Shape up!

We started our unit on shapes this week. One of the art projects we did were our shape sculptures that were both 2-D and 3-D. We talked about how shapes are all around us, even in buildings and homes. We talked about how sculptures are art that are made with different materials, and then we made our own sculptures out of shapes.

Another art project we did were these shape clowns. We first colored our shape clowns, and then we practiced our cutting skills and cut them out. The kids did a great job cutting on the lines. 

We also practiced our shape recognition with these shape pegboards. These pegboards are from Lakeshore learning and come with a triangle, a square, and a circle and then have the same shape of pegs to fit into the foam boards.

We used bendable wax sticks (bendaroos) to practice outlining our shapes. The wax sticks will bend into any shape and stay that way, making them perfect to use for tracing. And with the sticky wax texture, they stayed put on our papers nicely too!
                                      

We also had a reading center the kids could visit. I will continue to have this center quite regularly. I have added a couple of bean bags to the center and books that apply to the weekly theme. So, this week all of the books were centered around shapes. The bean bags are in the shape of a spider and a lady bug, so we found the saying, "Don't bug me, I'm reading" very appropriate. :)

We talked about the letters D and E this week. For the letter D, we use our dot markers to make dotted D's.

And for the letter E, we used one long popsicle stick, and three short popsicle sticks to make our big E.

We sorted shape buttons by filling up our shape jars.

And, you might think that this last center is a little "fishy", but the children were "hooked"! We used our water table and our magnetic shapes and fishing poles to see what shapes we could catch.

And then we put our shape on the corresponding shape flashcard.

As you can see, we had a ton of fun with shapes this last week! And, we are going to continue to learn and play with shapes this week as well!

Book: Mouse Shapes. This is another great book by Ellen Stoll Walsh. 

We celebrated two birthdays this week. A Happy Birthday (cha cha cha) to

Miss Haylee

and Miss Addison!

Color Mix-a-roo!

We continued to talk about colors at school this week. And, we had a lot of fun doing some more color mixing.

I made some red, yellow, and blue playdough and let the kids mix to their delight. Here James is mixing red and yellow to see what color it will make.

We also did some finger painting with the primary colors. They loved the cold, smooth feel of the paint on their hands.

We also did an experiment with skittles that I found off of prekinders.com where the colors separate from the candy, and the S on the skittles floats to the top. I told the kids we were going to perform a magic trick and make the S float to the top of the water while the skittle stayed at the bottom. They were amazed and could not wait to tell you parents that they could do a magic trick. So, if they want to try it at home, just take 3 skittles, put them around the edge of a bowl filled with a little water, and watch the magic happen.

We learned about the letter C this week. C is for cookie! We decorated our own cookie and used candy topping to trace our cookie C before we ate them.

For a math center, we had a ball! Or two, or three, or whatever number our dice landed on! For this center, we rolled a die and counted the number that it landed on. Then we took that many of our colorful balls and threw them into the basket.

We also practiced our coloring skills.

And our fine motor skills with these color coordinated puzzles.

For a word recognition center we had a bean bag toss where we tossed the correct color of bean bag onto the corresponding color word.

For a dramatic play area, we played with our colorful crystal builders. 

We reviewed letters A, B, and C this week. We practiced writing them with our dry erase upper and lowercase letters.

Books this week: Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See by Bill Martin Jr.

and

The Crayon Box that Talked by Shane DeRolf

Songs this week: 

Rainbow Song 

(to the tune of “Twinkle Twinkle Little Star”)

Red, orange, yellow, green, and blue.

Indigo and violet too.

Rainbow, rainbow in the sky.

Rainbow, rainbow way up high.

Red, orange, yellow, green, and blue.

Indigo and violet too.

and

our song about manners because we talked about always remembering to say Please and Thank You this week.

Please and Thank You

(to the tune of Frere Jacques)

Please and Thank you

Please and Thank You

We must say, We must say

When we ask for something

When we ask for something 

Everyday, Everyday

And, a BIG THANK YOU to Brett and his mom for bringing us a new class pet! We now have two soft, fuzzy caterpillars in our school that we get to watch transform into beautiful butterflies. We are so excited!!

Colors, colors, everywhere!

A is for alligator! Watch out or he might munch you up....aaaahhhhh. That's what the A would say too!

We also talked about the letter B this week.

We used our colorful counting chips to practice forming the letter B. Each chip has a small metal ring around the edge, so after the kids finished making their B, they could use their "magic" magnetic wand to pick up all of the chips in one swoop!

For a math center, we used the stacking cups shown below to race a friend as we counted to ten. Each cup has a number on it from 1-10 so we took turns playing this game that can definitely stack up!

We also played with some Orbeez! These are always a favorite! They come in many colors and they grow from the size of a needle tip to the size of a small marble by absorbing water. They keep their smooth, wet feel even after they have fully grown which the kids love. We used them as a color sorting center.

We had different colors of cannisters, and could either drop or bounce (yes they bounce!) our orbeez balls into the correct corresponding container. Oh, what fun!

We also mixed colors with water and water droppers to see what colors we could make. Then, we'd empty the cups, fill them with primary colors again, and do it all over again.

Check out all those colors.

Another color recognition and color mixing center we had were these color paddles.

I just love watching children's minds at work. They were SO happy when they put the paddles together and saw that it really worked!

A really fun game that is excellent for color and number recognition is a game called Hyperdash. There are many different modes and levels of play, so it really is fun for all ages. For our colors week, we simply played the level where it would ask you a color and you would have to touch that color with the tagger. Then, it would tell you how many seconds it took to complete, and they enjoyed trying to beat their own score.

We also sorted fish by color. We did this using rainbow colored goldfish, so its always fun having a snack while we work.

I am pretty sure that yellow won for most goldfish everytime. Guess we know what the box has the most of :)

We did an art project we called scribble art. The children were asked to find the black crayon in their box and to simply scribble a design onto their paper. After doing so, they could then use any other color to color their designs. 

For another math center, we used these pegboard numbers. Each mat has a number from 1-10, and then the corresponding number of holes to add that many pegs to that board.

Songs of the week: We sang about our primary colors this week.

R-E-D Red

(Tune of Are You Sleeping)

R-E-D, red. 

R-E-D, red. 

I can spell red

I can spell red.

Fire trucks are red,

Stop signs are red, too.

R-E-D, 

R-E-D. 

BLUE

(Tune: THE FARMER IN THE DELL)

 

B-L-U-E SPELLS BLUE

B-L-U-E SPELLS BLUE

HI-HO DID YOU KNOW

B-L-U-E SPELLS BLUE?

 

THE BIG SKY IS BLUE

THE OCEAN IS TOO

HI-HO DID YOU KNOW

B-L-U-E SPELLS BLUE?

YELLOW

(IF YOU’RE HAPPY AND YOU KNOW IT)

 

Y-E-L-L-O-W SPELLS YELLOW.

Y-E-L-L-O-W SPELLS YELLOW.

LIKE THE EARLY MORNING SUN

WHEN THE DAY HAS JUST BEGUN.

Y-E-L-L-O-W SPELLS YELLOW.

 

DAFFODILS AND BABY DUCKS ARE YELLOW.

LEMONADE AND SCRAMBLED EGGS ARE YELLOW.

I LIKE THE SMILEY FACE THAT’S YELLOW.

HE IS SUCH A HAPPY FELLOW.

Y-E-L-L-O-W SPELLS YELLOW.

Book of the week: Our book was called Mouse Paint by Ellen Scoll Walsh. Excellent book! for color mixing. Really cute.