Fairy Tales, Teamwork, Unexpected Days Off, and Choice Time Fun!

As our kiddos have been really into princesses, fairies, and superheroes, we decided to study fairy tales for a few weeks.

We started out with "The Three Little Pigs".

 The kiddos love using props help tell the story while we read. We love the printable masks on Sparklebox. We also printed little simple story books for each fairy tale we are studying. The kiddos took them home to read them to someone special. 

As we only had two days of school this week, the other fairy tale we studied was "Goldilocks and the Three Bears". 

We created a story map for our bulletin board in the library. The kiddos teamed up and drew different parts of the story. When they were finished drawing the pictures, Katelynn and I wrote down their words. 

At small group we used lacing cards for fine motor development and counting bears for patterning, counting, and classification. 

We read the story "The Three Billy Goats Gruff" and talked about small, medium, and large. We carried this into our planning and recall where we used a small, medium, or large voice to talk.

The kiddos used tweezers to sort the pom poms in various ways (size and color).

Sorting into large, medium, and small bowls.

We also read:

After reading this story we used shoes to help us sort and classify.

We watched the Disney Silly Symphony version of this story. Before watching, our question of the day was "Do all stories have to have words?" This caused quite a big discussion. We told them they were about to watch a story without any words. They enjoyed trying to figure out the animals' feelings and gave their ideas of what they might be saying. It was a great experience. :)

We ended fairy tale week by using our story telling dice to create our own stories. Many of the kiddos used our blank books in the writing area to illustrate their own books and then asked us to help them write the words.

At choice time we had a wonderful "teamwork" moment. We added a new cardboard house to our dramatic play area. ALL the friends planned to play there at choice time so we had a class meeting about it before we played. We asked them what they thought would happen if everyone played in the house at the same time. They told us it would break. So we asked them to figure out how to play so it wouldn't break. The kiddos decided the "rules" all on their own: how many kids in the house at a time, how long they would play in the house, we should set a timer, we need a sign up sheet, we can play somewhere else until it is our turn. Their plan worked very well and the house is still intact. 

The sign up sheet.

This house was used for retelling a lot this week, too.

Our boys decided to get creative with the linking chains and "lock the girls out". With four boys and twelve girls I can't say I blame them. ;)

We put out new play dough and cutters.

The bears were a big hit and many kiddos continued on into choice time.

 

The library was very popular this week.

Our little builder this week. She was very focused.

We built a lot of different kinds of castles this week.

She chose to color in her "Goldilocks and the Three Bears" book.

Playing with the Native American and Pilgrim tube people.

Some "banking time" with Miss Katelynn.

Our new bird feeder - Thanks Mom!

The kiddos have enjoyed watching for birds.