Friday, October 25, 2013

Leaves, Field Trip, Spirit Week, and the Letter C!

  •  Our theme this week was Leaves. We incorporated the leaf theme into our plans in many ways:
  • We sang songs and rhymes about leaves at music time.

  • We read both fiction and non-fiction books about leaves and fall.
They love reading "Granny" stories and feeding her silly stuff!


  • We sorted leaves and used our senses to describe them. Then we made AB patterns.


We encourage them to say the pattern as they do it, ie. red, yellow, red, yellow, etc.
  • We used magnifiers to find and identify tiny letters in a picture of a leaf at small group.
  • At small group we used pattern blocks to make leaf shapes while we named all the shapes. 


Hat Day!

  • We made predictions about how many pennies it would take to sink different sized leaves. We talked about how bigger leaves take more pennies and smaller leaves take less pennies.





I wish I could've gotten a picture of their reaction when this finally sank. Priceless!
  • We read the story “Leaf Man” and then made a leaf man of our own. 


When we finished making "Leaf Man" we sang the song "Mat Man" using leaf man. The kiddos loved naming all of Leaf Man's parts. They giggled like crazy.

We put leaf man on butcher block paper and laminated him with contact paper so he will keep for a while.

  • We had a wonderful time celebrating Spirit Week and going on our field trip to Porter’s Orchard! 
Waiting to pet animals!

Petting Caramel.



They thought feeding the animals leaves was amazing and hilarious.




We went on a hay ride!

We got to stop and pick pumpkins and apples!
We had a picnic and then got to try doughnuts and apple cider!
  





Our kiddos were super excited to play on the playground at the orchard!
 






Green Day! We matched!

Dress Up Day was a lot of fun!



 


Cat in the Hat and Captain America are all smiles!
 At choice time this week we put googly eyes and spider rings in the water table. They thought it was hilarious!

  • We read the story “The Little Old Lady Who Was Not Afraid of Anything”. They loved putting together the scarecrow and acting out the story.



  •  This was a happy moment for me this week. We've been encouraging the kiddos to ask each other for help instead of always coming to us for everything. This happened spontaneously during choice time and made me smile. 
She couldn't get the costume on by herself so she asked a friend for help :)
  • Our “Letter of the Week” began this week with the letter ‘C’. Some of our activities include:
    • Identifying the letter.
    • Saying the sound. 
    • Searching the room for things that start with the letter of the week and feeding them to the “letter monster”.

    She was playing teacher. She said the letter monster chant and told them whether or not their item started with the right letter. This was a super cute moment to watch!
    • Letter tracing pages in the writing area.
    • Bingo Dobber letter pages in the art area.
    • Using white boards to practice writing the letter at large group.
    • Making our alphabet book page for each letter at small group.