Thursday, November 15, 2012

Native American and Old Lady Weeks

Old Lady Week
I love this week because we read silly stories such as There Was An Old Lady Who Swallowed A Fly, There Was An Old Lady Who Swallowed Some Leaves, There Was A Cold Lady Who Swallowed Some Snow and There Was An Old Lady Who Swallowed A Clover!  The stories are great because we are able to really incorporate the children into the books because they are so repetitive.  Their favorite is the leaves book because she sneezes so many times in the story! 
 
We worked on this cute craft the one day and they turned out so neat!  I had printed out pictures of the kids faces and they added white and gray hair, a body with arms and legs, glasses and wrinkles.  They also had to tell me what they know about old people such as "Old people have wrinkles" or "old people have cane sticks"! LOL...
 
 
 
On Tuesday we learned about the election and talked about our presidential candidates!  We made a construction paper flag, talked about the pledge, traced a flag and discussed voting!
 

 
We also did this old lady craft/writing activity.  We made old ladies with funny faces and added pictures in their mouths of something they might have eaten such as the fly, cat, dog, etc.
 
 
Miss Vanessa saw this cute idea for our bulletin board!  It's a big Indian corn and the kiddos told us things that make them laugh.  The title is "Corny, Corny, Corny"!
 
 
 
Our fun fall sensory tub to go with the story There Was An Old Lady Who Swallowed Some Leaves!
 
 
Native American and Pilgrim Week
 
We LOVE feathers!  We used our fall (halloween) feathers to build in with our play dough activity!  What a neat fine motor activity and the kids loved it!!
 
 
We feather painted with big and little feathers and colors such as browns,
 oranges, reds, blues and greens!
 
 
 
We even painted with spices.  We specifically used cinnamon, chili powder and
 onion powder!  It was a neat sensory experience for the kids even though it smelled so strong!!
 
 
We used small sponges to make Indian corn in the afternoon!
 
 
We learned a little bit about Native American homes and the most recognizable is obviously the teepee!  We used our math pattern blocks to make teepees.  Unfortunately I forgot to take a picture of the kids actually using the pattern blocks but this was our teepee pattern!
 
 
We had Indian Corn from our fall science center so we husked it this week!  We will continue husking our smaller corn next week, but the kids loved pulling the corn off the husk.  What I think is so neat is this sensory tub was empty and all I had to do was throw some corn husks in it and the kids knew exactly what to do!!
 
 
Our silly Native American faces.  We talked about shapes,
colors and patterns in the headbands!
 
 
 
These were our pilgrims waiting to be hung up with our Native Americans.  sooo cute :)
 
 
My favorite project of the week is the one that is pictured below.  We did this is in our writing center and the kids did such a good job! We were very proud of them.  We showed pictures of Native American symbols and translated them.  The students picked their favorite ones to recreate in their drawings on the buffalo "hide".
 
 
 
 
We talked a lot about what Pilgrims and Indians would have worn, used and eaten.  We matched shapes on Mayflower ships and played a memory game with Native American tribes.  We are so excited for our Thanksgiving Week next week and to celebrate with a big thanksgiving feast!
 
Danielle

Friday, November 2, 2012

October Wrap Up!

We had a couple of fun weeks but we were so busy I forgot to take and post pictures!
 
Searfoss Photography www.searfossphotography.com came in to take our photographs and we did such a great job smiling for the camera!
 
We had a fun Western week talking all about cowboys.  We talked about what cowboys do, what they wear, what jobs they have, etc.  We also discussed a lot about the state of Texas.  We talked about the state flower of Texas and fingerprinted Texas Bluebonnets with different shades of blue.
 
 
We watercolored boots and talked about what we do with our feet and our boots.  We had some cute answers from running to skipping, walking, dancing and stomping!
 

 
We read the story Chicks and Salsa!  We made chicks in art and added some fun fiesta hats!
 
 
We talked about foods we are tired of and foods we would like to eat every day.  They had some really funny answers.  Most of the kids are tired of eating broccoli!  They want more candy!!!
 
 
We made pretty dessert scenes out of colored construction paper.  We then added our cacti on top!  They turned out really neat. We loved talking about cactii.  We learned that they are sharp! We made cacti with green play dough and toothpicks in our fine motor center.  We made sure we were careful with their spikes...
 
 
Our last art project from Western Week was our armadillos. 
We learned about their sharp bodies and added scales with macaroni noodles!
 
 
We finished off our western week by taking a fun field trip to Cherry Crest Farms!...
 
They had a fun petting zoo with goats that wanted to eat out of our hands!  We held a baby chick, went on a wagon ride, rode down a big slide, and went through a fun corn maze!  We had a fun but tiring day!!!
 
 
 
 
 
 
We also worked on our name spelling as always.  We spelled our names with name tiles! 
We are getting very good as recognizing our names! 
 
 
I had to post a picture of our sweet hamster Sarah!  She loves to nibble on carrots and loves when the kids come to look at her...she goes right over to them and sniffs her little nose in the air!
 
 
HALLOWEEN WEEK!
 
We had a bit of a crazy week because of Hurricane Sandy but we managed to finish out our week with some fun activities!  We had a day of "not-so-scary" monsters and made these silly Frankensteins!
 
