Community Helpers, Movement Time, Flubber & Bread, and Choice Time!

• At Large Group: 
• We read stories about community helpers and how what they do for us. 

• We used our exercise cards to use our gross motor muscles. We crab walked, hopped on one foot, touched our toes, did jumping jacks, etc. 

• We practiced our yoga moves using Miss Katelynn’s yoga cards. The kiddos are getting pretty good at some of the poses. 

• We played our “Someone’s in the Middle” game with a community helper twist. When it was their turn to be in the middle they had to pretend they were community helpers.
• We had two special visitors come in to visit our classroom this week: Genesee County Police Officer Paul Burt (Katelynn’s husband) who talked to us about what police officers do to help keep us safe and Burton Memorial Librarian Katie Badgley who told us all about the library, library cards, and read us a story.   

• Our letters of the week were: V, W, X, Y &Z. We identify the letter, the sound it makes, brainstorm other words that start with the letter, and work on finding the upper case and lower case letters in our letter poem books.  We also practice writing the letter during  planning or recall.
• At Small Group: 
• We started our week off by talking and learning about a variety of community helpers.  Miss Katelynn’s group cut out pictures of community helpers from magazines and made a collage. Miss Kendra’s groups matched community helper figurines with pictures from around the Burton area. Then we “built the city”. 

• Tuesday we were chefs and scientists. We mixed ingredients together & Miss Katelynn’s group made bread in a bread maker & Miss Kendra’s group made Flubber. 

The bread finished baking at the end of nap time. The kiddos said it smelled delicious! We ate our bread at snack time with jelly.

The flubber recipe can be found here! It was very easy to make!

The kiddos were amazed at how it was slimy, but not sticky and stretchy, but it also broke into pieces.

They also enjoyed making balls and bouncing it.

I told them there was a Disney movie called Flubber that I watched when I was little.

• Wednesday we were doctors and nurses. We used band-aids to fix our paper bears’ boo-boos. The “boo-boos” were capital letters and the band-aids had the lower case letters on them. The kids matched them up. 

We drew out bears on paper and used real band-aids. Opening them was great fine motor work for the kiddos.

• Thursday we wrote and drew pictures showing what we wanted to be when we grow up. We had a wide variety of jobs: doctors, astronauts, pilots, dog walkers, princesses, mermaids, and more.
• At Choice Time: 

The art table was full of flubber so they made their art at the discovery table.

Dr. Seuss books are still very popular.

One of the kiddos wanted to make a picture of me. We worked on it together and then he took a picture of me with the picture.

Playing with the community helpers.

Soapy water = washing animals

Building a marble run on PJ day.

"We're knitting! Like old people do!"

• The kiddos are still loving building cages for animals. 

• They have been dancing up a storm this week! You’ve got to love Kidz Bop. They have also been using microphones (and creating their own) to sing while they dance.
• They are still into planning birthday parties for their stuffed animals; complete with cake, pizza, cupcakes made in the art area. 

They use the oven to "bake" the cupcakes.

He's even using the pizza cutter. :)

• We added stencils to our writing area and the kiddos have been tracing up a storm. This is excellent fine motor work for them! 

 

•  We practiced our letters.

He's using Letter Monster to practice writing his letters.

Making words with puzzles.

Animals, Scavenger Hunts, Irish Music, and more!

•  At Large Group:
•  We read stories about farms, farmers, and farm animals this week.

•  We used our farm animals from the block area to act out the song “Old McDonald Had a Farm”. The kiddos always enjoy pretending to be animals. 
•  We read the sing-song book “Farmyard Beat” and danced to and acted out the sing-song book “Barnyard Dance”. 

Click here to hear the song.

Click here to hear the song.

•  We worked as a team to get our plastic eggs moved safely from the “chicken coop” to the cartons. We passed them over & under our bodies. 
•  We used our Color Me Healthy Curriculum to learn about cows and what they provide for us (milk, yogurt, cheese, etc.). This led to a great discussion on what other farm animals provide for us (ham, burgers, bacon, goat cheese, eggs, etc.)

•  One of our questions of the day was “Have you ever been to a farm?” The kiddos told us all about their experiences.
•  Our letters of the week this week were: L, M, N, & T. We identify the letter, the sound it makes, brainstorm other words that start with the letter, and work on finding the upper case and lower case letters in our letter poem books. We also practice writing the letter during planning or recall time.
•  At Small Group:
•  We got out farm animals and zoo animals to help us work on our sorting and classifying skills. We sorted them by farm/zoo, color, and size. 

•  We created scented rainbow art w/ Kool-Aid.

•  Miss Kendra’s kiddos worked on their counting and number identification by building towers with unifix cubes.
•  We put shaving cream on our tables and put out the farm animals. We tried sounding out the animal names to see if we could hear what letters they started with. Many of the kiddos continued playing in the shaving cream through choice time. We also put warm soapy water in the water table and the kiddos gave the animals a bath.
•  Miss Katelynn’s friends played a game rolling emotional dice and acting out the emotions of the farm animals.
•  At Choice Time:
•  Our kiddos had their vision and hearing screenings done again this week by our new nurses from the GISD.
•  The kiddos have really been interested in maps and going on treasure hunts this week. We have been busy coming up with clues, hiding them, and creating treasure.
•  We’ve been fascinated by Irish music this week. They have been dancing & playing instruments along with the music.
•  We had a special treat of green milk on Tuesday. It tasted “just like a shamrock shake!”

•  The kiddos extended rainbow art into choice time by creating a lot of very colorful artwork.

They were looking up pictures with the iPad a quite a bit this week so they could draw them.

•  We had a lot of kiddos pretending to be puppies this week after a we had a puppy join us to play outside. His name was Rusty and we made sure he got home safe.
• They used the magnatiles and blocks to build zoos, farms, and cages for the animals.