Ocean Fun

We had fun learning about the ocean and the octupus this week! We heard a great story called An Octopus of My Own by Bernard Most.  In this story a child imagines what he could do if he had an octupus for a pet.  We had fun going around the room and sharing what we would do with an octupus for a pet.  The kids came up with some really cute ideas.  It might be fun to ask your child what they'd do if they had a pet octupus!!

We had yummy sea treats that Jonas brought in.  Thanks so much Jonas!!

We painted toilet paper tubes purple and then cut 8 legs and curled the lets.  We put stickers on the bottom to represent tentacles.  We called these our counting octupus because we put 1 sticker on one leg, 2 stickers on the next leg and so on all the way up to 8.  Some of the kids wanted to count all the stickers to see how many there were all together.  Great math activity!!  (1+2+3+4+5+6+7+8=??? or any combination of legs, 1+3=, 2+7+)  We wrote some math sentences out together on our white board to introduce the kids to the addition and equal signs.

Mrs. Chyko has been working with the kids at the easle painting fish.  

Knox brought the mystery bag back on Tuesday to share his 3 items.  He gave some really good clues and kept all the kids guessing as to what he brought!  Two of the things he shared were a stuffed baby seal and a lego guy.

We played a new game called "Pass the Ball Around".  We all sat in a circle and passed the ball as music played, then when we heard a tambourine we had to pass the ball the other way!!  The music kept getting faster and faster as we passed the ball this way and that.  When the song was over most of the kids yelled, Can we do it again???"  Of course we did!!  

We used our imagination a lot this week and played another game called "Octopus, May I?"  It's sort of like Simon Says.  I bet the kids would have teaching this game to their parents.  The kids can be the octupus!! 

We watched some fun video clips of a coral reef and real octopi on youtube. 

http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=RA61f4Tums4

 We heard a great story called Over in the Coral Reef.  It's a song so we sang it as we read it.  Great way to involve the kids in choral reading!!

Hope you're all enjoying this great weather and that it stays so we can get outside this week!!