Once Upon A Time

Oh how much fun we had learning all about Fairy Tales. We learned that Fairy Tales usually start with Once Upon A Time, they usually deal with magic, the characters are usually Queens, Kings, Princes, and Princesses , and sometimes the animals even talk!

On Monday we started our week by reading the 3 Little Pigs and we learned about ordinal positions like First, Second,Third or First, Next, and Last. We recreated the story by building the 3 Little Pigs houses. 

On Tuesday we watched a video of There Was An Old Lady Who Swallowed A Fly then we retold the story with our own little old lady. 

Not my exact, but some how I forgot to take a picture, but it is the same idea just different pictures

On Wednesday we watched a video of The Gingerbread Man and created our own gingerbread cookies. We decorated out cookies with crayon icing and then water colored the brown which created a resist affect causing the crayon colors to really stand out. 

On Thursday we watched Jack and The Beanstalk: A Fractured Fairy Tale which is a hilarious version of the original story. If you ever watched Rocky and Bullwinkle as a a kid you may have seen this and other fractured fairy tales and if you have never seen them I highly suggest you Google them because they are so funny! If you find them make sure you watch the Rapunzel one it is the best! 

On Friday we watched Cinderella: A Fractured Fairy Tale. After watching the story we create our own Fairy Godmother wands and everyone described what they would wish for if thy had a fairy godmother. 

This is a great wish if I do say so myself!

For jobs this week we made quail Q's

Quilt q's

We searched through uppercase and lowercase magic coins and colored in the letter when we found it

Sorted uppercase/lowercase letters and letters and numbers

And we measured giant hands and feet and then compared and measured our hands and feet. 

Oh and one more thing! We can't forget that we learned that everyone always lives
HAPPILY EVER AFTER in Fairy tales!

It's Rhyme Time

This week we concentrated on learning some of our favorite nursery rhymes. We decided to become authors and illustrators this week and create our very own nursery rhyme books and since nursery rhymes consist of many rhyming words what a perfect week to really work on such an important skill. Each day we worked on 2 pages of our nursery rhyme books. First we read the rhyme together, then we highlighted the rhyming words on our smart board, next each student highlighted the rhyming words in their own book, and lastly we create illustrations for each page. 

On Monday we read Humpty Dumpty and Hickory Dickory Dock. We made our own little cracked egg sitting on a wall

and learned all about telling time on a clock. Each student worked with a buddy and helped me place the numbers 1-12 on our hula hoop floor clock. Then we recreated our own clocks and placed the numbers in the correct order.

Wednesday we read Baa Baa Black Sheep and Jack and Jill then we created a fluffy little black sheep

and a cute movable picture of Jack and Jill falling down the hill.

On Thursday we finished our Nursery Rhyme book with 1,2, Buckle My Shoe where the students had to match the word that rhymed with the corresponding rhyming picture (2-show, 4-door, 6-pick up sticks, 8-lay them straight, 10-big fat hen). 

And the last page we read Peter Peter Pumpkin Eater and drew a portrait of ourselves inside the pumpkin. 

On Friday we made our uppercase N into a nest with a birdie

And our lowercase n into a nap time/nighttime n. 

I hope everyone has enjoyed reading their nursery rhyme books with their Little's and be on the lookout for some more rhyming words. 

Hey Good Lookin What You Got Cookin

This week we learned all about the Kitchen and Nutrition. We learned about the difference between fruits and vegetables and what are foods that are good to eat everyday and foods that are ok to eat on special every now and then. 

We played a game on our smart board where everyone got a chance to come up, choose a food, and decide whether it was a healthy or unhealthy food. I was so impressed with my friends ability to not only name each food but to identify what category it belonged to. 

I decided to shake things up this year and instead of just learning about the kitchen we wanted to integrate some of my favorite books especially since they were all about food. 

Monday we read the story If You Give A Mouse A Cookie. That silly little mouse wanted a cookie and boy what a mess he ended up making. We decided to make some cookies for our mouse but we had to sort and count the chocolate chips write how many if each color an then add them together. To end our math lesson we had to have a special treat of chocolate chip cookies. They may be in the unhealthy catagory, but they were delicious!

After we finished counting chips everyone drew a picture of what they would give the mouse. 

On Tuesday we read if You Give A Moose A Muffin and created our own moose hats. Sadly I forgot to snap a picture, but they were super cute and everyone looked so cute eating their mini donuts in their moose hats. 

On Wednesday we read If You Give A Dog A Donut and created our own cute puppies and once again we had to have a special treat that went along with our story. I think my friends enjoyed their mini chocolate donuts because they were all begging for more.

On Thursday we read If You Give A Pig A Pancake and then we counted chocolate chips in the pancakes and practiced writing our numbers.

For snack I decided to make my friends pancakes of course, but I had to make them in the shape of our letter. Some turned out better than others, but they were still delicious and gluten free so even I could enjoy them (yum yum!)

Later on that day we had a feast of our favorite foods. Each student brought in their favorite food to share with their friends. We had pizza, lac n cheese, cheese dip, pomegranate seeds, yogurts, spaghetti just to name a few of the 20 items we tasted. It was quite the feast! Here you can see everyone gorging themselves. Poor babies slept it off in Thanksgiving rule food comas. I never heard a peep from anyone during nap time.  

