K is okay!

 We had a powerful start to the week with everyone karate kicking for Kk! We had to follow that up with a small Kit Kat bar - and we kept the wrappers to put on our K pages.

This week I added a kennel full of kittens (and puppies) to our play area, as well as several koalas and kangaroos.

We read a lot of books about kangaroos and koalas this week, and sang along with songs about them on youtube.com.  You probably already knew that baby kangaroos are called joeys, but did you know baby koalas are too?  I grew up in Australia, and didn't know that koalas make a grunting sound - we learned about that here, and heard a kookaburra laughing here.

Kookaburras are a kind of kingfisher, and are mostly brown.  Other kingfishers are more colorful, so when we chose our hand print art, we made either colorful kingfishers, or koalas.  The children tore and glued paper to make trees for their animals, then the teachers painted and placed their hand prints.  The kiddos painted on heads, and added all the details, making some beautiful hand print art.

My hand print alphabet has been inspired by many many blogs and pins, all of which I have posted on this pinterest board.  I try to take everything a step further, find ways for the children to do their project, rather than a teacher doing everything for the child.  A child's hand print is cute, but if the child is only a passive item to be painted and printed, it isn't art.  I try to ensure that our projects are child directed as much as possible, and that my role is to help as needed.

One way we are working on making things more child directed, is to have the kiddos cut out their letter crafts if possible.  You can see the lines on our K crafts are kid cut.  Some children were able to manage independently, while others sat in my lap and used scissors with finger holes for a child and adult to work together.

 Here's another Kk activity: fruit kabobs.  We tried papaya for the first time on our kabobs.  One child loved it and had lots more, several ate it and said it was okay, and lots just tasted it and decided it wasn't for them.  That's okay - we won't know if we like it unless we try it and find out, and children often need to be exposed to a food 10 times before they'll even try it. 

 Our big art project this week was to do a guided drawing of koi fish, then do a crayon resist and water color wash to complete it.  We've fed the koi at the zoo, so the children are familiar with them.  We looked at photos and noticed the coloring of koi, then used crayons in those colors for our fish.

 The water color wash was made using dried up old markers.  You can see how to make it here.

 I think these fish are gorgeous!  These young artists are 3, 4 or 5 years old.  I found the idea here.

There were also a lot of interesting things this week that had nothing to do with the letter Kk, but everything to do with learning.  Check out this Tersa Sphinx moth caterpillar Mark found and showed us!  It was eating our pentas, before burrowing underground to transform into a moth!

One of our friends broke his arm over the weekend, and he invited everyone to write on his cast.

We enjoyed mini pumpkins and pine cones in our fall sensory box...

... and tasted the first clementines of the season from our little orange tree.  Yum!

We continued learning math concepts with a variety of manipulatives, sorting, patterning and developing our fine motor skills along the way.

Some of the older kiddos worked on making hexagons with pattern blocks.  We have played with pattern blocks countless times, just exploring, making patterns, or matching the shapes to a template to make pictures, so this is a familiar manipulative.  This time I guided their play, encouraging them to make hexagons with each of the six available shapes.  The first four worked just fine as they have common angles, but the square and the narrow diamonds do not.  I wanted the kiddos to figure that out for themselves, so I gave them each shape in turn, without letting on that it was, I thought, an impossible task.

 Surprise!  I was wrong.  I have over 20 years experience teaching young kiddos, using math manipulatives including pattern blocks, and "knew" that the orange squares don't make a hexagon shape.  Why did I never think to make it in negative space, the hole left when squares form the outside of the hexagon instead of the inside?

Next, this same child took 6 narrow brown diamonds, and joined them together to create a hexagon.  We counted sides, and found it had 12!  That's a dodecahedron.  Together we reevaluated, and used three narrow brown diamonds.  Yes!  It's not the same hexagon, because the angles truly are different, but a six sided shape nonetheless.  Another child realized the negative space inside his diamonds made a star!

