Shapes

We had fun learning about shapes this week.  We read Mouse Shapes, and The Shape of Things. During circle time, we poured a tub of pattern blocks into the middle of our circle and used them to make designs.  Additionally, we used magnetic pattern blocks to create designs on our white board.  At art center we used colorful shapes to create robots!  Circles, squares, triangles, diamonds, hexagons, trapezoids, semi circles and quarter circles are some of the shapes we've talked about this week. We also worked with shape puzzles, magna tiles, play dough with cookie cutter shapes, and blocks.  The kids loved talking about, making and finding shapes!!

Making shapes at play dough center.

Using pattern blocks to create pictures with shapes!

Finn celebrated his 4th birthday this week...

Singing " Happy birthday..."

Finn's birthday treat...with sports rings in the frosting!  Thanks Finn....Yum!!

We were finishing our coin rubbings this week.  A great way to introduce kids to the names of coins and presidents.  They had fun trying to identify the coin!! 

A little too cold to go outside, but we had fun using rhythm instruments and creating a parade inside!!  A new song we've been doing is The Mice Go Marching By....ask your child if they can tell you about it and act it out...they love it!!

Annie was our Maple Leaf this week! She shared her poster with us during circle time on Tuesday and her mom came in and read us 2 of Annie's favorite stories on Wednesday.  We also had donuts with milk or orange juice for snack..delicious!! Thanks Annie for helping make our week so special!

Valentines and Presidents

We started the week with our Valentine's Day Party.  After the kids were dropped off we took each student around to deliver their valentines. We pretended we were mailman delivering the mail.  Mrs. Jenkins stopped in for an early morning music class, then it was time to hear a few stories about Valentines Day and begin our party!

We have such great parents in our classroom!  What beautiful table decorations and treats!

After our snack it was time for games!  At this station the kids used a serving spoon to transfer Hershey Kisses from one container to another.  They loved seeing how many kisses they could fit on each spoonful!

Making valentine bead necklaces...so fun!!

Valentine art...cute valentine creatures!

Making bug masks...

...and then going on a scavenger hunt

Wednesday and Thursday we talked a little bit about presidents. We read a short story about the Presidents on Mount Rushmore and learned that the name of our country is The United States of America and that presidents lead the country along with lots of other helpers.  We learned that we've had lots of presidents and one of them was named Abraham Lincoln and when he was little he lived in a log cabin.  Then it was time to pull out the Lincoln Logs and get to work building.  Mrs. Jenkins and I sat around for about 25 minutes building a railroad and houses using Lincoln Logs with the kids!  At the end of the day everyone agreed that building together with Lincoln Logs was our favorite part of the day!

After snack the kids could build with Lincoln Logs by themselves!

Thursday we learned the names of coins and looked at the president on each one. We learned a song about presidents and coins...here's the link...https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HzwAwehKP8U

We made paper chains during art.

Getting Valentine Tattoos from Mrs. Jenkins!

Friends and Hearts

We were preparing for our Valentine's Day Party this week.  We read Clifford's First Valentine, My Heart is Like a Zoo, Care Bear Books, and Little People Lift the Flap Valentines Day Book. During circle time we talked about friendship and how to be a good friend.  We tried to practice being a good friend at school. Joan and I saw the kids sharing, asking one another to play, bringing in treats, passing out napkins, speaking in a caring way to someone and more! Ask your child what s/he did to be a good friend this week at school!  We had fun singing with Mrs. Jenkins, making Valentines Bags with Mrs. Chyko, and cutting and decorating hearts them with Mrs. Gould. 

Our decorated hearts.  We were hit with the flu this week...lots of kids were home sick. 

Roman was Maple Leaf of the Week.  We learned about his favorite things on Tuesday when he shared his poster with us.  Thursday Roman's mom, Alex, came to visit with us.  She brought some of Romans favorite Dr. Seuss stories to share.  We loved listening to them!  Roman even brought in mini Dr. Seuss notebooks and mechanical pencils to share with us.  Thanks Roman for helping to make our week so much fun and being such a good friend to everyone!! 

We loved writing in our new notebooks...Thanks Roman!

A Dr. Seuss celebration!

Roman and Alex captivated us!

The fire station was a favorite activity this week!

