Friday, January 31, 2014

Eric Carle

I am behind on a few weeks of posts and since my lesson plan for next week I thought I would do a little catching up today. 

So let's go a few weeks back and talk about one of my favorite Author/Illustrators Mr. Eric Carle.  We started off our week by talking about why God made everything in the world different, why he made us different, and how boring the world would be if everything and everyone all looked the same. To help illustrate this t we watched a video of the book The Mixed-Up Chameleon. The poor chameleon wanted to be like the other animals, but in the end he got all mixed up and realized he was better off just looking like himself. After watching the story everyone created their own mixed up chameleon by placing colorful squares of tissue paper all over a piece of tracing paper and when the paper was covered they cut out the outline of a chameleon and put all of the different pieces together.



On Tuesday we started working on a brand new skill called ordinal counting or ordinal numbers. This includes first, second, third, etc. We read the story 10 Little Rubber Ducks and as a class we worked on coloring in fishies based on the ordinal position I gave. 

On Wednesday we continued working on ordinal numbers and we colored in a choo choo train based on the ordinal position I gave.

Friday was a very special day for us because it just so happened to be the 100th Day of School

Friday was another special day because we were celebrating Grandparent's Day! This day start off with 3K and 4K singing songs to their Grandparent's/Special Friends, then everyone gets to enjoy a special treat, followed up by a grand tour of the classrooms. I was so proud of my friends for singing so nice and for showing off our little classroom.

Since this week was full of 100th Day parties and Grandparent Musicals we did not do jobs as we typically do. Instead of each table completing a different task we all completed the same things at the same time. 

So for jobs this week we made and Elephant E

 an egg e
 And we continued working on finding the missing letters and placing them in the correct box

Even though this was a short yet fun week I can honestly say I was worn our from all of our partying! 


Thursday, January 30, 2014

100 Days Smarter

Yesterday we celebrated the 100th Day Of School 

and boy did we have some fun!! We started off out day making some silly hats

And then we really celebrated by eating 100 Snacks!!!!! That sounds like a lot, but don't worry we didn't have any bellyaches afterwards. 

To finish off the celebration we sent home a few treats to end such a fun day!

I guess it is all downhill from here now that we are counting down the remaining 80 days of the school year. 

Friday, January 24, 2014

Welcome To The Jungle

Now that we have learned all about animals that we can see in our zoo we wanted to learn where many of these animals come from. We already learned that Panda bears live in the jungles of China and many of the other animals we can see in the zoo like tigers and monkeys also live in the jungle.

This week we learned all about the different layers of the jungle and some of the beautiful yet poisonous plants and animals that live there. Did you know there is a plant that eats bugs and the jungle is home to another flower the size of a large dog and it smells like rotten meat?!?!

After learning about the different parts if the jungle everyone got to test their knowledge by creating and correctly labeling their own jungle. All of my friends did an awesome job matching the words on the board to their labels and placing them in the correct position on their jungles.

We created jungle explorers to help us on our adventure. 

We worked on our fine motor skills by tearing paper with our fingertips to create some beautiful jungle flowers. 

 We welcomed some beautiful jungle parrots into the classroom. 

For jobs this week we created Jaguar J's

Jellyfish j's

We worked on a new skill of adding 2 sets of numbers/dots together and counting on after finishing one set and adding in a second. My friends each rolled two dice and added the dots together then colored in the circles containing the combined amount. 

Last but not least we worked on a little something special for the upcoming grandparents day next Friday. 

Everyone please pray that is warms up this next week so we can get some fresh air and get out of this stinky ole classroom!! Thankfully we have a few fun events coming up next week to help make staying inside a little more fun!!

Friday, January 17, 2014

Going To the Zoo Zoo Zoo How About You You You

This week we went on an adventure to the zoo and boy did we have fun! 
Sadly 4k doesn't actually get to go anywhere for field trips, but that doesn't mean we can't use our imaginations or bring the field trip to us. Thanks to our super awesome smart board we were able to watch some if the animals live in our own zoo and across the country in other zoos. We saw pandas, polar bears, and we tried to see some grizzly bears but they seemed to be asleep 

 I think my favorite thing we learned this week was learning about the people who care for the animals called the Zoo Keeper. We learned all about the super cool and kind if dirty work a zoo keeper has to do when we watched a video about a day at work with a zoo keeper. The zookeeper got to feed he animals, wash the animals, and clean up after the animals (yuck!) after watching our video everyone made their own zookeeper to watch over the animals we would be making throughout the week. 


We made some zoo animals to make sure our zoo keepers had someone to take care if. 

Now that we are halfway through the year we are working in really preparing for kindergarten and mastering the skills we will need to be successful so you may see a few of the same skills over and over again because they are a little more difficult and need a little more time and focus. 

For jobs this week  we made a Zebra Z

A zipper z

We worked on counting and writing the number in each set of zoo animals 1-10

And we worked on measuring and number writing. 

I not only want my babies to be able to identify and write  their letters, but I want them to be able to identify and write the numbers 1-10 and higher. We are focusing on working on each individual child's skill level so differentiated instruction is a huge key to or teaching process. 

I am so super proud of all of my babies and how far they have already come and I look forward to seeing where we go from here. 

Friday, January 10, 2014

We're Going On A Bear Hunt, We're Gonna Catch A Big One!

We had so much fun learning about bears last week. We learned about Real/Living and Pretend/Nonliving bears. Things that are Real/Alive breath air, eat, and move on their own and things that are Pretend/ Not Alive can't do any of these things.

What would a week of learning about bears be without Going On A Bear Hunt. We read and acted out the story of the bear hunt and let me tell you we were all worn out after going through the tall tall grass, swimming through the river, trudging through the icky sticky mud, going through the forest and the windy 

On Tuesday we watched a Video of Brown Bear, Brown, Bear What Do You See and then we had to work together to place all of the animals in order of where they were in the story. I believe we got every one of them correct! Afterwards each student made their own Brown Bear and then they had to use their super smart brains to think of something their bear would see.

We learned all about Panda bears on Wednesday. Did you know Panda bears are from China and they love to eat Bambo. We looked at our globe to find our Country and to see how far away China is. We sure are glad we have Panda's in our zoo so we can see them anytime we would like. 

We already learned all about Polar Bars when we learned about winter animals. My friends were able to remember a polar bear has black skin and clear fur. Each students used a sponge to paint in the outline of their snow bear and later after everything dried they created their cute little faces.
One Friday since we had learned so much about bears that are alive we wanted to learn about a pretend bear. We read the story of Corduroy  a little bear who wanted a home. It was silly reading a story about a pretend bear who could walk and talk since we know he is just a pretend bear and can't really do any of these things, but it sure is fun to pretend.


For jobs this week we made a B bear

a butterfly b

We worked on direction following and counting. 

We counted Brown Bear animals and correctly matched the number 
and we worked on 10 frame counting