The kiddos made hexagons in negative space using triangles too, and then, returning to the problem, finally achieved a hexagon in negative space with the narrow brown diamonds!  When I tell you that I am both teacher and learner in my classroom, this is what I mean.  How cool to find there is another way, and to learn something new!  I love young children!

Jumping for Jj

We always talk about the letter Jj the week of Halloween, because it is just the right time to make our jack-o-lantern!

First we had to decide what kind of face to give our jack-o-lantern.  The kiddos suggested shapes for each feature, and then we voted.  We had a tie for eye shape: circle and triangle, so we had one eye of each shape.  We voted for a circle nose, scarey mouth, and no eyebrows.

 Ms. Paula cut the top off the pumpkin, and showed us the inside.  Everyone was encouraged to help get the guts out.  Ooey-gooey!  Most of the children enjoyed digging inside the pumpkin and pulling out seeds, but a few balked at touching the "guts". 

Here is our finished jack-o-lantern!  Ms. Paula toasted the seeds with a little salt, and we tried those for snack.  Just over half the children liked them! We also made a jack-o-lantern on our upper-case J craft.

Another day we talked about jewels and jewelry.  We put on bracelets, necklaces, rings and clip-on earrings, and jumped in our jewelry, joyfully.   We glued jewels onto our lower case j craft to follow up.  We really like the jewels!

We learned the nursery rhyme, Jack Be Nimble, and took turns jumping over a pretend candlestick.  Everyone made a page for our class book about it, using our own names and adding the color of our candlesticks.  I found the idea at http://saylorslog.blogspot.com/search/label/nursery%20rhymes.  Our book is already a favorite to read together, and the children jumped over imaginary candlesticks all week long.

 

 We read a lot more Halloween books, including some about how pumpkins grow.  Here's the bracelet we made to help us remember the pumpkin life cycle.  I modified the idea from an activity we did at the Botanic Research Institute of Texas' story time last month.   First we put a real pumpkin seed on a pipe cleaner (Ms. Paula made a hole in it ahead of time).  We added a foam leaf, then a flower-shaped yellow bead.  Right underneath the "flower" we put a tiny green bead, to represent the tiny baby pumpkin that grows from the base of the flower.  We added another green bead that was a little bigger, because pumpkins grow and grow.  They turn yellow and then orange, so we added beads to represent that, and finally a larger orange bead to represent the ripe pumpkin.  Guess what is inside the ripe pumpkin?  Seeds!  Our bracelets go around and around, just like the life cycle of a pumpkin plant.

Our art project this week was painting.  We mixed yellow, red and orange paints to cover our paper, and will cut out a large pumpkin shape from it, then the children will cut black paper shapes to make their own jack-o-lantern.  We'll finish this project on Monday.  I got the idea here.

The highlight of the week was definitely our Halloween party.  Many parents and siblings joined us- yeah!  We ate cupcakes with chocolate eyeballs on them, then showed off our costumes to each other.  The photos of each child in their costume will make another class book, with simple repetitive text; "_______ was _______ for Halloween."  As they read the book, the children will practice reading the names of their friends, and because the text is repeated, they can all be successful "reading" the book. 

 After lots of photos in our costumes, we went out to play in the backyard, and made our first big leaf pile.  As you can see, we ran and jumped and played in the leaves for an hour!  Thank you to the parents who helped rake the leaves for us - we LOVED it!

Jj has definitely been a joyful letter!

Letter Ii

What could be better for the letter Ii than ice cream?!  We had a delicious science project on Monday.  I bought 3 flavors of ice cream, and each child predicted whether they would like each flavor.  Believe it or not, several kiddos didn't think they would like the cherry cordial, or peanut butter fudge flavors! 

 Before our taste test, I had each child predict which flavor would be their favorite, and we graphed our predictions.  The next part was our favorite: tasting!  We tried one flavor at a time, and gave them a thumbs down, or more likely, a thumbs up!

 Here are the results of our taste test.  Some kiddos did indeed prefer the flavor they had predicted, but several children were surprised to discover a new favorite.  Scientists make predictions and test them, just like we did, and it is okay even if your prediction isn't the same as the outcome.  That's part of how we learn new things!

