Hibernation

This week we learned about what animals do in the winter time. We read several books and made a chart together to categorize animals that hibernate, migrate, or adapt. Our classroom became a hibernation station with a bear cave and bears in our sensory table. Here are a few pictures taken to capture the fun:

At one of the our art centers the children made bears. They colored the bear first, then painted glue onto the outline of a bear, and then sprinkled cocoa onto the bear. They turned out great and we displayed them on our bulletin board.

We made bird feeders for the birds that do not migrate in the winter and have trouble finding food in the cold weather and snow. We used bagels, honey, and nut-free birdseed.

On Monday, we had a great day of training at our center. We learned a lot of great ways to improve the health of ourselves and of our classrooms. We had opportunities to learn new ways of integrating exercise and movement into our school day. Danielle and I spent time changing our schedule around to accommodate more time for large movement activities. We started these changes this week. With the bitter cold temperatures we had to get creative and use our resources inside. The game we played was called "Feed the Bear." The children had to role a colored cube to determine which color berries to feed the bear. Then they ran to a tunnel which we pretended was a cave. They crawled through and on the other side they fed a pretend bear. It was a great way to practice our colors and to get up and moving!

The game was so popular that we added it into one of our table centers for the children to continue practice with sorting and identifying colors.

We used gummy bears for a fun counting and sorting game. The children had fun using this chart to sort their gummy bears. They counted the number of each color and then colored in the chart. I think they had the most fun eating the bears and picking their favorite flavor!

I wish we had room to leave the bear cave in our classroom longer....playing in a cardboard box can be one of the funnest things!

Letter of the Week Activities (ABC)

This month we have introduced a letter of the week into our weekly lessons. We introduce the letter at circle time. At the beginning of the week the children are able to bring in an item from home for show and tell. We are loving this activity because it provides them with experience talking and sharing ideas. They are often very excited to show their special item and we add it to our list of words that begin with the letter. Here are some photos from our show-and-tell:

After spending time learning about each letter sound and making a word list the children have time to experience writing and tracing the letter using a variety of writing tools. We have also had them build the letter with play dough or drive a toy car over the letter for fine motor practice and to build pre-writing skills. Here are some pictures of the children working with the letter "A" during our centers:

Each week the children are creating a page for an ABC book that will be made at the end of the year. For the letter "A" we painted with apples:

For the letter "B" we cut out the letter and then glued buttons:

For the letter "C" the children made car tracks:

We are having so much fun exploring the alphabet together and incorporating it into our play and activities. We will be sure to keep you updated.
These last pictures are from our birthday celebrations that took place during the letter "B" week!

Winter activities

After returning from Christmas break and celebrating the New Year we have been having a lot of discussions about winter. We decorated snowman using collage materials after reading the book Snowballs by Lois Ehlert.

We also decorated paper snowmen using markers and our artwork is display around the town of Whitney Point. Here is a list of local businesses on Main Street where you can find our pictures. We encourage you to take a walk or drive through town and try to find your child's picture!

-Dominic's Pizza

-Merriam Accounting

-Rural Health Network

-Physical Therapy

-Dr. Office on Main Street

-RHSC (Branch of Rural Health Network)

-Decker Real estate

-Rite Aid Pharmacy

-Nationwide Insurance

We also enjoyed reading the story, The Mitten by Jan Brett. At one of our centers the children were working hard to make two matching mittens. 

We used cotton balls in our sensory table to shovel snow. For large motor play, we also put cotton balls on our parachute and worked together to throw the snowballs into the air and off the parachute. It was a popular game!

We have spent time focusing on reviewing our colors and shapes through recognition games including Bingo.

 We have been incorporating a letter of the week into our daily activities. I will be posting updated pictures of our alphabet progress soon!

Happy Holidays

We began December with a unit on cookies. We read several books including, If You Give a Mouse a Cookie, The Gingerbread Boy, and The Gingerbread Girl.

We practiced counting skills with chocolate chips.

