Thursdays fun Class!

It's so fun to see new students learning and growing.  Many of our activities are teacher oriented, however there are times when children themselves learn to direct activities.  As I was cleaning up the room, the children decided to play Ring Around the Rosie.  They came together on the circle rug, held hands and had the best time falling down!

 We have special helpers in the class.  Our older 4's and 5's love to assist our beginner preschoolers.

  Snack is a fun social time to talk, but on this day pretzels became letters of the alphabet!

Flying time.

During Transportation week, several of our friends came out to see Mr. Dan fly his remote control airplanes.   The skies were clear and the planes were fueled ready to go!

 Our flight started out with some yummy donuts!   Mom Kate even learned to fly!

Sean and Kevin chose the Stealth Bomber as their favorite!

                                            We named the plane's pilot Captain Crunch!

Vroom, Vroom!

A favorite of all children....transportation week!   We began by learning about community workers and the kind of vehicles they use.  Dressup is always a fun way to pretend.   We worked hard on our shirts and made tracks by running a car over the shirt with black paint on the wheels.  Everyones' turned out nicely as you can see by our class pic!

      Ms. Kathy Gomez will be subbing in our class on Wednesday, but will continue our learning with transportation.  I'll be back on Thursday for more learning and fun!

 
                                           What cute "cheezy" smiles!

                                    Two police officers for construction traffic control???

 
Making shirts (very messy) and getting ready for circle time!

Monsters Everywhere!

Friendly Monsters have joined our classroom.  They are very sensitive and have a variety of feelings.

When asking the children "What feelings do you have sometimes?"  I was blown away by their answers.  Usually, we know children at this age can only identify with sad, mad, happy and angry.

My class also came up with "annoying, upset, afraid, frustrated, and lonely!"  They are really in touch with their feelings.  The dialogue going on in the classroom is very sweet and wonderful as they are doing acts of kindness for each other.  I've heard some of the following:

                     "I'll get the towel for you because I know you are short and can't get it"  (LOL)

                    "I can show you which bag is yours."

                   " Can I help you sweep?  I'll hold the dust pan for you."

                   " Miss Kathi,  I can pass out the snack if you want.  I know you are busy."

            and  "Let's do something nice for Ms. Jeannie when we go to the lobby."...And they did!  They decided she needed a pack of fruit snacks.  Today we found a note on our door from Ms. Jeannie thanking everyone.

We have been busy learning about feelings, and even heard the book today Big Bad Bullybug,which tells how one big bug is mean and unkind to the little bugs.  The children responded with "thats not nice", "arms are for hugging"

 and "we need to be kind to each other!"

We've been making our own monsters.  The names and stories were scary!  We worked on

 monster math with patterning and working on ordinal numbers.

We had so much fun flipping Sully the monster up in the air.  Giggles Galore!!!

                 

Winter is Over...

Winter is over in our classroom as we move into "Monsters and Feelings".  We had a last great day with our "Frozen " party!   We played in the igloo, had a wonderful penguin snack (thank you Angela Gilitan and Kevin) and we even played in snow!

   Our Thursday crystal experiment worked as we grew icy cold crystals on pipe cleaners!   The highlight was watching part of the Frozen movie.   We sang "Let it go, let it go" during the morning.

We mixed Borax and boiling water, leaving the pipe cleaners over night in the cup.  We got icy crystals!

What a great job Angela!

Yummy!  The middle is always the best....

Fun, Fun, Fun!

 We did a teacher directed activity and learned to draw a snowman.  They did really great!  This skill teaches looking at the board then transferring what they have seen to paper.   Some activities in school are child created and some teacher directed.  Both are an important part of learning.

  Playing in fun foam was a textural sensory activity as many felt it was too sticky!  However, when we wet our hands the foam did not stick to us.

Our winter puzzles and matching games (Frozen) have been very popular this session.

It's always great to see children choose to read from a choice of centers.

Remember, you can drag these .jpg pictures to your desktop to save them!  WELCOME to my new families!

Winter Session is SNOW much fun!

"Oh the weather outside is frightful."....really?  it' sunny and bright!  Not here in our classroom -it's beginning to look like winter!  We've been busy making new friends, learning about penguins, snow, ice, snowmen, the Antartica and more!    We've even had a snowball fight together!

The children have been practicing writing their names, cutting up Christmas cards, doing Penguin math games and journaling.   After one week of classes we have been excited about our new class "jobs" and the routine of the class.   It seems the top two jobs are being the "sweeper" and the "bell ringer"(which tells us its time to clean up!)

At snack time we learn our manners by waiting until everyone is served.  This week we made letters with our pretzels.  Quiet reading time is after snack (OK, we are working on the quiet part) and we have eight children reading!  As our young threes and fours learn the letters and sounds, we will then start learning to read.  Journaling is a fun part of reading time when we tell stories that I record in their journal.   

The children went "fishing" in ice cube water and then tried it with a rubber glove on.  We learned how polar bears, penguins and walrus stay warm in the water...blubber!

What is the Arctic without an igloo!