Friday, September 27

We love Fridays!  Friday is our silly day where we go outside first and then have music before we start our centers.  Today as we waited for Miss Jenna to arrive, we took turns "feeding" the dog and cat banks coins for our Be Kind To Animals Week.

We loved making the kitty cat bank meow!

Singing and dancing with Miss Jenna

At Miss Paula's center today, we worked on our October placemats then played with bristle blocks while we waited for our friends to finish.  We did a great job using the glue pots to get all of our pieces on the placemats!

At Miss Kathleen's center we played a game with names and pictures.  We had to find our picture (while naming our friends too!) and practice matching up the names.  After we finished that we did some fine motor work with Noah's Ark lacing.

At our rug center we built with castle blocks and had some really cool dramatic play with our stick puppets and the puppet theater.  Some of our puppet shows must have been musicals because there was a bit of singing going on up on the rug!

Before we packed up to go home, we read a book about acorns and passed around some acorns to look at.  We were very good at waiting patiently for our turns.  Next week we'll do some activities with acorns as we begin moving into a unit on fall.

Monday, September 23

After our calendar, Pledge of Allegiance, "Salute the Flag" song, and "Who Built the Ark?" we waited patiently in our circle and each of us took a turn feeding a coin to the dog bank and the kitty cat jar for homeless pets.  (I'll try to get a picture of this on Wednesday.  They were really cute!)

Next we started our centers.  Today was the last day we played with our big LEGOS and Noah's Ark on the rug.  We'll have two new dramatic play/manipulative activities there on Wednesday.

At Miss Paula's center, we were gardeners!  We scooped pretend dirt into flowerpots and planted flowers, flew around butterflies, and did a lot of talking!

At Miss Kathleen's center we colored paper towel holders to donate to the Humane Society for cat and dog toys.  Then we used tangrams to make pet shapes like a dog, cat, rabbit, fish, turtle, and bird.  We also did some exploratory building with the tangrams!

Friday, September 20

We had most of our friends back at school today so we had a lot of catching up to do at Morning Work.

After a quick circle time, we took a bathroom break then went outside for some fun!

Next it was time for Music with Miss Jenna.  Today we did a great job playing instruments and learning their names.  (Here's a link to a video of that! If the link doesn't work for you, please let me know!) 

https://plus.google.com/photos/104552171069507827929/albums/5925848954880666929?authkey=CIDt59b4xouDrgE

Finally it was time for centers!  Miss Paula had to stay home today, so Miss Daniela helped out at our beading center.  We talked about colors and patterns and worked on our fine motor skills by stringing wooden beads.  At Miss Kathleen's center we did some more fine motor work by sorting pompoms--but we couldn't use our fingers!  We had to use spoons and tongs.  At our rug center we continued to build with our big LEGOS and we played with our Noah's Ark set.  

Wednesday, September 18

Morning Work 

Making and measuring snakes, writing with pencils

Centers

Using scissors and glue for a Noah's ark collage

Playing with big LEGOS

Working with Moon Sand

Outside Time

Sleeping on the bench

Climbing on the caterpillar

Friends on the seesaw

Snack

Learning how to peel a fruit roll-up!

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Monday, September 16

Miss Kathleen rearranged our center groups this morning so that we had one group that was all girls and two groups that were all boys.  (*I try to mix and match groups during center time to help the children get to know each other, to blend learning styles, and to encourage some of our quieter classmates to talk to new friends.  Today we only had ten children in the class so I kept our groups a little simpler!)

At our rug center, we still had our dollhouse, but we also got out our big legos.  We did a lot of building and exploring with them!

At Miss Paula's center we used our tracing tools.  In addition to making some cool pictures we worked on fine motor skills and tried using two hands at a time--one to hold and one to trace.

At Miss Kathleen's center we explored with magnets.  We tested to see what stuck to our magnets and what didn't; we fished magnetic letters from the metal board; and we talked a little bit about the science words of attract and repel.  We also took a trip outside to watch a butterfly who had just emerged from its chrysalis stretch and dry its wings.

When we went out on the playground today, there were a lot of our friends from other classes out there.  We had fun!

Friday, September 13

At our Morning Work tables today one of the biggest hits was our unifix cubes (These are great snap-together manipulatives that build hand strength and fine motor skills.  Later we'll use them for counting and making patterns.)  There was also a lot of interest at our scissors/cutting table.

Because we have music class on Fridays, it's usually a silly day where we go outside first.  This means we have the playground to ourselves!  This gives us a chance to get to know some of classroom friends a little better.

Next it was time for our first music class with Miss Jenna.  We had a great time singing, dancing, playing shakers, and drumming!

Here's a link to a short video clip from today's lesson.  (I hope this works--my video links aren't always reliable!)  https://plus.google.com/photos/104552171069507827929/albums/5923234733454416033?authkey=CIG89pbu9sXEwQE

After music we went to our centers.  Although both the blocks and the dollhouse were out at the rug center, everyone chose to play with the dollhouse today!  We had a lot of imaginative play going on.  I overheard conversations about firemen rescuing pets, kids going to the beach, and making pizza for dinner!

At Miss Paula's center, we continued practicing our cutting and gluing skills.  We made collages from old book order forms!  Most of all we had a lot of practice and instruction in using scissors and glue correctly.

At Miss Kathleen's center, we used water colors.  We learned that without water our watercolor paints were hard and dry.  We practiced rinsing our brushes between colors, swirling the brush around to get more color on it, and mixing colors on the paper.

FINALLY, it was time for snack.  We had pretzel sticks for our salty snack today and chocolate animal crackers for our sweet snack.  We all remembered reading "The Gingerbread Girl Goes Animal Crackers" so we kept our eyes open to make sure there were no sneaky foxes around trying to steal our animal crackers!

Have a great weekend!  See you Monday!