Happy Thanksgiving!!

We spent the past two days getting ready for Thanksgiving.  We heard several books about Thanksgiving including Franklin's Thanksgiving and I'm Thankful Every Day!!

Yesterday we made two turkey art projects, one with Mrs. Chyko and one with Mrs. Gould.  Mrs Chyko painted our hands and helped us make handprint turkeys.  Mrs. Gould helped us turn a toilet paper tube into a turkey using a coffee filter and do-a-dot paint bottles for the feathers!!

Even though it was cold outside most of us went outside to play in the snow for about 15 minutes.  We had fun running around in the snow and making snow angels.

We made butter again today to have with our Town House Crackers for snack.  

We watched a short video about things to be thankful for and then we made a class list.

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www.youtube.com/watch?v=aJYXFDKOoH8

Jul 4, 2008 - Uploaded by friendofraul

Raul does Raffi! Great arrangement. (*Raffi is a noted children's entertainer.)

Kate is thankful for slides and kittens.

Carter is thankful for Grandmas and Grandpas.

Liam is thankful for snow.

Gavin is thankful for walks to the park.

Duncan is thankful for best friends.

Jonas is thankful for Grandmas and Grandpas

Jacob is thankful for snow and sunshine.

Mika is thankful for her little brother.

Emma is thankful for kitty cats.

Mrs. Gould and Mrs. Chyko are thankful for all the kids who come to Maple Leaf

and all of us are thankful for our families!!

                              HAVE A WONDERFUL THANKSGIVING!!

Potato Day

We read the Lois Ehlert book Eating the Alphabet during circle time.  We also passed a potato around the circle and played hot potato.  Then we each got our own potato and we dipped it in water and washed it and then we tried cutting it up.   They were really hard to cut!!  We put the cut up potatoes in a pot covered with water and we watched as Mrs. Chyko put the pot on the stove and started cooking them!  When they were done we added the butter we made on Wednesday to the potatoes and we each got to mash and eat our own potato!!  

Mrs. Bulgerin came in today and did vegetable prints with the kids for art.  We each made a bowl of vegetable soup using potatoes, celery, and carrots dipped in paint.  We added some rice to the soup too!!

It was extended day so after lunch we walked to the park and had fun playing outside on the equipment.  When we returned we made get well cards for Kate.  We all missed having her in class today!  We hope she feels better soon!!

Fun with Food

With Thanksgiving next week we're taking this week to help us get ready for all the great food we'll be sharing with our families soon!!

Yesterday we learned about cranberries.  We saw a short video of a cranberry bog and watched as the cranberries were harvested.  We all thought it was cool how the cranberries floated to the top of the water before they were harvested.  We also were introduced to a new word "bog".  We talked about how it's a wet, marshy area where cranberries like to grow.  We were each given a cranberry to smell and touch.  We used our senses to describe how it felt smooth, it looked mostly dark red, and it didn't have much smell before it was cooked. Jonas was the only one brave enough to eat the cranberry before it was cooked.  He said it tasted sour!!

Then we put our cranberries and the rest of the bag into an electric frying pan.  We added 1 C orange juice and 1C sugar and turned the pan to 350 degrees.  We listened as the orange juice started to sizzle and we heard the skins start to pop.  The juice started boiling and we kept stirring the cranberries until some of the juice had evaporated and the cranberries had turned into a thick sauce.  The cooked cranberries smelled really good!!  While we were cooking the cranberries Mrs. Gould read us the story Gregory the Terrible Eater about a Goat who was a picky eater.  Then we talked about healthy foods and the different food groups.

While the sauce was cooling we had music with Mrs. Jenkins.  We've been working on our Holiday Show which will be in December.  More info on that will be coming.  Then we went outside and enjoyed the beautiful, sunny day!  Back inside we had fun spreading our homemade cranberry sauce on Ritz Crackers and eating them, yum!!!

Today we talked about cows and food made from milk.  We heard a story about A Big Red Barn that had some cows inside.  Then we went into the big room, sat in a circle and poured whipping cream into small jars.  We screwed the lid tightly on top and shook the jars as hard as we could.  We had two jars going around our circle and we all took turns shaking.  We called this "friendship butter" because we all worked together to make it.  After about 5 minutes it seemed like the cream wasn't making a sound when we were shaking it. We wondered what had happened so we opened the lid and found out that our cream had become very thick and turned into butter!!  It was so creamy and declicious.  We spread it on bread and had bread and butter, a banana, and apple juice for snack.  We're saving the 2nd jar of butter to use on our mashed potatoes tomorrow!!

We went into the church nursery today during activity time to use the fruit and vegetable stand that they have in that room as well as their kitchen and train set and some of their riding toys.  It was exciting to have a chance to play in a different room!!  

We finally finished with our hand print bats based on the story Stellaluna.  We added glitter to put some stars in the night sky.  Mrs. Chyko told us that Stallaluna means Starmoon in Italian!

Favorite Stories

Kids love good literature.  We heard some classics this week.  On Tuesday we heard the story of The Little Red Hen.  After hearing the story we saw a video of it on youtube.  Then we had flannel board pieces so we could retell the story ourselves.  

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www.youtube.com/watch?v=cRwo-vPseao

Aug 9, 2011 - Uploaded by wileyk209zback

As requested by BKDBrian2, here is another early Golden Book Video Classic making its ...

