Wednesday, February 27

We had some old favorites out at Morning Work tables this morning, including our Hook-Together Spiders.  Earlier in the year, these were one of the more difficult manipulatives for the children to use.  They require a lot of fine motor skills--and patience--to link up.  Now the challenge has grown to making and copying patterns!

At centers today we used stamps and stickers of all kinds with Mrs. Hennessy.  We had stamper markers, rolling stamps, and lots of St. Patrick's Day stickers.  Miss Kathleen did some evaluations with shapes and numbers while we did our writing center.  We made cards, did tracings, and practiced holding our pencils like big kids.  At our rug center we had our big Legos and our baby dolls.  We practiced doing snaps and velcro closings as we dressed and undressed our dolls.

Reading to our baby dolls

It was a little bit chilly outside this morning, but we played so hard we hardly even noticed!  The sandbox is one of our new favorite things.  We're really good at taking turns!

We had a special treat today!  Riley became a big sister yesterday and brought us lollipops to celebrate!  She's very excited about her new brother!

Monday, February 25

Making our Morning Work activities multipurpose...We've been practicing putting tops on and off some plastic bottles/jars (and building hand muscles while we're at it!) and today we filled them with our magnet cubes.  They looked really cool!

We added shamrocks and stickerss to our March placemats at Mrs. Hennessy's center--including our shamrocks we painted last week!  We made a sticker picture at Miss Kathleen's center and then used it to make some secret shamrock messages (better known as crayon rubbings!)  Because it was a so rainy we didn't get to go outside today.  We sang our Jonah and the Whale song and then did a Jonah coloring sheet.  We talked about what color whales were in real life, but then colored our whales any color we wanted!  (Because they were OUR whales!)  We also watched a short Dora video about fairy tales--and helped Mary's little lamb find it's way back home!

Jonah and the Whale

Our Bible story this month is Jonah and the Whale.  We've read some books about Jonah, talked about how he learned to obey God, recreated the story on the felt board, and sang a Jonah song!

Jonah and the Whale Song

sing to the tune of "London Bridge"

 God asked Jonah to obey
To obey,
to obey,
God asked Jonah to obey
But he said No.  (Shake finger No!)

Jonah was swallowed by a whale
By a whale,
By a whale,
Jonah was swallowed by a whale.
Swallowed whole!
(rub tummy at the end)

Jonah prayed to God above
God above,
God above,
Jonah prayed to God above
And was forgiven!
(hold hands in prayer position at the end)

Friday, February 22

We had a lot of fun--and some mess--at our centers today!  We played with shaving cream at Miss Kathleen's center that we sprinkled with leprechaun dust (lime jello) and tiny shamrocks.  We had a lot of fun--and didn't even need a squirt of soap when we went to wash our hands afterward.  We played with our Mr. Potato Heads while we waited for our friends to finish, and some of us decided to be potato heads too!

At Mrs. Hennessy's table we finished working on our March calendars.  We glued down our handprint leprechaun that we made on Wednesday, then added a green hat and a pot of gold with March's blessing.  We've become so independent on completing these projects!  We also made some patterns and designs with our lacing disks before changing centers.

At our rug center we continued playing with our big builders and our kitchen.  We had several "dramas" playing out at the rug center today.  We had our servers bringing coffee over to the restaurant; the guard with his green super-power gloves making sure no one got in trouble or knocked the building over; and our team-workers who discovered that if they pre-fabricated a piece of building and then stuck it on the top, they could make the building taller!  (One of the rules is that you can't stand on chairs, crates, etc. to build, so the children had been constrained as to how tall they could make their towers.  Today they realized that if they put several pieces together and then added them to the top, they could get their towers taller than they could by stacking one at a time on the top.  Their ingenuity is amazing!)

Because of the weather we didn't get to go to the playground today. We made up for it by having a special snack (popcorn!) and by getting out the parachute and playing all kinds of games with it.  Our favorite was when we hid underneath it like turtles!

Wednesday, February 20

We were excited to see our friends this morning after our long weekend.  At Morning Circle time we reviewed our classroom rules song just in case some of us needed reminding!

We continued with our kitchen and our big builders at our rug center.  Normally we'd switch these activities for Friday, but there is still a lot of interest and activity with both ends of the rug so we'll keep playing with them for at least one more day.

At Mrs. Hennessy's center we began working on our March calendar.  We painted leprechaun beards, added gold to the pot of gold with our March blessing, and then made sticker pictures while we waited for our friends to finish.  We've really improved our fine motor skills--most of us can peel the stickers all by ourselves now!

At Miss Kathleen's center we painted shamrocks and then played Hi-Ho Cherry-O.  Not only did we practice counting as we picked our cherries from the trees, but we worked on social skills such as following directions, taking turns, and listening!

After coming in from the playground and enjoying a great healthy snack of cheese sticks and bananas, we dressed up as leprechauns and had our pictures taken for our March placemats.  We had some fun being silly!  We'll have some retakes on Friday!