Plants, Tadpoles, Small Group, Choice Time, and the Letter Y!

· This week we read books about Spring and Plants.

· At Large Group:

· As we now have several tadpoles in our classroom, we read a story about the frog life cycle and talked about how our frogs will grow.

 · We read “From Seed to Sunflower” and then walked down to check on our plants (growing in our greenhouse). We will be watching them grow over the next several weeks. 

· We retold stories using props and masks.

· We used our bean bags to practice our hand eye coordination, following directions, balance, and gross & fine motor skills.

· At Small Group:

· We worked on rhyming using pictures of things that rhyme and nursery rhymes.

· We used our play dough mats to create play dough numbers, letters, and shapes.

· We made Cheerio bird feeders to hang outside on the playground.

· At Choice Time:

· We took a classroom vote a few times this week and decided to take our choice time activities outside. We played with blocks, “cooked” food, created artwork, did puzzles, and more all outside in the sunshine. 

•  Inside at Choice Time:

Our kiddos really enjoy "going on adventures", "solving mysteries", and using maps. We made this map of our classroom for the kiddos to use at planning and recall time.

Our new friend Fred the Spider who dropped down from the ceiling one day. We put him in one of our new bug catchers for a few hours and then set him free outside.

He used our block idea book (with famous structures from around the world) to make this. It is modeled after the Tower Bridge in London (see below).

 

This one is modeled after the Sydney Opera House in Australia (see below).

· Our letter of the week this week was Y.

· 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.