Since it was red day, We had bread and raspberry jam for snack.  Yum!!

The kids are developing longer attention spans and it's great to see all the things they enjoy doing first thing in the morning.  They are getting so good at choosing what they're interested in and then putting it away before moving onto something else.  They are forming friendships and learning invaluable social skills, not to mention all the things they're figuring out as they're "playing".  They are counting, reading, writing, retelling stories, developing geometry skills, as they use peg boards and blocks, expanding their vocabulary, practicing their speech, and even discovering basic physics as they figure out how high a tower can be built and why it falls over if it's smaller on the bottom then on top!!

We heard Stellaluna on Wednesday.  A wonderful story about a mother bat who gets seperated from her baby but eventually they get reuinited.  You could have heard a pin drop as I was reading this story to the class...they were all so interested.  

tellaluna - YouTube

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www.youtube.com/watch?v=VLRIvyWUzxs

May 21, 2012 - Uploaded by StorylineOnline

By Janell Cannon. Read by Pamela Reed. When Stellaluna is separated 

We also learned a song about bats which is sung to the tune of "Down by the Bay"  The kids each wrote their own verse that rhymed with the song.  If you aren't sure of the tune, check it out here!!

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www.youtube.com/watch?v=uE6xzCI-TwE

Jun 14, 2012 - Uploaded by Kids-Songs.TV

Down by the bay Where the watermelons grow Back to my home I dare not go For if I do My ...

The kids are learning the original version with Mrs. Jenkins so they'll enjoy singing along with this as well as changing it to the bat song!!

On Thursday we heard the story Legend of the Indian Paintbrush.  A beautiful Native American tale. 

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www.youtube.com/watch?v=gyaifWkUWr0

Apr 12, 2012 - Uploaded by Nathan King

The classic children's book "Legend of the Indian Paintbrush" by Tomie dePaola put into ...

Mrs. Bulgerin came in to do a special project with us.  We learned about native americans and she showed us signs that they used to communicate with one another.  We each had a chance to try our own writing using symbols!!

See you all soon!!

Nature Art

So glad we got out last week to go on our leaf hunt before the snow fell!!  We read the story Going on a Leaf Hunt and then then went outside and collected our own leaves!!  Inside we used yarn to create a loom and then we wove our nature finds into the loom to create a nature wreath!!  So much fun!!

We painted with Indian Corn on Wednesday.  We heard a great story about raccoons sneaking into a farmers corn field at night and eating the corn that was left on the stalks.  We also pretended we were pieces of popcorn and played a game where we popped!!  

On Thursday we all brought in a spice to share during circle time.  We passed them all around and used our sense of smell to describe if the smell was strong or or not so strong and if it was a pleasant odor or one we didn't care for as much.  Some of the spices that we smelled were allspice, cloves, ginger, nutmeg, cinnamon, dried mustard, and italian seasoning.  Then came the really fun part, we poured the different spices into Dixie cups and added a little water and glue, stirred them up and painted with them!  It was fun to see the different colors and textures that the spices made!  

Here are the completed spice paintings!!

We used a paintbrush to paint the Indian corn and then rolled the corn on paper to see what kind of print it made!

Costume Party!!

It was great to see all the kids come to class dressed in their costumes this morning!!  Durinng circle time we heard the book Spooky Bunny Tales by Rosemary Wells.  We watched a short video on our Ipad about a lonely pumpkin.  We really liked it!  

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www.youtube.com/watch?v=-7s4QcpbbL0

Then it was time to go on a  costume parade through the church!  We went upstairs to visit with Mrs. Diane and Mrs. Candy and they had a basket with treats in it for us!!  They loved seeing us all dressed up!  

We went through the sanctuary and down the back steps to finish our parade.  Then we washed our hands and got ready for our snack.  We each had a cup with white frosting in it and Mrs. Chyko and Mrs. Gould added a drop of red and a drop of yellow food coloring to our cup.  Boy were we surprised when we mixed it up and ended up with orange frosting!  We used it to frost our sugar cookie, yum!

Thanks to everyone for sending all the goodies to help us have a wonderful party!  If you didn't send anything in for this one don't worry, we'll be having a Christmas and Valentine's Party too!!

The kids took turns telling what they were dressed up as:

 Carter was an astronaught,

 Kate was a surgeon,

 Emma was super hero,

 Liam was a pit crew worker for Lightening McQueen,

 Jonas was a cobra snake ninja,

Jacob was a pirate,

Mika was a cat, 

Duncan was a ninja and 

Gavin was Spiderman!!

We played party games after snack and got out our parachute.  We each had a paper pumpkin that we put in the middle of the chute.  We told a story and whenever the wind blew we shook that parachute as hard as we could until all the pumpkins flew out, then we chased the pumpkins, found our pumpkin and put it back in the chute where we did it all over again.  We loved watching the pumpkins fly around the room, it was fun to see how far of them flew before they landed.  We sang the song about Orange Pumpkins Growing on a Vine,  and we pretended to be pumpkins and we grew and grew!  Then we wanted some time to play with our friends so some of us played with play dough, some of us played with the babies, some of us played with the cars and some of us built with blocks....it was a really fun day!!