 
I have a huge LOVE of candy corn!  We scooped, poured, measured, sorted and
graphed the three different kinds of candy corn!  Suprisingly none of the kids actually at the candy corn!
 
 
 
Miss Vanessa had the kids work on their fine motor skills to make torn paper candy corns!
 
 
Scary bats!
 
 
Halloween Feather Sensory tub...what a mess! but sooooo fun :)
 
We also had a rice table (that made such a mess) with halloween
figurines, halloween rings, eyeballs, etc.
 
 
Our fun fall owls!
 
 
We sorted halloween rings by color: green, purple, orange, white and black!
 
 
We explored our pumpkins and guords!  We used magnifying glasses, scales
 and our baskets to sort, examine and weigh them!
 
 
This was one of our monster worksheets!  We cut out the numbers, counted the monsters and matched the correct number.  On the back, the students had to count and color a certain amount of monsters.  That was a very hard skill because there were more monsters than they needed to color, so they really had to use 1:1 correspondence to get the correct answer.
 
Here's a link to my Fall Themed Pinterest board for other fun activities!!
 
 
I wish I would have taken a photo of our finished mummies!  We read the book Where's My Mummy? and talked about what our "mummies" do when we are scared.  We got some really cute answers and our kiddos have awesome "mummies".  We covered a mummy with white paper "wrappings" and cut off the excess.  They turned out sooo cute! 
 
 

Hope everyone had a great Halloween and a fantastic weekend!
 
Danielle!

Friday, October 12, 2012

Health and Safety and Career Weeks

Hi Everyone!
 
We've had a pretty crazy two weeks but lots of fun!  Last week was health and safety week.  We learned about fire safety, nutrition and exercise, healthy food choices, dental health and we even had a fun purple day!  The pictures are a little mixed up so I'll do my best to describe each picture and what is going on in it!
 
We listened to the song PURPLE PEOPLE EATER and made this cute purple people eater craft.  The kids decided that they were glad they weren't purple so they didn't get eaten.  We left blanks at the bottom of the paper for them to fill out how many eyes and horns they wanted to add.  Most kiddos only added one eye and one horn so it was pretty easy for them, but we did have some people eaters with a couple horns!
 
 
 
Pizzeria day!  In math we counted how many pictures were in each box and colored in the number.  We are working hard on number recognition!
 
 
Our Journals have arrived!!!!! (finally!)  We brainstormed what we wanted to be when we grow up!  The answers varied from a princess to a soccer player to a whale (don't ask!).  We will be working on drawing and telling stories in our journals in the weeks to come but this was a great start!
 
 
 
More pizza day!  We tore our pizzas, drew on our sauce and glued on pepperonis and yarn cheese!  Yummy :)
 
 
 
We discussed things the UPS man can deliver to our house!  After awhile the UPS man started to sound like SANTA...lol :)  The trucks turned out cute and their answers were even cuter.
 
 
During safety week we talked about policeman and women and how they are here to help us.  We colored the policeman or women, cut out the pieces and put them back together.  I asked them what they knew about policemen and their answers were too cute!
 
 
 
Our torn paper traffic lights.  We really focused on what red, yellow and green lights mean and what order the lights go in.  We even learned that a lot of mommies and daddies go through red lights!!! :)
 
 
Miss Vanessa talked to us about fire safety.  We made these cool fire hidrant crafts in the afternoon and even painted the flames with our fingers!!!
 
 
Our new and improved science center!  I took a trip to the garden store to get pumpkins, indian corn and guords.  We love touching them, weighing them, observing with magnifying glasses and playing in our blue sensory tub (pictures in the back)
 
 
Workin' at the car wash, yeah!  That song is so catchy...and these were our car wash crafts!  We picked our favorite car, glued it on and made bubbles out of the top of plastic cups.  It's funny how the cars they picked match their personalities, from the pink car to the yellow race car!
 
 

On Thursday we worked as a big group to complete our soldiers.  We had to follow directions VERY carefully to create these soldiers and then got to paint them in camo!
 

Our October Bulletin Board...

SpringRose Childcare supports Breast Cancer Awareness.  Although it is difficult to explain, we did talk about that some people get very sick and we have to support them and hope they get better.  We made the big ribbon out of smaller ribbons that the children painted pink.  We asked them what makes them strong and took pictures of the students showing their muscles...
 

We worked on stamping our letters.  While doing this activity, one of my little boys told me he was going to stamp my paper because he loved me so much!  It's times like that that make my heart melt! :)  We love our kiddos!
 

Our USA sensory tub was of course...red, white and blue!  We used letter cubes, red pom poms, poker chips, measuring cups and feathers in our rice table.  We love rice but man it's such a mess!  We also had a hay sensory tub and a car wash sensory tub that I didn't get to take pictures of...
 

Team Pink!
 
 
 Western Berks brought their firetrucks to visit!
 

They even put their ladder out and climbed on to our roof!!!! It was so neat to watch them dress up in their firesuits for us and we watched a video about being "Rabbit Ready!"
 
 
All the kiddos were able to go through the firetruck, but since I won't post their faces, I can post a picture of my little guy driving the firetruck!  He loved it and so did your kids!!! :)

Have a great weekend!

:) Danielle