February Friendship Month

The kids have been so cute this month! They are all getting comfortable with each other. Sometimes a little too much that I have to remind them to use their quiet voices. :) But it is so fun to see them getting a long so well and having fun.

Here are some of the things we did this month.

We started out February with Groundhog's Day. I didn't get any pictures this day but we learned about what a groundhog is and watched the official reading of Phil this year to see that he saw his shadow and that there would be 6 more weeks of winter. The kids were so funny telling me that it wasn't winter yet. I guess it feels a little more like it now that it has been cooler but they seem to be a bit disappointed that they haven't been able to make a snowman yet. On this day we also learned about shadows and practiced making shadow puppets on the wall as well as a cute groundhog craft.

We had a Valentine Center Day

Our morning starter was a bingo like game to find the matching letter.

We worked as partners to do some games. They had to count the numbers of hearts on each card by adding a heart jewel for one to one correspondence. They also made their own heart friend out of stickers and markers, threw a bean bag to the colored heart their partner told them, used fine motor skills to sort pom poms into colored cupcake holders, and put together heart puzzles as well as organizing biggest to smallest.

The kids loved making animals, bugs, robots, trains, etc out of shapes. I love seeing what their imagination can come up with.

Graphing our candy hearts to see what color we had the most and least of in our box.

Valentine Party! We decorated cookies/cupcakes, played spin the bottle with the kids telling the person that it landed on something nice about them and then giving them a hershey's kiss. We also played bingo, a Valentine stomp game and played a fun hiding game with our love fox.

They loved passing out their Valentines. 

Dental Health: February is Dental Health Month. We learned all about how to take good care of our teeth and what food is good or not good for our teeth. The kids got to "brush" with toothbrushes and paint their smiles.

Mrs. Chelise came to do yoga with us as well and we did partner yoga. It was so fun watching them work together with their partner to exercise.

For dental health I hard boiled some eggs and we put them in 3 different liquids. We put them in Vinegar, milk and Rootbeer and left them in for a few days to see what would happen. The eggs represented the hard enamel of our teeth. The Vinegar was like acid and actually ate away the shell completely. It was only left with the soft egg inside. SO we talked about how our teeth will get really soft and full of holes if we eat acidy foods and don't brush. The milk egg was still nice and hard and very white. And the Rootbeer was stained and very hard to clean when we tried brushing it.

To show an example of good vs. bad foods we ate an oreo and then looked in a mirror at our teeth. They were very black. Afterwards we ate a few apple slices and looked at our teeth again. They were completely clean of any black. The kids thought they had done a magic trick.

We counted our teeth and then glued 20 marshmallows to make a puppet with teeth. 

The kids loved this game we did. They got to pull out a tooth on my picture I made and on the back there was a picture of a food. The kids would tell me if that was a healthy choice or a not so healthy choice for our teeth.

Shape Day: We had a lot of fun doing different centers on this day. We divided up into partners and played a sensory shape game. They couldn't look at the shapes in the bag but had to use their hands to feel the sides and find a matching triangle, square, star or circle. 

We played a really fun cookie game. On this one they got to pull out cookies from the cookie jar and then make a face that matched the picture on the card. This game has lots of other games you can play and is one of our favorites. 

Magnet Shapes: The kids would look at a picture and then try to make the same picture using magnet shapes. 

We read a fun book called The Shapes of Things. It is a book that takes a shape like a square and then adds some other stuff like a roof and some windows and a door and now it is a house. They then got to create their own picture out of shapes.

We added some shapes to our wall that aren't just shapes but stuff that we might see all the time. 

We finished out our month with a field trip to Texas Roadhouse with the 4 year old class. 

They made their own rolls with cookie cutters and then they cooked them up for us. 

We took a tour of their kitchen and saw where they store the food, cook it up, mix the rolls, and clean the dishes. 

We decorated the floor with sidewalk chalk. 

We ate Mac n'cheese and applesauce for lunch.

Now to have just as much fun in March! I sure love these guys. They make me feel like a kid again and bring me so much joy!