Dr. Suess/Eric Carle Week

This was my favorite week so far!!  The kids were so engaged and happy.  We all had a great time reading books from these two amazing authors and doing lots of fun activities.

Our first day was the day after Dr. Suess’s birthday.  So we did all things Dr. Suess.

• Calendar Time: Read "Dr. Suess’s ABC’s”  While the kids acted out all the different animals in the book.
• We read “One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish”  And then played a fishing game.  This was a great activity to enforce taking turns.
• Read “Bartholomew and the Oobleck”  Then the kids made “Oobleck”  It was a simple science experiment that the kids were able to do almost on their own.  They simply added Elmers glue and dyed Borax solution to their little cup.  They LOVED this.
• Next we read “The Foot Book” then we drew our feet on a paper and they ‘measured’ their feet with different objects.  This gave me a chance to teach them about measuring.  And gave them great fine motor exercises and practice counting.
• For Snack time I made them “Cat Hats” out of strawberries and bananas and “green eggs” (hard boiled eggs with guacamole).  While they ate I read “Green Eggs and Ham”.
• After snacks we played a cat in the hat dice/counting game.  The kids had to roll a dice and find a stripe with a corresponding number. 
• Finally we read “If I Ran the Zoo”  and the kids designed their own crazy animal with dough pipe cleaners and googley eyes.

The Next day we did Eric Carle Books.  Again the kids were amazing. 

• For Calendar Time we read “Head to Toe” the kids loved acting this one out.  Our letter of the day was S so we also read “Will you be my friend?” and the kids made the SSSSSS/snakey sound as we followed the snakes tail to the end.  Finally they let me read a third book, “Polar Bear, Polar Bear What do You Hear?” They loved making each of the animals sounds and we talked about hearing and sound.
• Our Shape for the week was symmetrical shapes.  So I had the kids build different shapes with wicky sticks and then use a small mirror to see how they are the same on both sides.  I was surprised at how much they enjoyed doing this activity.  
• We then read “the Mixed Up Chameleon” and then the kids went out side to ‘hunt’ for chameleons throughout the yard.
• We read “The Very Hungry Caterpillar”.  We reviewed our days of the week and talked about the life cycle of a caterpillar/butterfly.  The kids then made caterpillars by stringing dyed cheerios onto a pipe cleaner.  Then they cut colored paper and made butterfly wings like the butterfly in the book.
• For our Snack time we read “Pancake, Pancake!” and the kids made the Pancake batter.  Then got to enjoy their cooking.
• Finally we read “Little Cloud”.  The kids then chose what shape they wanted their little cloud to be from cookie cutters.  We traced the shape and they ‘painted’ in the shape with a glue/paint then filled it in with cotton to make their ‘little cloud’.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  

Geography Continued - USA

This was our last week of Geography/Culture since it was just following President’s Day our theme was the United States.

Our first day this week wasn’t as effective as I had hoped.  So we switched gears day two and did a lot more gross motor and group activities.  This made a huge difference!

Some of our activities this week included:

• Puzzles
• Board Game (we played candy land, just to reinforce turn taking, they loved this)
• Reading time; ‘How to Make an American Pie’, ‘George Washington’, ‘Circling the Globe: USA’, ‘If you give a Pig a Pancake’ (Our letter the second day was P)
• O is for Olympics, we talked about the Olympics going on right now, the kids painted the olympic rings
• Cut, pasted and painted an American Flag
• Made Uncle Sam and Lady Liberty “masks”
• Played games using US money
• Made personalized coins/money
• Made Bald Eagles

Also for day two because I really wanted to switch things up and be more effective I got a “story time” kit from the library.  This had a flannel board and pieces as well as a list of different movement activities, songs and games.  This worked really well.  It kept all the kids engaged the entire time.  I will definitely be doing that again.

 Doing a U.S. Puzzle.  The kids did well identifying the country and state we live in.

Building their ‘masks’.  They all cut out their own stripes (Uncle Sam) and spikes (Lady Liberty) and glued or painted their masks.  

 Our cute Uncle Sams and Lady Liberty

 Painting the Olympic rings for the letter O

 Cutting and Pasting for the American Flag.  That cute Riley would cut all day!

Hand print painting for the stripes.  Dax and Adam loved this.  Clean Riley and James were not thrilled about getting their hands messy.  James was so upset about doing this Dax offered to do James’ flag too.

We looked at all the different US coins.  We talked about the different presidents on them and how they all have different names and different pictures on the back.  Then I had the kids stand in front of their coin (they all selected the color they wanted) while the other kids took turns holding a flash light to get their shadow and trace their silhouette.  They actually did much better for this than I anticipated.

The kids then got to name their ‘money’ I love what they came up with...

 They also got to color whatever they wanted for the back picture of their coin.  Adam drew “pyramids” James drew “the hoover dam” (he just went on a tour a couple days before and has been a little obsessed since), Dax drew a rainbow and Riley drew “flowers”.

Finally we talked about our national bird and the kids built these bald eagles.

South America week!

February 4th & 6th

This week was the final continent, South America. On Tuesday the focus was on the Rainforest. I didn't take any pictures on Tuesday because I'm really bad at remembering to do that but we had a lot of fun. Riley wasn't with us this week but the boys were all very good and excited for everything on Tuesday. We did:
- tracing the letter K worksheet. Everyone did very well with this. Their tracing skills are really improving. We talked about what sound the letter K makes and different things that start with the letter K (kite, kangaroo, etc)
- we did a worksheet on circles. There were a bunch of circles in the picture and the kids had to find the circles and color them black (color of the day). I was very surprised at how little help they needed with this. I simply gave them the instructions and they all took off doing it. They found all of the circles and colored them in very well.
- for our Rainforest theme we read a Magic School Bus In The Rainforest book. We talked about all of the different plants , animals and I insects that are found in the Rainforest. We talked about what the weather is like, how it is warm and very wet. There was even a chart in the book that compared the amount of rainfall in the Rainforest per year to the amount of rainfall in Nevada!
    After the book we went out to the front yard where I had hidden (15) pictures of animals/insects from the rainforest all through the yard. The boys took turns with a pair of binoculars as they all searched for the animals. We then counted a few times to see if we had 15. They all loved this and were excited whenever they found one.
- we also made a rainforest craft. A paper plate frog. The boys each painted the plate and then they colored and cut out the legs, arms, tongue and eyes of the frog. Adam and Dax each needed a little help cutting, not much though. James just took off with his cutting and did very well. They are all improving in that skill as well.
- the final activity we did was singing the monkey/alligator song which they all liked :).


On Thursday we focused more on the geography and culture of South America. After calendar we started off with our number (16). They each glued 16 goldfish onto a paper with a fishbowl on it. They were all kindof over it by the time they got to 8 fish but they kept at it and all finished! I think it made them understand how big a number 16 is :).
-for our triangle shape we did the same kind of oage that we did on Tuesday with the circles, this tone with triangles. They did we'll with it again.
- for our letter L we went out back where I had drawn a bunch if letters on the wall with chalk. They each got a squirt bottle and had to find the L's and spray them off (thanks for the idea, Heather). They loved this. It was really cold so they were all bundled in their jackets and hats and looked so cute. They had no trouble finding the (16) L's on the wall.
- for South America I showed them a globe and we found where we live and then where South America is in comparison. We also glued all the flags if the countries on a map of dough America.
- we read a South American folk talk story called Jabuti about a tortoise from the Amazon. It was cute and they were all really interested in it. Then we played with a puzzle and some hats and a flute that Mandi had provided. I tied getting pictures of all them together with the stuff but they weren't having it :). We had a fun week!