Map Day: We spent some time looking at real maps and talking about what sort of things we saw on the maps. (Oceans, lakes, streets, etc.) Then we had some fun making a map of streets with houses.
Finish product: this one even included stop signs.
Z day: We read a book about animals at the zoo that were on strike. It was pretty funny trying to describe what the word strike meant. We had our field trip to the bowling alley coming up and a few boys kept telling me that a strike was when you got all the pins knocked over. I think they finally understood our new vocabulary word after reading this book.
We made some letter z zebras.
We also played a fun game for P.E. this day. I have a bunch of laminated animal pictures that my 2nd graders made years ago. I played some music and we practiced different skills such as jumping, skipping, galloping etc. When I stopped the music they had to go stand by one of the pictures and act out that animal. They really loved this!
He was acting out a bat.
Happy Mother's Day! The kids always love telling me about how much they love and miss their mommies. I love to see how excited they get about making something for them. We planted some sweet peas in a pot and watched them grow. If your plant is flimsy and falling down that is normal. You can go ahead and plant it outside and watch it continue to grow. I am not sure if it will produce real peas or not. The picture on the front had flowers but so far I haven't noticed any blooming. :)
We also read a couple books about mothers.
They loved putting them in envelopes and smothering them with stickers.
Fairy tale Jack and the Bean Stalk. This was one of my favorite days. We watched this book on video to learn all about this classic fairy tale. Jack and the Beanstalk Video
Then we reviewed everything that had happened in the story. I got out lots of things like a house, little people to be Jack, the mom and the man selling beans, a cow, beans, a giant (transformer), and a beanstalk, clouds and a castle. They loved acting it out and taking turns helping jack climb the bean stalk.
Afterwards we made a beanstalk on our own for art and I made some leaves for the beanstalk that spelled out the word bean. They had to match the upper case letter with the lower case letter. They turned out really good.
Ladybugs and Butterflies:
This year I decided to order some ladybugs along with our caterpillars. Ladybugs are really interesting. They look like this little scorpion when you get them. This stage is called Larva. They drink water during this stage and some special food that was sent with them. Afterwards they climbed to the side of our garden and made a cocoon called the pupa phase. They were there for about 7 days and then hatched into ladybugs. At first they were yellow looking but now are red with lots of spots. It was really fascinating because I never knew that they went through metamorphosis. We are going to be releasing them next week into a garden so they can eat all those nasty little aphids.
This is such a fun game to play if you love the book. We were able to do this game one day during center time.
We had fun making cocoons for our caterpillars to climb in.
We practiced some symmetry this day. The kids had to practice coloring each side so it would be symmetrical.
Ladybug art: We read the book The Grouchy Ladybug and then made our own ladybug and added stickers for their spots.
Ladybug snack. Use your imagination :)
Humpty Dumpty Nursery Rhyme: We practiced this rhyme and I was happy that a lot of the kids already knew it. There have been times that no one has heard some of these nursery rhymes that we learn. It is so weird to me since I remember my grandparents always saying them with me.
We watched this fun animated video to go with it.
Then we made our own Humpty Dumpty by cutting out oval shapes and decorating them with faces and bandaids to put them back together.
Afterwards I had them work as a group to make a big wall for Humpty to sit on.
We used a real egg and I used a sharpie to draw a face on him. We practiced saying the nursery rhyme over and over again while Humpty Dumpty fell off the wall into a bowl and kept cracking. They loved watching him crack until finally he was broke and ready for me to make him into a fried egg. Afterwards I gave them each their own little egg with some treats in it.
Airplanes and Clouds: I got this fun banner off of Preschool Alphabet.
We watched this book on video. ( I love that some of the books I don't have yet are on youtube.)
It Looked Like Spilt Milk Video
Afterwards I gave them a piece of paper and put a blob of paint in the middle. They shut it and rubbed the paint around. When they opened it they told me what they thought their cloud looked like and I wrote it on a sticky note for them to look at and practice writing on their own.
This one looked like a snowflake.
We also talked about the 3 main types of cloud. (Cumulus, Stratus, Cirrus)
Then went outside to see what types of clouds there were. There weren't a lot of clouds when we went out but about an hour after preschool there were tons of big, fluffy, cumulus clouds.
Feelings: We read this book and talked about all the different feelings that they feel. I would ask them what sort of things made them feel that way, and some of the answers really made me laugh. I loved when we had the word Silly. One of the boys said he felt silly when his friend, that is a girl, puts lipstick on him. That was definitely the best definition of feeling silly.
Here were some of their faces they made:
Silly
Scared
Happy
We also made silly faces out of some different types of food for a snack.
Wow this has been a really long post. Sorry for how long it took. As you can see, we have been having TONS of fun! I am looking forward to my last week with these adorable kiddos.
Last but not least. The picture I promised on the last post of our grass heads. I hope yours is still growing and had a couple haircuts.
I love how you can see all the roots growing on the side of the cup.
