Presidents and Rockets

Our letter of the week this week was U. We had a fun hunt around our class for the letter U and hung all of the ones we found from our umbrella!

Since we didn't have school on Monday because of President's Day, we took some time on Wednesday to talk about why we celebrate President's Day. We learned about what a President is and a little about Washington and Lincoln. 

The kids always think it's so funny that Washington wore a wig, so they had lots of fun making his wig extra poofy! They also got to make their own Lincoln masks. (No, I have no idea why this picture insists on uploading sideways.)

On Friday we went back into outer space in a rocket! We watched a video of a rocket launch that this kids absolutely loved. We also pretended to be rockets and took the opportunity to work on counting backwards from ten. I love learning that feels like fun! We slipped in a little more learning by making rockets out of our names. The kids had to unscramble the letters of their name and glue it on the page in the right order. They were awesome at it!

More About the Moon and Valentine's Day

On Monday this week we finished learning about the moon by talking about the phases of the moon. 

We also talked about the letter T this week. You probably noticed a paper in your child's backpack that said "SEEL At Home". SEEL stands for Systematic, Engaging Early Literacy and is a program I love to use. You will be seeing activities from the program come home about once a week for the remainder of the year. Please take the time to do these with your child to reinforce what they are learning in class! If you would like more information about the SEEL program, please check out this website: http://education.byu.edu/seel/what_is_seel.html

We also had lots of fun with Valentine's Day this week! We used hearts to make a valentine's monster and to learn more about patterns! The kids had tons of fun making Valentine's gifts for their parents. The jars make cute candle holders, pencil holders, vases or anything else you can think of!

Sun and Moon

I love learning about the letter S and so do the kids! Learning the sound is super easy because we get to sound like snakes. They had lots of fun making snake sounds and finding words that start with S!

We also pulled out some new puzzles this week, which is also fun. Puzzles are so great for spacial reasoning and fine motor skills. If you're child isn't ready to put a puzzle together on their own yet, help them and let them just put the pieces together! I saw one student this week just taking one piece out at a time and then putting it back in. Though that doesn't seem productive, it's a great start!

On Friday we got to practice numbers some more and worked on identifying numerals. A few kids were even ready to start on 15-20!

Our group activities for the week started off with a lesson on Groundhog Day. We learned about making predictions and took a poll of our class and recorded our predictions on whether the groundhog would see his shadow. After that we got to watch the ceremony and look back at our predictions to see if we were right! Looks like we're in for more winter. I think I'm ok with that!

On Wednesday we started our outer space unit by learning about the sun. We watched the first few minutes of the Bill Nye episode about the sun. The kids loved it! If you would like to let your child watch the rest of the episode, you can find it here http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kq-l65eEgjc . 

We also started a science experiment to research why we use sunscreen. The kids each made a picture with sunscreen and then we set them out in the sun. We'll leave them out for a few days and see what happens to the paper.

We also made sun catchers by drawing pictures and then poking holes along the lines with a toothpick. I hope your child got a chance to hang theirs in a window to show you!

On Friday we made some decorations for our classroom and practiced our scissor skills for cutting out stars.

We also started to talk about the moon. Since the moon is bumpy, we made bumpy paper plates and then covered them in tin foil so they look like the moon!

Rain Forest Animals

We learned  how to play a new game for centers this week! Alphabet Tic-Tac-Toe! Just like regular tic-tac-toe, except that in order to draw your X or O, you have to name the letter that is covering the space you want to use. I think we will be doing this again soon and maybe we will branch out and use other letters besides X and O to give us some practice writing.

Our group activities this week all focused on animals that live in the rain forest. It was fun to learn some of their crazy names and see all the beautiful colors of the rain forest!

On Monday we read "The Umbrella" by Jan Brett. It is just as good as all of her other books! In the story, a group of rain forest animals all float down a river in an upside down umbrella. So we painted animals and put them in our own umbrellas. I loved the things that the kids remembered from the story as they were working on this. Some even remembered where some of the animals were sitting in the umbrella.

We also practiced our counting with the Monkey Grid Game, following the same rules as the Reindeer Grid Game we played last month.

Wednesday was all about snakes! We read about different kinds of snakes and had fun looking for similarities and differences. We also made our own snakes out of cardboard tubes.

Friday was our field trip to the zoo! It was so much fun to see the animals that we've learned about! I have to say though, that I was pretty bummed that the coyotes weren't out, so next time you see a coyote running down the side of the street, make sure you point it out to your preschooler! (Maybe it's just me, put I see them pretty often!)

These were some of the kids' favorite Arizona animals. 

Did you get a chance to see the tiger?

Or these adorable monkeys?I love how close you can get to them!

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.