The Mitten

We had more winter fun this week.  Jan Brett's version of The Mitten is one of my favorite stories.  The kids had so much fun reading it.  We were predicting what animal would go in the mitten next using the clues Jan Brett left for us on the page before...during art time we worked on sewing our own mittens with yarn and construction paper.  Then we put the animals in the mitten so the kids could retell the story at home.  We sang a song called "The Mitten in the Snow" sung to the tune of The Farmer in the Dell.  We used our class parachute and pretended it was a mitten.  Then each child pretended to be a different animal and we crawled into our mitten.  It became very crowded...just like in the book.  When the bear sneezed...we all had fun tumbling out onto the carpeting.  We used our parachute for other fun games this week too! 

Our Northern Lights...Beautiful!! (We've had several kids home sick so not all of the projects are in this picture.)

Addy brought in our snacks this week....thanks Addy!!

Henry was Maple Leaf of the Week.  On Tuesday he was helper and brought in his poster and told us all about his favorite things.  On Thursday his mom came in to visit with the class.  His mom is a dentist so we learned all about our teeth and how to take care of them.   Thanks Henry and Dr. Jen for helping make our week so special!!

Dr. Jen asked Henry to be her patient.  She told us what dentists are looking for when they check our teeth.  She also counted Henry's teeth!

We all had a chance to floss giant teeth made out of marshmallows!!

Dr. Jen and Henry brought in a dinosaur puppet with big teeth.  We were able to brush them!

Arctic Animals

We talked about animals that live in Alaska and the Northern Lights this week. We read the books Mama, Do You Love Me? about an Inuit Mother and child as well as Baby Beluga and Alaska A,B,C's.  We also watched a few videos of the northern lights.  Here is one of the videos we watched:Northern lights video

During activity time we used watercolors and salt to create our own version of the Northern Lights.  We added an indoor hopscotch rug to our classroom. Gigi was our Maple Leaf of the Week.  Her Mom came in on Thursday and read us a super cool book called Press Here by Herve Tullet.  Ask your kids what happened when they pressed the dots in the story...it had all of us in giggles!! Then we played a game where we threw a colored dice, drew a matching color card, and acted out what it said to do. Some of the ideas were twirl around, march in place, do a happy dance, etc. Gigi sent in delicious pink frosted cookies so we could celebrate her 3 1/2  year old birthday!! Thanks Gigi for helping make our week extra special!!

Our new hopscotch rug.  Mrs. Chyko taught us how to play the game using bean bags!

Celebrating Gigi's birthday!

What a yummy pink treat with sprinkles!

Gigi and her mom reading us Press Here. 

Snowmen

With the snow we got early in the week, we had lots of fun talking about snowmen this week!  We read several books on this topic including The Snowman, Snow Balls, and There Was An Old Lady Who Swallowed Some Snow!  We also watched, move and sang to some snowman songs on our class ipad. We played some new movement games including The Freeze and Snowman, Snowman Where's Your Nose.  Mrs. Chyko played a bean bag toss game with us.
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What beautiful snowmen!

The kids really enjoyed making these, they spent a lot of time working on them!

After snack, the kids read books or work with magnet letters or flannel board pieces.

Our sand table has become a snow tub!  One of the new favorite activities for January!

The winter snowstorms the kids made last week at art center.

 "Put your right hand in..."Mrs. Jenkins had her son come in and help with music this week.
Thanks for coming in, Ben, the kids had so much fun singing with you!! 

Winter

It was so good to be back at school...the kids were so excited to see their friends!   The first day back we had show and tell during circle time which prompted the kids to share some stories about what they did over break. We  talked about winter this week and read several books about winter including Tacky the Penguin and The Wild Toboggan Ride.  We also learned a rhyme about mittens. (Thumbs in the thumb place, fingers all together, this is the way we dress for mitten weather!!)

At the art center we used white paint on black paper to create a snowstorm.  We used lots of different things to put the white paint on the paper including textured stamps, race cars, and porcupine rings!  When the kids were done painting we sprinkled glitter on top to make our picture glisten, just like the snow!!

We had music and learned a song about the months of the year. We worked on how to hold a crayon using a pincer grip and practiced tracing a snowflake to help us practice  holding a crayon.

Demonstrating how to hold a crayon and trace over dotted lines.

Our "snow" painting!