Well.....we made it! Today was our first ever Out and About! We took a walk around the neighborhood to look at street signs and houses. We found stop signs, school signs, traffic lights, and even learned how to "read" the crosswalk signs. We did stop at the park and play on the playground.....which was wonderful, until 4 classes from Dilworth Elementary came out to join us. That made the experience a little stressful for the grownups!
Along the walk we got to talk about things we saw and heard around us. We saw airplanes, birds, mushrooms the size of baseballs, squirrels, and one big truck even blew his horn and waved to us! The kids LOVED that! It was a wonderful natural learning experience!
We made a big circle and crossed East Blvd. I know right now you are thinking how very brave we are.....and, at the time, it felt a little ambitious! We spent so much time explaining the crosswalk and, wouldn't you know it, it changed to "Don't Walk" in the middle of the street. The kids wanted to stop.....which showed that they understood, but wasn't really possible at the moment! There happened to be a policeman first in the line of traffic, which turned out to be really neat because he turned on his blue lights and made everyone stop to let us cross! I guess he could see the panic on my face and knew he needed to help!
Despite all the obstacles, we were on a mission and needed to get to the blue mailbox. While we were at the park, we put some mail in an envelope with a stamp and addressed it with our home addresses. I'm not sure that they really understand the process but, you can reinforce it again when the special mail arrives at your house this weekend. Inside you will find some shape homework to reinforce our weekly theme about Where We Live.
We were gone from school today for almost TWO hours even though we didn't go that far! Little legs just don't move as fast as big legs! Everyone was really tired when we returned for lunch. It was easily the quietest lunch we've had since school started! They were completely worn out! We put on some soft music and had some chill time before we closed the day out with loud musical instrument play. One last blast before we sent them home to you for the weekend!
We all had a great time outside today! I promise to post some pictures later! Since I can't take a nap, right now I am headed to get some much need caffeine!
Thursday, September 29, 2011
Wednesday, September 28, 2011
Show and Tell
Where do we live? NORTH CAROLINA! Yippee! Everyone learned that today! It was a very proud moment! AND.....we learned the first three digits of our phone numbers.....luckily they were all 704! We plan to put the phone number into a song to help the children remember, but it may take some time. Christmas is our goal!
Our book today, Where People Live by Margie Burton, showed us all the different areas that people can live. Some live near the beach, some live by a lake, some live in the mountains, and some live in a desert. It had some wonderful pictures of what those houses might look like.
For art, we made our "dream houses". Everybody selected their favorite door and four windows for their house. We glued and colored. It was fun to learn the names of all the parts of a house. Ms. Tiffany even had a special song with hand motions to help us remember.
Ms. Angela came today and the lesson was all about jumping and running. We always begin with a whole body warm up to If You're Happy and You Know It....where we stretch, bend, and twist our bodies. Then two at time we ran in a relay race where we had to sort colored balls into the correct matching tub. The new activity for the day was bouncing balls. These are bright yellow balls with handles that the kids sit on and bounce around. Some kids were a little hesitant at first, but it looked like such fun, everyone gave it a try! Ms. Angela also brought back the barrel from last week and we did some balancing on top before we jumped. Everyone was a little more comfortable with the jumping this time! Practice makes perfect!!
The playground still had puddles from the rain last night.....so we splashed around again today! Our Weekday friends were a little more interested in getting wet today. (Their teachers were not very happy about that!!) The funny part is that when we walked out to find our cars this afternoon.....the tire swing with the biggest puddle was roped off so nobody could get near the water! We laughed and said that would be hard to explain to the kiddos tomorrow! Maybe the sun will dry everything out and we won't have to worry about it!!
Our book today, Where People Live by Margie Burton, showed us all the different areas that people can live. Some live near the beach, some live by a lake, some live in the mountains, and some live in a desert. It had some wonderful pictures of what those houses might look like.
For art, we made our "dream houses". Everybody selected their favorite door and four windows for their house. We glued and colored. It was fun to learn the names of all the parts of a house. Ms. Tiffany even had a special song with hand motions to help us remember.
Ms. Angela came today and the lesson was all about jumping and running. We always begin with a whole body warm up to If You're Happy and You Know It....where we stretch, bend, and twist our bodies. Then two at time we ran in a relay race where we had to sort colored balls into the correct matching tub. The new activity for the day was bouncing balls. These are bright yellow balls with handles that the kids sit on and bounce around. Some kids were a little hesitant at first, but it looked like such fun, everyone gave it a try! Ms. Angela also brought back the barrel from last week and we did some balancing on top before we jumped. Everyone was a little more comfortable with the jumping this time! Practice makes perfect!!
The playground still had puddles from the rain last night.....so we splashed around again today! Our Weekday friends were a little more interested in getting wet today. (Their teachers were not very happy about that!!) The funny part is that when we walked out to find our cars this afternoon.....the tire swing with the biggest puddle was roped off so nobody could get near the water! We laughed and said that would be hard to explain to the kiddos tomorrow! Maybe the sun will dry everything out and we won't have to worry about it!!
Tuesday, September 27, 2011
Fun in the Puddles!
