Friends

This week we our theme is Friends! Everyday we have read the poem "Friends" by Jill Eggleston.

On Wednesday we read the book The Rainbow Fish and did a sharing activity afterwards. I gave each child a bag that had 10 "scales" (made of tissue paper) that were all one color. I told them that we were going to make the rainbow fish and we would use the scales to make him colorful. We decided that we should all share our different colors to make our fish more beautiful. They each took turns going around and sharing one scale with each person until we all had 10 different colored scales. I then went around and gave them all a "special" scale, one that was shinny (made of foil).

The beautiful Rainbow Fish!

Today we read our Class Book called Guess Who? A few weeks ago I took pictures of all of the kids and asked them a few questions about themselves: Are you a boy or girl? What color is your hair? What color are your eyes? What is your favorite color? I read all of the information they gave me and the kids had to guess which one of their friends it was. They loved the book!

Here are the pictures of the kids. They were really precious!

During centers we made friendship necklaces with fruit loops! They had to make a necklace for their friend and then give it to them. They were so sweet about it! Here are a few of them wearing their necklaces!

Bears

Bears was the theme of the week and we had a lot of fun going on bear hunts, reading about Corduroy and Pandas, finger-painting bears, and playing a bear toss game. We started out the week by reading Brown Bear Brown Bear What Do You See? During centers we played a Brown Bear Bingo game. The students did a great job with matching the animals I called out. The students also got to make a cave for our beanie baby bears using blocks. On Tuesday we read the book Corduroy and painted a picture of him. The students did an excellent job painting and staying in the lines! I had them paint with toothbrushes to give their Corduroy a textured look. 

Heres a close up to see how great they did staying in the lines!

Another center we had was the bear toss. I set up the mini bean bag toss I had from my wedding and told the students it was a cave and that they had to toss the beanie baby bears into the cave. They really enjoyed this and were pretty good at it!

On Wednesday we read A Pocket for Corduroy and I had the students sew a pocket of their own. 

On Thursday we read Where's My Teddy? and played Hey Eddie Where's Your Teddy? after reading it. I sent one child out of the room and the rest of us decided where to hide the teddy bear. I then had them come back in and we gave them hot and cold hints until they found the teddy bear. Each student had a turn trying to find the bear, they loved this! During centers we did a gummy bear sort. 

On Friday we read Old Bear and Pandas. The first was a fiction book and the next was a nonfiction book. After reading, we did a bear sort and sorted real bears and fictional bears. 

During centers we did some finger-painting, with pudding! This was so fun and the kids just loved it because they could lick their fingers when they were done! They did a good job staying in the lines again!

We had a fun week and learned a lot! 

Earlier this week we had just gone outside when I looked over and saw this excellent Kodak moment! Tyeler was hanging out on the monkey bars with his pal George the monkey! Haha!

Since it was raining on Friday we decided to have a movie day all together during nap time!

Our Five Senses

"Our Five Senses" was the theme of the week and we had some great fun making discoveries using our senses! On Monday we started by introducing each sense and singing the song "I've Got 5 Senses". They loved this song! We ended up singing it everyday. Tuesday we used our sense of hearing to identify animals. I have an app on my ipad that has different animal sounds. I played a sound and the students had to guess what animal it was. They had so much fun with this! On Wednesday we explored with our sense of touch. The students had to use their sense of touch to identify hidden objects such as a shell, a block, cotton balls, play-dough, etc. We then took a trip outside to play in the sand boxes on the porch. The students had to tell me how the sand felt using descriptive words. We then came back inside and did the same thing but with play-dough. Thursday we used our sense of smell and taste. I made smell jars and had the students smell each one and tell which smells they liked and which they did not like. We then graphed the smells they liked on the whiteboard. Everyone liked the smell of brown sugar! It was hilarious watching their reactions to the smell of coffee and pickle juice! The did not like the smell of coffee!

After we used our sense of smell, we had a taste test! I blindfolded them and had them smell, then taste five different foods. We tasted oranges, strawberry fruit snacks, pickles, brown sugar, and chocolate. They had a lot of fun with this! Here are a few of our little taste testers, ready with their blindfolds on!

Along with our five senses we learned about the letter S this week. We did a sound sort with pictures to help them here the sound S makes. 

We had a great week and I know they are just so excited about the fair tomorrow! Ask you kids about their 5 senses and the letter S to see what they learned!

Alike and Different

It's September! We started off the month this week by learning about things that are alike and different. Tuesday we started off by reading It's Okay to be Different by Todd Parr. This book teaches children that its ok to be themselves! The next day we read the book From Head to Toe by Eric Carle. We discussed how we all have a head, eyes, ears, nose, arms, legs, etc which makes us alike. We then talked about how even though we all have eyes, they are not all the same. We all have different eye colors! 

We had a variety of eye colors in our class! 

The students also had a chance this week to play with sand and rice during center time! I buried a variety of objects in the sand bucket and rice bucket for the students to find. They had to find the objects and then pair the ones that were alike. 

They really enjoyed this!