Friday was yet again another half day. I found myself once again rushing around to get things ready for next week and to prepare myself for parent teacher conferences big we don't have another 4 day week for quite sometime I will be a happy little teacher. I will take everyday I can get to get everything ready for the next week. 

We read If You Give A Cat A Cupcake and the. Very one made their own unique cupcake. I decided to skip any special treats this day because we had had enough treats the day before. 

For jobs this week we made a Kangaroo K

And a kite k

We followed a Pizza Glyph to create some delicious pizza pies. 

We searched through a pile of leaves to match each letter on bout list and the. We practiced writing all of our letters. 

What a fun and tasty week down in 4k!

Boo!

Once again I am a few days behind, but here it is in all it's Halloween glory! 

Monday we used 4 of our senses to discover what a pumpkin looks like, feels like, smells like, and sounds like. We decided to skip what a pumpkin tastes like for now because the germaphobe in me couldn't take 20 kids licking our poor little pumpkin. Ugh now I have an awful mental age of each kid coming up to take a lick and it makes me shudder! Now you might be saying "Roxanne you chose the wrong profession if you don't like germs", but trust me after being sneezed on by every child you have taught for 12 years really helps desensitize the crazy. And yes I said I have been teaching for 12 years! That blows my mind I have been doing what I love for so long! Oh how time flies when you're having fun!

After we all got a chance to discover the pumpkin with our senses we watched a video all about the life cycle of a pumpkin. Afterwards everyone used their super smart brains and memories to create our own pumpkin cycles. Cute and educational!

Tuesday we read the story Stellaluna. It is a story about a little bat who gets lost and goes to live in a nest of birds. Stellaluna thinks something is wrong with her because she is different then the birds because she is nocturnal and sleeps during the day and flies at night, doesn't like eating bugs, and sleeps upside down so she changes to be like them, but she knows it just doesn't feel right. Long story short Stellaluna finds her mom and realizes that even though they may be different they are still friends. I love this story because I feel like it kind of describes all of us down in 4k. We are all a little different, but we all love each other and are all friends no matter what. It is also a perfect book for us to learn a little about bats. We learned they are nocturnal (sleep at night), they eat fruit and some bats eat insects (just not Stellaluna), and they can see in the dark. After we finished our story we all graphed whether we thought bats were cute or creepy and then we made some awesome bat wing hats!

Wednesday we made our own classroom Jack-O-Lantern and everyone got a chance to help me scoop the goo out. We decided on a super simple BOO! pattern for our orange gourd. 

It seems a little blond monkey got a gold of my phone and deleted some of my Halloween photos. 

Naughty Monkey!

For jobs this week we measured bats with coins, paper clips, and candy corn and practiced writing the numbers.

We counted the dots in each Haunted House window and matched the ghost with the matching number. 

We counted out Halloween erasers. 

And we counted out "pumpkin seeds" which were actually dried corn kernels because Mrs. Roxanne couldn't find any dried pumpkin seeds beside the goopy ones we scooped out of pumpkin and no one wants to count with goopy pumpkin seeds! 

I think my favorite craft we worked in this week is our pumpkin names and Jack-O-Lanterns. We started on Monday by each finger painting a large sheet of paper. I told the kiddos I couldn't find my orange paint so we had to mix red and yellow together to make orange. While our papers dried everyone worked to find the pumpkins that had the letters in their names and they made a little name pumpkin patch. After our papers dried everyone free handed a circle on their orange finger painted papers and then they cut it out. This made for some fun shaped pumpkins which made them even more unique just like each one of our friends. Last, but not least we needed faces for our crazy Jack-O-lanterns. I love how different and unique each one turned out. 

Thursday we celebrated Halloween by dressing up and eating lots of delicious food. Isn't that why you are supposed to do? Our amazing parents put together some delicious and healthy treats which I forgot to snap pictures if amidst the chaos of the day. 1 thing I do want to say is how wonderful the babies were in this crazy day! They are always good listeners, but party days can get a little rowdy and they were fabulous, sweet, and polite. We played Halloween bingo, made some spiders, and ate lots of food. 

I am so sad this picture turned out so blurry because my babies looked so stinkin cute in their costumes. I am just happy most of them were actually looking at me, but I was pretty interesting standing on top of my big blue self in a care bear costume with no shoes. Good times down in 4K!

And if you thought she could do it Mrs. Douglas once again transformed Mr. Bear. He has now become a spooky Vampire!!
Don't worry he may have a life left in him to make it through Thanksgiving!

Hopefully everyone has detoxed from their sugar comas and are taking it easy after all of the Halloween fun!

Power of Prayer

I am sending a shout out to everyone tonight because we have so many people in our school and church family who need some extra prayers right now.

If you haven't figured out just yet, there is something a little special about our school and it is the people it holds. If you are a new parent just give it a little time and you will very soon catch a glimpse of how special this little school is and how important it will become to you and your family. You won't have to wait long I promise. 

So if you get a chance take a moment and please ask God to be with those who need it right now and to give them the strength to have faith in him and his plans for them.