Wednesday, February 29, 2012

Happy Leap Day! We talked at Calendar about the significance of February 29 and how the students won't see it again for another four years. We also bid adieu to February as we get ready to say hello to the month of March! Lots of exciting things are coming up this month, which you will get to make note of when we send calendars home tomorrow. Here we are nurturing our crafty sides today.

 

We also tried out some more new hands-on centers today. We rotated through a number beading center, the sight word center, an alphabet center, a counting center, and a magnet center. It was quite a fun and eventful learning experience.

Rolling out the Playdoh for the alphabet center

A work in progress

The finished product and some very proud students

Here is our numbers center. Students ordered numbers 1-20 correctly and placed them in the Playdoh stand.

 Our beading center contained pipe cleaners flagged with numbers 1-20. Students had to recognize the number and then count and string the matching number of beads onto the pipe cleaner. They did a great job!

Our magnet center was very cool! Ms. Kathleen scored the class magnet wands, and we used them to move objects like paper clips, pipe cleaners, and craft brads around.

During Circle Time, we tried out a new activity called a Light Box. We placed various objects on top of the light box to determine which ones were transparent and which were not. The kids really enjoyed this activity.

Landon was our leader today. He did a great job!

Everyone earned a sticker today, which is fantastic! Many students have reached ten stickers. We chose a toy from the treasure box today (the toys were donated), and tomorrow we will celebrate with cookies. Please continue to encourage your children to earn their stickers. We have some students who are very close, and they are looking forward to earning a special treat! Anyone who would like to donate items for us to use in the treasure box like small toys, bouncy balls, pencils, erasers, toy cars or small dolls, or homemade sweet treats, please let me or Ms. Hill know. Here are the kids playing with their "treasures."

Tomorrow will be a very fun day! We have music with Ms. Kaitlin, and we are making a kangaroo to hold all of our groovy Kk words. See you then!




 





Tuesday, February 28, 2012

Today we continued our work on the letter Kk by piecing together a koala bear who loves leaves and the letter Kk.

We also took turns practicing writing the letter Kk on the dry erase board. The kids really loved getting to write on the teacher's board.

We also rotated through some new hands-on centers Mrs. Jones created. Today we worked at the color matching center where we had to match the color coded clothes pins to the matching pipe cleaner rings. This activity is great for learning our colors, but more importantly, for building strength in our fingers and honing our fine motor skills.

We also utilized a similar concept at the sight word center. The students took flashcards with the sight words written on them and matched the letter clothes pins to spell the words.

As always, we made time for puzzles, one of our favorite small group or independent activities.

In honor of the letter Kk, we read Mr. Katapat's Incredible Adventures, a wonderful book about the journeys that reading can take us on.

Ella was our leader today. She did a great job!

Finally, we celebrated Sydney's 5th birthday with delicious cookies!

See you tomorrow!

Monday, February 27, 2012

Today was a wet, soggy Monday! We made the best of the weather by having a fun-filled indoor play day! We kicked off our unit on the letter Kk by brainstorming all of the Kk words we knew. Then we sat down to paint a lovely water color painting with a magic letter hidden in the middle! Mrs. Jones and Mrs. Hill used tape to block off a letter K, and we set to work painting around it.

Check out these beautiful K's!

We also completed a listening activity for the letter Kk. We discussed each of the objects in a picture, and we colored the ones that began with the K sound. We discovered a kitten, kites, keys, a kangaroo, and more! Then we got to try two new activities. At one table, we practiced popping plastic bubbles (great for building hand strength and fine motor skills). When we were done, we did a little ice fishing for letters and numbers. Once we "caught" a number or letter, we had to name it and give its sound if it had one. Then we got to drop it in our buckets.

Bubble wrap popping can be very exciting!

Benjamin concentrating

Little hands hard at work

Time for a little ice fishing!

Syd is hoping she'll catch a big one!

Daniel and Ella trying to hook a letter or number

Steven was our leader today! He did a great job leading us in the Pledge of Allegiance, reviewing sight words, and helping write the morning sentences. Thanks, Steven!

We had a great day today! Hopefully the sun will come back soon, but if not, we have some very cool new activities waiting for a lucky boy or girl to try them out! See you tomorrow!

Friday, February 24, 2012

Today we finished up our letter Uu unit with some fun hands-on crafts! When we got ready for Centers, Mrs. Jones held up our last names so that we would know it was our turn to find a spot at the table. We are doing really well at recognizing our last names, and we're even starting to learn our classmates' last names.

At the first center, we cut out an uppercase U and created our very own unicorns.

We also honed our fine motor skills at our next center with some coloring and gluing on our paper plate fish bowls. Then we added the perfect finishing touch--a custom made hand print goldfish!

Emily was our leader today. She did a wonderful job helping us with our sight words, leading us in the pledge, and completing our morning sentences.

She also started us off with our favorite Friday activity--Show and Tell! She explained to Mrs. Jones what a Fidget is and showed me how she works. I love Em's facial expression as she gets ready to command the toy to dance.

The other guys and gals had some great items at Show and Tell, too. Check them out!

The most popular Show and Tell this week had to be Dean's new puppy, Biscuit. We each got to pet him and feel how soft his fur is. He is so cute! Thank you to Dean's mommy for bringing in the class' surprise guest!