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!