We introduced upper case and lower case letters with a new cookie puzzle.

The children helped follow a cookie recipe and we baked chocolate chip cookies together. They also cut paper to make their own cookies.

After learning about the gingerbread boy and girl we decorated our own gingerbread people. They ran away to each child's house and some of the children brought stories and pictures back to school to share the adventures with our class. The stories were great!

We introduced a wrapping paper center to the classroom and the children have been working hard to wrap anything and everything. They used blocks from our block center to make presents.

The children have also been busy decorating the tree. More pictures of our classrooms decorations and Christmas activities will be posted soon! We have been working on a special project for our parents and families for Christmas. The children are so proud of their creations...we can't wait to send them home!

So much to be thankful for...

The past few weeks we have been learning about family, friends, and being thankful in our preschool classroom. On that note, I would like to say that I am very thankful for each day that I am able to spend singing about turkeys, sharing stories, and learning with the preschoolers. I love my job!

I was very forgetful about taking pictures during some of our activities to post on the blog. I will try to recap some of our favorite learning experiences both pictured and not pictured.

We read several books together about friendship. We also talked about how we can be good friends to each other and what being a friend looks like. I had originally planned to have each child pick a friend's name  from our classroom and then create a picture of him or her. I have done this in the past and the children enjoyed it. However, when it comes time to send the artwork home I always struggle with who gets to take the picture home...the person who made it...or the person who is depicted in the picture. I decided to avoid that by having the children make self portraits using a wide variety of collage materials. The focus was still on friendship but the children practiced looking at themselves and their own characteristics and tried to make their pictures as real as possible. I loved this learning experience and I think the children did too. Some of them were so involved in their artwork they stayed at this center with Miss Danielle for nearly 40 minutes! We did not want to interrupt their creativity. It was awesome!

Some of our other family activities included playing with potato heads, cutting pictures from magazines, making a class book with pictures of our families, and making family puppets. Our puppets are pictures of our family members glued to Popsicle sticks. We will be using them for the next few weeks to practice storytelling. I will be snapping more pictures of process and posting them soon.

We also practiced drawing pictures of our family. The children answered questions about their family while they were working and we created a little "Guess Who" trivia. I love capturing some of the silly things they say!

After spending time learning about family we began Thanksgiving activities. Here are two of the songs we have been enjoying together:

I have a turkey big and fat,
He spreads his wings and he walks like that. (Waddle)
He pecks at the corn all day long (Peck at the ground)
and when he talks, he talks like this:
GOBBLE, GOBBLE, GOBBLE! (Shout it out)


We Eat Turkey
We eat turkey, We eat turkey,
YUM, YUM, YUM
YUM, YUM, YUM
Always on Thanksgiving, Always on Thanksgiving
YUM, YUM,YUM
YUM, YUM, YUM.
Here is a video of the song

We read several books about the first Thanksgiving and learned about the Pilgrims and Native Americans. We had a Mayflower ship in our dramatic play area and we also made hats which are not pictured. In our kitchen center the children spent time pretending to prepare Thanksgiving dinner as well as wash the dishes after the big feast.

The children enjoyed making books about things that they are thankful for.

Other activities included a shape lesson that involved making a turkey. Experimenting with turkey basters, making friendship necklaces, and manipulating feathers. We weaved place-mats for Thanksgiving which was a great fine motor activity. We used craft foam because it was sturdy and easier for the children to manipulate.

One day we made turkey toast together. I added food coloring to a cup of milk. The children used new paintbrushes to paint on a piece of bread using the colored milk. Then we popped the bread in the toaster. When it was finished we used a hand-shaped cookie cutter to transform the toast into a turkey.

Last but not least, we took some inspiration from this Thanksgiving picture that we had hanging as decoration. We used some fake fall leaves that we had to make turkey creations. We used potatoes for the body and head, Popsicle sticks for feathers, and the children added the leaves on for feathers in creative ways. I love the way their creations turned out. They were proud!

Happy Thanksgiving!