Learning about where we live is very important! People can live in all kinds of houses, but animals live in some pretty strange places! Birds live in nests, bears live in caves, and fish live in the water. During our book today, Who Lives Here by Rozanne Williams, we got to see some animals in their animal "houses". Ms. Gail and her "green friends" even had a caterpillar that they found outside living in the dirt yesterday that they saved to show us this morning. We talked about how different living in dirt would be from living in our nice houses! Everyone took a turn to touch the caterpillar....everyone except Ms. Kelly....who isn't very fond of bugs!
Ms. Michelle was back again today and she had some great new things! We went through an obstacle course with hoops to go through, beams to walk on, and beams to jump over. After all that, we had to get on our tummies and push ourselves under some more beams on the scooters, using just our arms! It was a wonderful workout.....and we got to practice all sorts of location words (prepositions)! For a final sensory blast (and some pre-writing skills practice), Ms. Michelle had a table with shaving cream all over it! We made shapes and lines in the shaving cream, then "erased" and started again! There was a lot of communciation during this activity.....asking for more, showing our friends what we made, even using our senses to describe the shaving cream! We got it everywhere! So....if your kiddo came home today smelling EXTRA clean....that's why!
Playing outside was especially fun today because there were so many puddles to splash and explore. Our Weekday friends preferred to stay nice and dry, but not us! We have a special fondness for anything messy!
We sorted animal homes and people homes and used our prepositions again to tell where the animals were. In, out, under, on top, up, and down were the words that we practiced the most. Ms. Tiffany had a picture of a house and, during centers, we took turns naming and identifying all the shapes. There were triangles, squares, circles, and rectangles. Everybody could point to all the shapes, but some of them were really hard say! We will keep practicing!
Ms. Ellen stopped by to visit today! We were all so excited that she is back safely! Maybe she will bring in some pictures from her trip to Kenya for Show and Tell one day?!
Ms. Michelle was back again today and she had some great new things! We went through an obstacle course with hoops to go through, beams to walk on, and beams to jump over. After all that, we had to get on our tummies and push ourselves under some more beams on the scooters, using just our arms! It was a wonderful workout.....and we got to practice all sorts of location words (prepositions)! For a final sensory blast (and some pre-writing skills practice), Ms. Michelle had a table with shaving cream all over it! We made shapes and lines in the shaving cream, then "erased" and started again! There was a lot of communciation during this activity.....asking for more, showing our friends what we made, even using our senses to describe the shaving cream! We got it everywhere! So....if your kiddo came home today smelling EXTRA clean....that's why!
Playing outside was especially fun today because there were so many puddles to splash and explore. Our Weekday friends preferred to stay nice and dry, but not us! We have a special fondness for anything messy!
We sorted animal homes and people homes and used our prepositions again to tell where the animals were. In, out, under, on top, up, and down were the words that we practiced the most. Ms. Tiffany had a picture of a house and, during centers, we took turns naming and identifying all the shapes. There were triangles, squares, circles, and rectangles. Everybody could point to all the shapes, but some of them were really hard say! We will keep practicing!
Ms. Ellen stopped by to visit today! We were all so excited that she is back safely! Maybe she will bring in some pictures from her trip to Kenya for Show and Tell one day?!
Thursday, September 22, 2011
Rainy days are really LONG!! Everyone was kinda crabby today because we couldn't go outside. We attempted to go out, but the downpour made us decide to turn around and play inside today. To be honest, it made me feel kinda crabby too! There was a lot going on in the room during playtime, so even though no one was bored, it isn't the same as going out to play with our Weekday friends.
Our book today, Franny's Friends by Catarina Kruusval, was about a little girl's adventures with her seven friends. Each child pretended to be one of the seven friends as we acted out the story. We also did a story sequencing activity using the pictures from the book to help us remember.
Art was a big success today! Everyone had colored slips of paper that they decorated with crayons and stickers. Then we gave one bracelet to each of our classroom friends. Everyone ended up with six different colored bracelets.....one for each of their friends at school! Susannah was pink, Gianni was yellow, Garrett was white, Henry was orange, Jack was green, and Reid was blue! They loved making the bracelets....but everyone needed a little encouragement to share their creations with their friends!
No school tomorrow! Your children have all made so much progress in three short weeks! They are learning the days of the week, their friend's names, and the words to so many new songs! They are each such a joy.....thank you so much for trusting me to teach them! See you Tuesday!
Our book today, Franny's Friends by Catarina Kruusval, was about a little girl's adventures with her seven friends. Each child pretended to be one of the seven friends as we acted out the story. We also did a story sequencing activity using the pictures from the book to help us remember.
Art was a big success today! Everyone had colored slips of paper that they decorated with crayons and stickers. Then we gave one bracelet to each of our classroom friends. Everyone ended up with six different colored bracelets.....one for each of their friends at school! Susannah was pink, Gianni was yellow, Garrett was white, Henry was orange, Jack was green, and Reid was blue! They loved making the bracelets....but everyone needed a little encouragement to share their creations with their friends!
No school tomorrow! Your children have all made so much progress in three short weeks! They are learning the days of the week, their friend's names, and the words to so many new songs! They are each such a joy.....thank you so much for trusting me to teach them! See you Tuesday!
Wednesday, September 21, 2011
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