Thursday, January 9, 2014

Geography

We are back from Christmas break!

January Calendar

Our Theme this week was Geography.  My hope for this new year was to be better at getting pictures of these little cuties while they are busy learning and playing.  The kids were really good the first day so I got quite a few.  Our second day...lets just say I had a harder time keeping their attention, so pictures weren’t really happening.  

Our activities for the week included:
  • Geography puzzles 
  • Bounce the ‘Sphere’ (our shape of the day) game-we bounced around a balloon, shouting ‘sphere’ each time we hit it, trying to keep it from hitting the ground. (gross motor) The kids LOVED this one.
  • C is for continent, tracing and gluing activity (fine motor). Their tracing has come a long way since the first week!
  • Geographical formation play with play dough and water (sensory play) the boys loved this, Riley wasn’t so sure.
  • Cutting ‘mountains’ ‘hills’ and ‘rivers’ (fine motor)
  • Swim or walk? flash card game - I had several pictures of different geographical formations and the kids had to motion if it was a place where they walked or swam. (gross motor)
  • Read “Hello World”, “It’s a small world”, “Global babies” & “Circling the globe”
  • Built “our town” using blocks, legos and puppets.
  • Made a ‘book’ of where we are from - painted earth, stamped our continent, colored our country, cut and pasted a mosaic on our state, stamped our city and colored our home.
  • Roll the ‘cube’  (our shape of the day) counting game - the kids took turns rolling dice, they had to count the dots and find the number on a card that coordinated.  When someone rolled a nine (our number of the day) all the kids got a treat.
  • Learned/sang the continent song.


























Christmas Party!

Rachel threw the kids a wonderful Christmas Party just before the break.  
She had tons of festive food (reindeer sandwiches, reindeer donuts, snowman string cheese, snowflake crackers, strawberries and banana ‘candy canes’, hot chocolate...).  There were fun games, sensory play with “snow” (corn starch and shaving cream), cookie decorating and a candy cane science experiment.    The moms and the kids had a blast!













Also I just have to share the adorable ‘gingerbread mangers’ Rachel had the kids make that same week.  James was SO proud and excited about his! 

Tuesday, November 26, 2013

Thanksgiving

It has been a while since I have gotten to teach these little cuties.  I cannot believe how much they have improved and progressed over the last five weeks.  They were all so good today for our Thanksgiving theme.  We were able to get through all of our activities TOGETHER.  Everyone participated, everyone took turns, everyone shared and everyone Listened.  
Our day consisted of:
  • Calendar time
  • Lesson (we learned about the pilgrims voyage on the mayflower)
  • Sensory play with cookie dough, shaping “turkey” cookies.
  • Turkey tag out side
  • Sensory play with corn
  • Fine motor scooping corn from small bowl to large bowl
  • Science lesson about heat and molecules heating the corn into popcorn
  • Snack time
  • Fine motor painting with q-tips
  • Decorating Turkey cookies
  • Charlie Brown Mayflower Voyage show
  • Follow the leader, learning new ways to say “thank  you”
  • Singing/music time



Our little ‘pilgrims’ in the ‘mayflower’ taking their journey to the new world.

Pilgrims hunting a Turkey at the new world for Thanksgiving dinner

Another Turkey ready for the hunt. 

 Decorating Turkey cookies







 I put on Charlie Brown’s mayflower voyage.  As soon as the kids saw the characters in their pilgrim hats and bonnets they HAD to have theirs on too.  

Trying to get a single picture with all four of them looking at the same time…..





… maybe next time

I was so busy helping during the painting I didn’t get any pictures of them working, but here is James’ final project.

Happy Thanksgiving!!  I am so grateful for these sweet kids and this fun preschool co-op!!