St. Patrick's Day Fun

  Mrs. Chyko saw a green streak run past her, she thought it was a leprechaun so we followed it upstairs and found gold coins!!  We each found 8 pieces!!  Later, Mrs. Gould read us the book Jamie O'Rourke and the Giant Potato which is an Irish Folktale.



 Wednesday we made leprechaun ladders  and hung them on our hooks, When we came to school the next day we found treats that the leprechaun left for us on our hooks!!  We had fun going outside a few times this week and we enjoyed singing with Mrs. Jenkins.  We watched several Kiboomer video clips about St. Patrick's Day. Here is the kids favorite, we all got up and followed the actions....Dance, Leprechaun, Dance I bet the kids would like to do this at home for their families!

Ellis was our Maple Leaf of the Week.  Tuesday she showed us her poster and told us about her favorite things. Thursday, she brought in green Lucky Charms treats and a rainbow in a cup (strawberries, oranges, pineapple, grapes, blueberries) as a special treat to share with her friends at school.  Her mom, dad, and baby brother came to visit too.  We saw Ellis's baby scrapbook, heard a story and  painted birdhouses! Thanks Ellis for helping make our week so special!!

Ellis's Dad read us a story!

Ellis's mom made a beautiful scrapbook for Ellis.  She shared it with us!

Ellis has a lot of bird houses at her house, so she brought in wooden birdhouses for all of us to paint!

Some gold the leprechaun left, he left us Lucky Charms too!

Maple Leaf of the Week!

Rainbows in a cup and green lucky charm treats...yum!!

We all wore green to school on Thursday...Happy St. Patrick's Day!!

Rainbows and Leprechauns

We had fun hearing a lot of stories about rainbows this week and learning about St. Patrick's Day traditions.  We discovered that an Irish legend says there is gold at the end of a rainbow put their by leprechauns!!  In the book Jack and the Leprechaun it even said that if you catch a leprechaun they need to tell you where they keep their pot of gold!! We talked about Irish Dancing and learned the Irish Jig during circle time. For one of our art projects this week we painted rainbows with watercolors and put gold at the end!  We also talked about the letter "G" and made gold glittery "G"S" with glue on green paper!! During movement we used colored scarves and bean bags to create rainbows.  We've said goodbye to our snow in our sensory tub and it  is  now filled with colored beans, plastic eggs, and several pieces of gold!

 Some of our favorite books we heard this week!

  

We celebrated Teagan's 4th birthday on Tuesday.  She sent in colorful cupcakes and green and red grapes for a special treat!

Happy birthday, Teagan!

A rainbow looking birthday treat!!

Using scarves to make a rainbow.  We had fun tossing and catching them too!!

It was a little cold to go outside this week so we made a conga line to go with one of our movement cd's!

We put all our scarves together and look what we made!

We learned 2 songs about rainbows.  Here are the links:

I Can Sing a Rainbow

The World is a Rainbow

Tommy was our Maple Leaf of the Week.  He shared his poster with us on Tuesday and let us know about some of his favorite things.  One of his favorite shows is Octonauts and his favorite character is Captain Barnacles.  Wednesday he was helper and on Thursday his Mom and Dad came in to help celebrate his special week and his half birthday!!

Happy birthday, Tommy!

What a cool birthday treat, it's Captain Barnacles.  Tommy helped his mom decorate the cookies!  We all admired how nice they looked and boy were they delicious!!  Thanks Tommy for sharing such a special treat with us!

Mom and Dad came in to share 2 of Tommy's favorite books with us...of course one of them was about The Octonauts!! 

After we heard the story about Frown Fish in The Octonaut book, we made our own aquariums!  What a fun project!!

Our gold, glittery, G's made on green paper with glue!!

Our rainbow sensory tub!!

Nursery Rhymes

We had so much fun learning nursery rhymes this week.  We read several nursery rhyme books, did flannel board nursery rhymes and Brooklyn brought in a book she had from home that we shared with the class as well...the kids loved it!  We also read the big book of Jack and Jill and learned a rhyme about 10 Little Bears in a Bed.  All of the rhymes had songs that go along with them so we had fun singing the songs.  In fact, if I started to read a nursery rhyme in my speaking voice, the kids would ask me, "Can you sing it to us???"  I'd say their favorites were Humpty Dumpty, Little Miss Muffet, and Hey, Diddle, Diddle.  I wonder if they can recite them at home too? 

    

During activity time we were finishing our robots at art center and Mrs. Chyko had a giant floor puzzle of nursery rhymes she worked on with the kids.  We also got outside for two of the days this week.  The kids cheered when they heard we were going out!!  Yay!!  They had so much fun playing outside on the equipment, running around on the grass and drawing with sidewalk chalk!

Our finished shape robots!!

Oh, to be outside again!!

The kids made their own hopscotch game!!

Finley was our special person of the week.  On Tuesday he brought in his poster to share with us and his Mom, Dad and little brother came to visit the class.  They shared with us some of Finn's favorite things from home and read us two of his favorite stories. Finn loves baseball and is starting T ball soon so he brought in some special baseball gum for each of us.  He loves to garden so he gave each of us a packet of seeds so we can grown vegetables in our gardens at home too.  Yum!!   Thursday he brought in a special treat from home to share with his friends.  Thanks for helping make our week so special!!

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!