Monday, March 23, 2015

Saint Patrick's Day and Shapes


Jack the Leprechaun was back to visit our school on St. Patrick's Day!  Mrs.. Chyko saw a glimpse of green running past so we tried to catch him.  We ran upstaris and asked Ms. Lucy (Ms. Diane has retired) if she saw anything.  She said she didn't see anything but she heard a lot of commotion in the narthex so we went out there and we each found a gold coin with chocolate inside....yum!!  We went back downstairs to have chocolate pudding but when we got to our snack table the pudding was gone and instead a bag was left with a note from Jack.  He left us leprechaun pudding and took our chocolate pudding.  So we followed his directions, we poured the white mix in a bowl and added 4 cups of white milk and it turned green!!!  Mrs. Gould and Mrs. Chyko brought us shamrock sugar cookies and milk too, so we ate shamrocks, gold coins and leprechaun pudding for snack!   It was so nice outside we ran around and played for awhile.  We kept looking outside to see if Jack left us anything but all we found were 3 gold coins for the class to use with green play dough during activity time.   We also painted with blue and yellow to make green.  Then we added some white paint and gold glitter and created a beautiful St. Patrick's Day piece of art!!
We had fun learning the leprechaun song in music!


www.youtube.com/watch?v=BSJsP_EBhR4
Feb 18, 2015 - Uploaded by KIBOOMU KIDS SONGS
It's "I'm a Little Leprechaun!" for St. Patrick's Day. Follow the story of this adorable Little ...


We started talking about shapes on Wednesday. We read the book called Mouse Shapes and then we got into smal groups and tried to make our bodies into shapes!
Mika, Parker and Knox made a triangle!
Brooke and Emma found a way to make a triangle with two people!!
Naomi, Ava, and Carter decided to make a triangle too!
The whole class got together and tried to make a house!  Do you see the rectangle with the triangle at the top for the roof?

We talked about dots, curved lines, straight lines, zig zag lines, sides, corners and angles....Geometry for preschool!!

We had lots of fun using pattern blocks to create pictures and designs!
We built with  blocks in different shapes and magnets in different shape.



We learned about circle, triangle, rectangle, square but we also talked about ovals, semi circles, hexagons, trapezoids, parallelograms, diamonds, starts, hearts, pentagons and octagons!  We watched a cool video about shapes.  The link is included at the bottom of this post.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=pQ5mZIInE6s
Jul 9, 2012 - Uploaded by Have Fun Teaching
Download the Shape Videos: http://havefunteaching.com/videos/shape-videos/ Download the ...

Monday, March 16, 2015

Warm Weather and Ireland

Boy did it feel good to get outside this week.  We went outside each day for at least 20 minutes.  The kids had so much fun using sidewalk chalk, playing on the equipment, using balls and running around! We also played class games like "Captain, May I?" and "Tag".
Some of the kids had fun writing their names and letters with chalk.  While others had fun drawing pictures and designs.

These are Parker's pirate ships.

We learned about Ireland and St. Patrick's Day traditions this week.  We started the week with watching a video about Ireland.  To view the video go to the link at the bottom of this post.



We read the story Jamie O'Rourke and the Big Potato.  Then Mrs. Chyko showed us how to make mashed potatoes.  We all worked together to help mash them.  We  added milk, butter, some salt...yum!!
Wednesday we talked about shamrocks and how you can put 3 hearts together to make a shamrock.  We colored one in and used play dough to make some shamrocks!
We also talked about rainbows and how leprechaun gold is found at the end of a rainbow. 
Parker worked for 3 days putting together a rainbow mosaic on a dry erase board....beautiful!!

 We pretended to be leprechauns and created our own leprechaun story to act out.  We heard several stories about colors and mixing colors too.  On Thursday we used watercolor paints to paint on top of the colored shamrock we made yesterday. 


 We created a crayon resist this way.  The kids art was so beautiful we have it hanging outside our classroom.  Look for your child's this week!
A leprechaun stopped by our classroom and left gold for us outside.  Mrs. Chyko saw it run past her with 4 fingers in the air.  We realized that meant he left 4 pieces of gold for each of us!  So, we went outside to look for gold.  We all found our 4 pieces....it was SOOOO exciting!!


Friday we made our own pot of gold.  It sure was fun learning about Ireland this week!!






Sunday, March 8, 2015

Dr. Seuss

Dr. Suess celebrated his birthday on Monday, March 2nd.  He would have been 111 years old! What an amazing author, kids continue to love his books! He has left such a wonderful legacy to our children!!  In honor of his birthday we read several of his books this week.  We started the week with reading the book Ten Apples up on Top.  After we read the story we all made a project using a picture of ourself and counting out the apples needed to write our names on our head!
In addition to being a great language activity it was also a terrific math activity!!

Carter was our Maple Leaf of the Week!
On Tuesday, his Mom and Dad came in to talk to us about farms.
Scott grew up on a farm and brought in a lot of farming equipment and animals for the kids to use.  He also brought in a replica of the barn that belongs to his family!  We heard a story about tractors and then we had a special snack....tractor tires and hay bales!!

Wednesday we heard the Dr. Seuss story One  Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish.  Mrs. Jenkins came in and we had music and Betsy came in to read us Carter's favorite book, Ideas.  
After we heard the book we used marshmallows, toothpicks, and our own ideas to create shapes!
When we were all finished, we got to eat a marshmallow too!!
On Thursday, we painted fishbowls.  When they're dry we'll put in a red fish and a blue fish! We talked a lot about rhyming words and listened to There's a Wocket in my Pocket by Dr. Seuss.   We had a special snack of fresh grapes, strawberries and a lego sucker! When the kids came in for circle time there was a lot of excitement because our amaryllis finally bloomed!! We also had a great time sharing the things we brought in for Show and Tell!
Grandma Debbie (Carter's Grandma) came in Thursday to teach us about exercise and taking care of our bodies.

  We had so much fun moving to the different songs she brought in.  We moved to Happy, Awesome (from the Lego Movie), Let's Go Fly a Kite and a bunch of other great songs! 

We had so much fun....it was AWESOME!!!  Thanks Carter for sharing your family with us this week!!  
Friday we heard The Foot Book by Dr. Seuss.  Then we painted our feet and made footprints!  We turned our footprints into puppets.  We also talked about right and left and put stickers on our right foot to help us remember our different sides.  It was nice outside so we went out to play, it felt so good to be outside!!  Hopefully spring is on its way!!




Monday, March 2, 2015

Birds

We spent the week learning about birds.  We focused on 7 main birds, the cardinal, baltimore oriole, robin, blue jay, indigo bunting, warbler, and wood pecker.  We talked about how birds have beaks to eat food and no teeth!  Then we talked about how they get hungry in winter and how nice it would be for us to put some food out for them.  We had blast making bird feeders!
 We had bird figures that the kids could play with this week.  We used our blocks to create bird houses for them!
We spent one day talking about how penguins are a kind of bird.  We discussed how they don't fly but their wings are called flippers and are designed for them to swim underwater.  We made a class list of what we know about penguins and then Mrs. Chyko helped us write a book about penguins!
We also had lots of fun continuing to use our imaginations with Wikki Stix.  Here are some of our creations!
On Friday we talked about Peacocks.  We used coffee filters, markers, a spray bottle and some tempera paint to create our own peacocks!
We also had fun using our Lincoln Logs to create a train track!