Valentine's Day, Block Towers, Restaurant Play, the Letter O, and a Puppy!

Valentine's Day

• This week we read both fiction and non-fiction books about valentine’s day. 

 

• At Large Group: 
• We practiced our number and letter identification with a Valentine’s Day Bingo Game. 
• We used our five senses to describe heart shaped Sweethearts. 

• We exchanged valentines during our “mail swap”. 

Each of our kiddos decorated a bag to put their valentine's in. We set them out where the kiddos usually sit to eat and each child came over to put their "mail" in all their friends' bags.

These were the valentine's I handed out to the kiddos.

• At Small Group: 
• We used clothespins labeled with numbers and letters to clip onto cards with corresponding pictures. 
• We used sweet hearts to work on several skills: patterning, sorting, counting, using quantifying words like more/less, and using our imagination. 

• 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 sand table we added magnetic letters and numbers so the kiddos can “search for buried treasure” with the magnet wands. 

• Building tall block towers have been all the rage in our class this week. The kiddos are fascinated with seeing how high they can build before the tower falls down. 

They always made sure everyone was out of the way before they knocked it down. We had a big discussion about block safety.

They were comparing the towers to see which one was tallest.

Bat Cave!

They were working together to make sure it didn't fall over before they were done.

• The art area has also been popular this week. We decorated our valentine’s day mail bags  and played with the new chocolate scented play dough that Miss Cheryl made for us. They enjoy filling the boxes with their handmade chocolates.

They continued to enjoy our playdough mats.

It was wonderful to hear them indentifying the letters they were making and "reading" the pictures to tell me what things start with that letter/sound.

They were mask making fools this week.

• In our dramatic play area this week they opened up a restaurant. There were waiters/waitresses taking orders, handing out menus, cooking food in the kitchen, and bringing out orders. It was very entertaining to watch and I was very impressed that they actually brought what people were ordering. 

They were saying "Order up!" and Lorri and I were cracking up.

She's holding our multicultural menu.

•  They started playing hide and seek at choice time this week. They get pretty creative with their hiding spots, but we've had to remind them a lot about remembering to use walking feet. We are very ready for the snow to melt so we can run around outside again. 

• One of our friends got a new puppy this week. He was super excited about it and wanted to bring her in to show the class. His mom was nice enough to bring Bonnie in at the end of the day. 

We reminded the kiddos that we had to move slowly and calmly so we didn't scare Bonnie.

Everyone got a chance to pet her. They were very excited to see the puppy.

•  Our letter of the week was 'O'. Some of our activities include: 
• Practicing saying the sound the letter makes.
• Using the white boards to practice writing the letter at large group.
• Making our alphabet book page for each letter at small group.
• Identifying the letter.
• Searching the room for things that start with the letter sound and feeding them to the letter monster.
• Seeing who has the letter in their name. 
  
  
  
  
  

Dental Health, Post Office, Letters M&N

• This week we learned about dental health and teeth by reading both fiction and non-fiction books.

• At Large Group: 
• We practiced our number identification with a game called I Have… Who Has… In which each card has two numbers to identify. 
• We used our big teeth model (on loan from my dentist) to talk about dental health, how to brush, & foods that are good/bad for our teeth.

• We practiced writing skills using name folders. 

• At Small Group: 
• We worked on sequencing puzzles and used words like first, next, and last. 
• We also used several different size teeth to do a size sorting activity. 
• At Choice Time: 
• We extended our dramatic play into the writing area by creating a post office complete with costumes, paper, pencils, envelopes, stamps, shipping boxes, and mailboxes. The kiddos have been writing and mailing letters all week. 

• We added alphabet, number, and shape play dough mats to our play dough area. 

• We brought snow into our classroom and put it in the water table. We used some dried our markers to “color” snow. 

• We added a ton of pictures of the kids to our room this week. They have really enjoyed finding themselves in all the photo collages.

 

•  At Choice Time:

This was the road they built and the triangle part was "bumpy". :)

They experimented with several kinds of paint this week.

She made a ton of very creative "caterpillars" this week.

Trying out our new dress up clothes.

This was a great moment of friendship. :)

She giggled and giggled when she tried on my glasses.

Bean Bag Toss!

• These are the groundhog puppets we made on our one and only day of school last week:

The kiddos really enjoyed making predictions about the groundhog and his shadow.

• To make up for all the snow/cold days we've been having, we had two letters of the week this week (M&N). 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. 
• Making our alphabet book page for each letter at small group. 
• Searching the room for things that start with the letter of the week and feeding them to the “letter monster”. 
• Identifying the letter.