Ms. Alyssa's Cool Cats

Valentines week was full of fun crafts and a lot of love! The first day we started out discussing what valentines day is all about, love! We read the book "I Love You So..." and then made a list of all of the people we loved!

During centers we made a heart out of tissue paper. Then I traced the kids hands and made it into the I love you sign.

During another center this week we had a missing number heart game. The students had to find the number that was missing in the number sequence.

Tuesday was 80s day in our themed week! Here are a few of the 80s kids!

The next day we read "Franklin's Valentines". During centers we made our valentines mail boxes!

They turned out great!

We did some more Pom Pom sorting this week.

Wednesday we read the book "Valentine Mice!", which is about little mice who deliver Valentines. One of our centers went along with our book. I had mice with the numbers 1-10 printed on them which they had to put in to the envelope with the same number.

They had so much fun putting the mice in the envelopes! During another center I had them do some candy heart patterning.

During the craft center the students got to make a beaded heart.

Thursday was our crazy day theme!

Thought this was cute, she was reading him the book.

We read the book "Froggy's First Kiss". During centers we made a love bug out of hearts.

Friday was Valentines Day and we had some very handsome boys and beautiful girls at school!

Our book for our lesson was "Pete the Cat Valentines Day is Cool". The kids were so excited to have a new Pete the Cat book! For centers we did some special whole group centers. First was sugar cookie decorating, which is always a hit!

What a handsome boy!

Next we made valentine heart necklaces!

Here are some of the students sporting their new necklaces!

I then had them "show some love!".

Our final center was Valentines Day Bingo!

If they won, they got to pick a prise from the Bingo bag! After we finished playing I let them pass out their valentines, which was insane! But they had fun! It was a fun week celebrating how much love we have for our family and our friends!

We continued our study of penguins this week! This week we focused on fiction story's about penguins. We started the week by reading the book "Tacky the Penguin". This is the story about how a quirky little penguin saved his friends. The students loved Tacky! After we finished reading the book we talked about the work unique and what it meant. I then have the students tell me what made Tacky unique.

They had some good answers! During centers the students got to make their own Tacky. They were so cute!

The next day we read another Tacky book, this one was called "Tacky and the Winter Games". After we read it, I asked the students which one they like better. We then graphed their answers. I asked them two more questions that we graphed as well. One was if they have ever seen a real penguin, yes or no, and the other was if they liked fish, yes or no. Here were the results!

During centers we made a penguin glyph using the results we gathered from our chart.

Depending in how the student answered the three questions determined how they dressed their penguin.

They turned out really cute and the kids loved making them!

The next day we read the book Cinderella Penguin. After reading the story we discussed how the story was the same as and different than the real story of Cinderella. I then introduced them to a Venn diagram and we charted our answers on there.

During centers the students got to make their own penguin book! They love to make their own books and then read them!

On Friday we read the book "Pierre the Penguin". This is a true story about a penguin in the zoo who looses all of his feathers and how the biologist taking care of him fixes his problem! The students really enjoyed the story! During centers we played the "Feed the Penguin" game again. After lunch I let the kids do something I know thy were dying to do the last two weeks, destroy the igloo! They thought this was just the most fun thing! After they had all of the milk jugs ripped off, they had a ball just running around kicking them.

Since it has been too cold to go outside I made some fine motor stations for the kids to rotate between after lunch. I called them "mini-centers" and the kids loved them! Here are a few we did this week:

Our first one was marble balancing. I gave the students 7 golf tees, had them place the tees into the foam piece, and then balance a marble on top of each tee. This was one of the favorite stations!