of the eggs had candy or prizes in them, but most had challenges. The kids completed their challenges by doing things like counting the students in our class and finding various letters, numbers and colors around the classroom.

Also on Wednesday, we let our butterflies go. None of them wanted to land on the kids, but it was fun to watch them fly around the yard for a few minutes before they took off!

Have a wonderful holiday weekend and I will see you on Monday!

Caterpillars and Butterflies

This week was our first full week of alphabet review! The kids have been doing great and have been working so hard on their caterpillars. I hope you've had a chance to display the pieces that have come home so far. You should have circles up to at least G (some of the H, I and J circles went home Friday, some are still here drying).

We also learned a few new games to help us review the alphabet. A really simple one that the kids love is trashcan basketball. Each piece of paper on the ground has a letter on it. The kids are assigned a letter to find and once they find the correct piece of paper they crumple it up and shoot it into the garbage like a basketball. This game is really easy to put together and can be used to review anything your child needs to work on. Just draw numbers, shapes, colors, letters or whatever else you want on the papers! This would be a great game to play at home.

This week we walked around outside the house on a bug hunt. We found ants, a spider and several flying things, but the kids' favorite find was this grasshopper. We saw him a couple times and they loved seeing how close they could get to him before he hopped away.

This week we focused a lot on caterpillars and butterflies. We learned about their life cycle and about the monarch butterfly migration.  

We also talked about bug patterns and practiced making patterns with caterpillars. Later in the week we made our own tree, complete with branches, flowers and butterflies.

When the kids left on Friday the caterpillars had all formed chrysalides. I can't wait to show them what has happened over the weekend!

Ocean Life and Bugs

Two weeks in one post! Two weeks ago we got to finish up our ocean unit. We learned a little bit more about the animals in the coastal zone by talking about octopuses. They also provide some great practice, which we took further by adding 8 pieces of cereal to each of their 8 legs!

We got a little more practice with numbers and even learned a little bit about how to add as we made our own penguins, colored fish for them and added to find how many fish we had. 

After that we spent a day learning about coral. It's so fun to guess the names of the coral, since most of them are named for their appearance. The kids decided (without me telling them to real name) that rice coral looks just like Rice Krispy Treats. 

On Friday we talked about the crazy looking animals that are found in the deep ocean. The kids also loved talking about the vents that are found down there and the fact that lava lies not far beneath the ocean floor. 

Now on to this week!

Thank you so much for joining us at the aquarium on Monday! It was great for the kids to be able to see the animals we've been talking about up close. I loved hearing about all their favorites.

On Wednesday we started learning about bugs. This month we have some guests in our class, caterpillars!

We are learning to be scientists by observing the caterpillars each day and recording what we see. The kids are watching closely for changes every day. 

It is crazy to see how much they do change from day to day, they grow very quickly!

On Wednesday, we also got to talk about what a bug is and make some of our own bugs for our bulletin board. The kids were all so creative and made some amazing looking bugs! One of my favorite moments of creativity was when the kids asked the child who made the bug at the top, middle, how that bug walks. He immediately responded that he walks with his eyebrows. They always come up with the most fun ideas!

On Friday we finished up the alphabet with the last of our letter Z activities. We got to make up actions for some Z words and then practice our writing by writing them down on white boards.

We also talked about the differences between bugs and animals and learned about a few bugs that have some neat (and stinky) ways of protecting themselves!

Over the next few weeks, we will be reviewing the alphabet by creating alphabet caterpillars, similar to the one shown below. Your child will be bringing home a few pieces each day. Please support your child by finding a place for them to display their caterpillar in your home and making sure that each piece gets added. Thank you so much for all you do!  

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.