Hearts

Today was such a nice day.  Last week I pulled out the "big kid" legos and the kids are having so much fun building with them.  We've had a lot of race cars, dinosaurs, and airplanes that are being made.  Such a great activity for visual spatial skills, fine motor, creativity, and geometry skills!!  We also have the larger size duplos and megablocks that have been used a lot too.  We may have a classful of engineers in the making!!  The kitchen area, vet center and babies also continue to be a hit during early morning activity time.  Last week we were working on identifying the numbers 1-12 and then finding them on a clock.  We had several movable clocks set out this morning for the kids to play with when they first arrived.  We reviewed the concepts that clocks have 2 hands and they move around as time passes.  We also practiced counting 1-12 on the clock faces.

During circle time we did some beginning sorting and graphing work.  Emma had brought in some coins from her piggy bank to share so we identified them and sorted them into piles of nickels, dimes, quarters and pennies.  Many of the kids were fascinated to find out the name of the coins!!  (Some of the kids already knew).  Then we laid them out side by side into a graph like format and counted how many of each one there was.  We'll continue to be talking about coins and money into next week.  We also discussed how the coins were all in the shape of a circle but some were bigger and some were smaller.  Great early math concepts!! 

We heard a book called The Valentine Express.  We learned that Valentines Day started hundreds of years ago.  The story is about bunnies at school having a Valentine's Day Party and then they decided to go home and make valentines to give to their neighbors.  They loaded up a wagon with valentines and named it the Valentine Express as they went around the neighborhood handing out valentines to their neighbors.  I showed the kids how to cut a heart from a folded piece of paper.  This would be a really fun activity to do as a carry over at home.  Cutting hearts, using glue sticks to put on pieces of paper and adding decorations with crayons, markers, or stickers is such fun for the kids and also a great way to develop fine motor skills!

We pretended we were a train (our own Valentine Express) on the way to snack time and we played a circle game where we sang a song about valentines and passed a heart around.  Ask your child to explain the game to you.  They might even be able to sing the song we learned!!

We had fun using heart stickers and punchers to decorate our valentine bags for our party on Thursday.  Thanks to all the parents who have volunteered to send in food for the party.  We are all set at this point.  If you wanted to send in something but didn't sign up yet, there will be more opportunities in the future to send in things.  Joan and I feel so blessed to have such supportive parents, THANK YOU PARENTS!!!!  The program couldn't be a success without all your help.

Mrs. Jenkins came in for music today and did hand bells with the kids and began to teach them to count in Spanish.  Mrs. Chyko helped the kids paint hearts at the easle during activity time.  What a busy day, but loaded with friendship, learning, singing and play....