Dinosaurs, Choice Time Fun, and the Letter Q!

· We read both fiction and non-fiction books about dinosaurs.

· At Large Group:

· We used our new Dr. Seuss puzzle to review our letters and letter sounds.

· We retold several familiar stories (Goldilocks and the Three Bears and The Three Little Pigs) using masks, props, and musical instruments. 

· At Small Group:

· We went to the block area for group time. We reviewed our shapes, created block patterns, and measured each other with blocks to see who was the tallest.

· We used several different kinds of manipulatives to test our predicting skills. We put the manipulatives into clear cups and had the kiddos guess if they had the same amount or if one had more or less than the other.

· At Choice Time:

· We are still enjoying our writing area dramatic play post office. The kiddos have been wearing the mail carrier
costumes and writing and mailing letters all week.

 · This week in our water table we created a “dinosaur ice age”. We froze several of our dinosaurs and then used hot water, droppers, salt, and a hammer (used by Miss Kendra) to break the dinosaurs free. The kiddos thought this was amazing!

We had been watching about 20 minutes of The Land Before Time: The Big Freeze at the end of each day this week and thought it would be fun to see what would happen if our dinosaurs froze.

We brainstormed ways to melt the ice. We started out with warm water and droppers.

Then we added some salt and listened to the ice crackle.

Then I got out my hammer and (after everyone backed up) I gave it a few good whacks.

The kiddos stayed engaged in this activity for a solid 30-40 minutes of choice time.

We heard a lot of great conversations between the kiddos during our Dino Freeze activity.

• In the Block Area:

Robot

Parking Lot

Castle

•  In the Art Area:

I told him this guy looks like Jack Skellington.

Bracelet Making

 

Glitter Painting

Spider Man masks were all the rage this week.

Spider People

•  In the Library Area:

• In the Writing Area:

We're starting to see letter strings from a lot of our kiddos :)

We're also seeing basic words like mom & dad.

• In the Toys & Games Area:

Making a swing for Ribbit

Sequencing Puzzles

•  In the Dramatic Play Area:

Our little bride!

They were making a road to get from area to area with the links.

· We brought our dinosaurs to the play dough table and made dinosaur imprints in the play dough and talked about what fossils are.  

• It seems like this cold weather will never end. We’ve been playing inside all week due to the temperatures. We’ve played with our parachute, beach balls, bean bags, rainbow ribbons, and more. We also played a new game called “What Time Is It, Mr. Fox?” where the “fox” says the time and the kiddos have to count out that many steps. When the “fox” says midnight everyone runs back to start all over again.  

· Our letter of the week this week was Q.

· Some of our activities include:

· Practicing saying the sound the letter makes.

· Seeing who has the letter in their name.

· Using white boards to practice writing the letter at large group.

· Searching the room for things that start with the letter of the week and feeding them to the “letter monster”.

· Making our alphabet book page for each letter at small group.

· Identifying the letter in the dry erase board sentence.