Giving Thanks, Food, Family, Turkey Art, and the letter G!

• Our theme this week was Giving Thanks, Food, & Family. 
• We read both fiction and non-fiction books about what it means to be thankful, foods and eating healthy, and family members.

• We talked about the importance of “eating all our colors” and what foods are which colors. For more information on the "Color Me Healthy" program click here!

• We read books and talked about being thankful and what we are thankful for. 

This is Mr. Gobbles!

They had some pretty interesting things they were thankful for ;)

• We used magazines and grocery store ads to cut out pictures of foods and make a plate of our dream Thanksgiving dinner. We also talked about how not everyone eats the same thing for Thanksgiving dinner. We are actually doing this next Tuesday before break. It will look something like this: 

• At Small Group: 
• We have been focusing on patterning and classifying this week using lacing shapes and unifix cubes. We encourage the kiddos sort objects in many ways (shape, color, texture, etc.).

• At Choice Time:
• Dramatic Play:
• We are still enjoying our grocery store and have been brainstorming new dramatic play ideas for next month. 

• Art Area:
• We’ve been making a lot of new kinds of art this week. We used a lot of new materials: tape, pinecones, peel and stick foam pieces, feathers, googly eyes, hole punches, buttons, and bottled glue. 

Handprint and Tape turkeys

 They were very proud of their creations!

•  Block Area:

Airplane!

•  Library Area: 

 Our student of the week's parents came in to read a few of her favorite stories to the class. :)

• Jumping!!
• Our kiddos decided to try jumping off our crate seats on the rug. We decided what we had to do to stay safe (no pushing, taking turns, waiting until the "coast was clear" to jump) and then they went wild with jumping the rest of the week. As we do not have a playground outside, I love that they came up with a safe inside alternative. 

• Our “Letter of the Week” began this week with the letter ‘G’. 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”. 

• 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.

Native Americans, Pilgrims, and the Letter F!

• Our theme this week was Native Americans & Pilgrims. We incorporated this theme into our plans in many ways: 

• We read both fiction and non-fiction books about Native American & Pilgrims. 

 

• We put homemade Native American & Pilgrim tube people, a Lincoln Log Cabin, a Teepee, and a fire out in our discovery area. 

• We used Pilgrim & Native American Cutouts to practice making AB patterns. 
• We did a Native American &  Pilgrim picture sort and talked about the differences in clothing, houses, boats, hats, and shoes.
  
• We used Native American & Pilgrim picture and number puzzles.  

 

Number strip puzzles

• We made Native American head dresses out of paper and feathers, gave each other Native American names, and danced to samples of Native American and Colonial music.

• Our Native American names:
• Brooklyn - Short Rainbow
• Deklan - Little Bluff
• Trystin - Soaring Eagle
• Jasmyn - Moon Valley
• Miss Kendra - Hopping Frog
• Isaac - Wandering Buffalo
• Tom - Young Beaver
• Landon - Strong Pheasant
• Bishop - Wild Porcupine
• Brandon - Laughing Bear
• Kobe - Howling Wolf
• Aubrianna - Happy Raven
• Paige - Dew Drop
• Ainsley - Friendly Owl
• Miss Lorri - Mother Bear
• Mario - Smiling Rabbit

•  At Small Group: 
•  We used a turkey cutout (named Mr. Tom) to practice our colors by adding colorful turkey feathers.  

•  At Choice Time: 
•  We are still enjoying our grocery store! If you have any magazines with pictures of food in them, feel free to send them in for an upcoming project. 

•  Our “Letter of the Week” began this week with the letter ‘F’. We will be going in alphabetical order for the next 20 weeks. 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”. 

• 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.

•  At Choice Time:
• Block Area:

They worked on this for almost a the whole hour.

This was the first time they built with these long thin boards. They were very excited to find a use for them.

• Art Area:

We used paper tubes to make all kinds of things this week: rockets, robots, binoculars, brooms. They had a blast making their inventions.

Working on our headdresses!

This picture doesn't really fit anywhere, but it was too adorable not to share :)