Friday, September 14

We  love having another crate of books from which to choose!  So far we've looked at books from the TV & Movies crate, the Mickey Mouse (or Walt Disney) crate, and now the Gingerbread crate!  When the children come in from carpool, they check their backpacks for any books they're returning and put them up in the correct crate.  Sometimes they'll choose a new book to take home right away, sometimes they'll wait until after snack during our book time to choose one.

We had a lot of fun at our Morning Work today!  Some of us made  PotatoHeads; some of us noticed one of our friends matched our zebra line; and some of us played at our table games and puzzles!

At centers we worked our hands and fingers by playing with PlayDoh with Mrs. Hennessy.  We're building strong muscles to help us with our beginning writing.  We used some planning and fine muscle coordination at Miss Kathleen's center while making collages.  We had to sort through our colored pieces of art tape, wet the shiny side on our sponge, and then find a good place for it on our paper.  At our rug center, we had our last day of playing with our blocks and dollhouses for a few weeks.  (We'll have some new toys to explore at our rug center next week.)

After cleaning up all of our centers, we went outside for some playtime with our friends!

Wednesday, September 12

After our Morning Work, we all came up to sit on the rug and practice sharing.  We took turns looking at the gingerbread man snow globe and then passing it to the person next to us.  Then Miss Kathleen showed us a walking bug or walking stick that was on the school door this morning.  We were all very gentle and quiet while we looked.

At our rug center today, we played with our dollhouses and our blocks.  At Miss Kathleen's center we  talked about colors and started sorting some teddy bears.  We also built with our crystal climbers--and found out that if you put a red and yellow climber together, they made orange!  (We also experimented with putting red and blue together to make purple and yellow and green to make blue.)  At Mrs. Hennessy's center we stamped our handprints for our art portfolios that will come home on Friday.  While we were waiting our turn to stamp we played with the magnet board or the leaves on the felt board.

After we cleaned up our centers, we went outside to play.  First we had to release our walking stick to a safe place where there were lots of leaves and real sticks so his camouflage would protect him.  Then we found our friends on the playground!

Finally it was time to come in for our snack!  We've been talking about salty and sweet tastes this week so today we had salty tortilla chips and sweet Cheerios!

Monday, September 10

After all of our friends arrived and we cleaned up our Morning Work, we came up to sit criss-cross/applesauce/hands-in-lap on the rug.  We all said the Pledge of Allegiance, sang Salute the Flag, and counted to 10 for Monday, September 10th.  We also peeked at our caterpillar who is just beginning to make his chrysalis!  We can't wait to see him become a butterfly!

At our centers today we enjoyed playing with the new toys on the rug.  Our rug center usually has something to encourage dramatic play (kitchen , puppets, dollhouse, etc.) and something that's  large scale manipulative (blocks, gears, giant legos, etc.)  This week we had our dollhouses and our colored blocks.  (For the first few minutes, the children didn't get the dolls out of the crate.  They just studied and explored the dollhouses with all of the doors, windows, and details!)

At Mrs. Hennessy's center we used our geoboards.  These are plastic pegboards that we use for rubberband designs.  While we worked we talked about the color of the rubberbands, some of the shapes that we made, and used a lot of direction words (up, down, top, bottom, across, etc.)  When we finished, some of us colored some pictures to bring home.

At Miss Kathleen's center, we used our glue pots for the first time this year.  We practiced holding the brush by the red lid and spreading glue all over our gingerbread men.  Then we covered them with squares of paper!  We were so neat and careful!  As we waited for our friends to finish, we sorted teddybears.  (Well, today was more just exploring with the teddybears!  After the newness wears off, we'll work on sorting by colors and making sets.)

After we cleaned up our centers we went outside to play with our friends.  When we came in we had a wonderful snack of circles and squares (Cheerios and Frosted Mini-Wheats) before choosing a book to take home with us.

Friday, September 7

We started our day with our morning work. Our class had free choice activities at the tables and on the blue rug with their friends until about 9:15.  Today we had puzzles, coloring, ladders, magnets, and Builders-N-Benders blocks to choose from.  Normally at 9:15 we'd clean up and start our Morning Circle, but we had quite a few children who were requesting a potty break, so we headed down the hall to the bathroom before coming back to clean up and find a spot on the rug.

At our Morning Circle time we practiced our friends' names, did our calendar (and counted to 7 for today's date), said the Pledge of Allegiance, sang Salute the Flag, and learned a new song about classroom rules!  Whew!  We also looked at a monarch caterpillar that one of our friends brought in.  We talked about (and acted out) a butterfly, an egg, a caterpillar, a chrysalis, and a butterfly to start all over again.  We placed our caterpillar and some extra milkweed from WIPP's garden into our class butterfly house to watch it grow.  (We were such caring helpers that during outside time we filled Miss Kathleen's pockets with all kinds of leaves that we found on the playground to share with our caterpillar!)

Finally it was time for centers!  At our rug center we had our last day of playing with our kitchen dramatic play and our Little People farm set.  We'll put them away for a while and have some new toys at our rug center next week.  At Miss Kathleen's center we did some coloring and cutting.  (Miss Kathleen used this time to observe/assess each child on holding a crayon, dominant hand, cutting skills, etc.  This gives us a starting point for working on some of the basic preschool skills.)  At Mrs. Hennessy's center we used chalkboards with chalk and erasers to draw some pictures while Mrs. Hennessy measured our height and weighed us.

  

         

Trying to cut plastic straws

"I did it!"

After we cleaned up our centers we went out to the playground.  We had a ton of fun with friends from our class and other classes too!

We came in from the playground and went to the bathroom, making sure to wash our hands well to get off the dirt we could see and any invisible dirt and germs.  Then we said our blessing and ate some delicious fruit snacks and Cheerios.  After snack we chose a book to take home from our TV/Movie crate or our Mickey Mouse crate.  We did a little practicing by putting the books with the TV/Movie sticker in the blue crate and the books with a big M in the white tub.  It was a great Friday!