 We continued with the ice cream theme on Tuesday with a cool finger painting activity.  The kiddos helped me to put shaving cream, paint and glue in a pan, and to mix it.  We painted ice cream with the resulting goo, which stays puffy when it dries.  This was a fun, sensory experience, not only for our sense of touch, but also for the wonderful smell of the shaving cream!  I found the idea here.

The inspiration for our sensory box this week came from www.lifeisaparty.ca  Once again, the sensory play was a huge hit with the kiddos, and they pretended and role played and talked and talked about ice cream all week.  Do you see the blue plate with sparkly pompons on it?  The children didn't know it, but they were practicing sorting and classifying as they played, as well as working those fine finger muscles.  Incorporating plastic fruit, cookies and cakes, plus empty bottles from sprinkles really took this play much further than just the bowls, tubs, and pompons have in the past! 

Here is an activity that is part of each week here at school: making a page for our abc photo albums.  Each child puts stickers and stamps that begin with the letter of the week on a page topped with a die cut of the letter.  You can see I incorporated a sorting activity too, with insects and instruments mixed in with the Ii items.  On the facing page in their abc photo album I'll mount a photo of them doing one of our fun letter of the week activities.  The kiddos love their photo albums, and read them often... reinforcing the letter sounds as they admire their work and their photos.  When they eventually leave me, each child has a fun abc book to take home, full of photos of themselves. 

Our Itsy Bitsy Spider activity came from Mailbox magazine.  The kiddos colored a house, then taped on a straw with a plastic spider on it, to make the water spout.  They moved their spiders up and down the water spout as we sang the song, and of course we read The Itsy Bitsy Spider, by Iza Trapani.

Musical instruments were available to play outside, and the kiddos came and went from that area...

... but by far their favorite outside game this week was "monster".  Mostly the teachers are the monsters, and chase the kids while making growling noises.  The kids never tire of this game!

Here's another part of our routine that I haven't blogged about yet: our singing and dancing time.  Each day, once breakfast is over, we clean up the toys and gather on the carpet.  I have created an educational  playlist on Youtube.com for each week of the year, and we all dance and sing together.

I like to start each session with a fast paced, high activity song or two.  We especially love Storybots, Harry Kindergarten, and The Learning Station, as well as Sesame Street Podcasts!  Each playlist includes an alphabet song and counting song, and most include a Spanish language piece: El Perro and El Gato are awesome, and Sesame Street has many great videos available too.  I try to incorporate nursery rhymes most weeks, and then a few more things that I think every child should know.  By the time we've finished 25-30 minutes of singing and dancing, we're ready to sit down for a few minutes to do our daily preschool time.

One of our songs this week was The Inchworm Song.  We sang about the inchworm measuring the marigolds... and then looked for inchworms on our marigolds outside while we sang the song some more.  We didn't find any inchworms, but we still enjoyed the marigolds!

I'm thrilled with how a new (to me) art project worked out this week.  I found this project at http://www.flickr.com/photos/artsyt/3592528765/in/pool-78198665@N00.  We looked at photos of real irises - I couldn't find real ones - and at Van Gogh's Irises, then chose pinks and purples to make our symmetrical iris paintings with.  A touch of yellow for the inside of the flower finished them off.

 Aren't they beautiful!  The children were very proud of their irises, and I'll be adding them to our Artsonia gallery.

Our field trip this week was to the Fort Worth Museum of Science and History.  We hadn't been to the new Curious George exhibit yet, and the kiddos were eager to see it.  It was terrific!  We played at the fruit stand, mini golf, a construction area, blew huge fans at pinwheels, and much more!  One group of kiddos even got to see a rattlesnake, skunk, bobcat and armadillo!

Of course, we always enjoy the Children's Museum area, with trains, a hospital pretend area, and a grocery store.

Today there was a new attraction that I think I liked as much as the kiddos: huge foam blocks in lots of shapes and sizes.  Check out the creation 3 kiddos worked on together for at least 30 minutes.  We LOVE our museum!