Zoo animals!

This last week was even more of a zoo in school than normal. :) We watched tigers and bears grow, oh my! They started out the size below.

And ended up like this.

We talked about what animals are called as babies and adults, and matched the mamas to their babies with these puzzle matching cards. They thought it was so funny that their was a human baby and mama in the mix.

For a math center, we had our animal stampers. We learned about the number 12 this week, so they had the numbers 1-12 on their paper, and a box for each number for them to add an animal stamp.

We had these monkey and hippo uppercase and lowercase alphabet puzzles. 

For dramatic play, we had lots of animal puppets, a puppet stand, and lots of imagination!

I got these really cool blocks from Lakeshore that are in the shapes of different animals. We loved them!

For another math center, we had barrel of monkeys. This worked on a couple of things. They worked on their fine motor skills by picking up the monkeys, and they counted them to see who could collect the most. (The kids were much better at this game than me, its harder than it looks!)

We also had this counting bears number recognition center. We are really cracking on our numbers, can you tell? This center had the numbers 1-12 written out and then that many blank spaces next to it to add that number of bears to that sheet.

A great fine motor activity for kids is lacing boards. We worked on some animal ones this week.

We played Animal Scramble. This game is like the game Hyperdash that we played in the past, but with animals! There are a few different modes you can play including colors, animal names, and animal sounds. 

We talked about the letter T this week. We decorated our T's to look like Tigers.

Book of the week: Animal Strike at the Zoo by Karma Wilson

Song of the week: Our Duck Song 

and

5 Little Monkeys

Once upon a time......

.....in a preschool full of cute children, we had a wonderful week filled with sand castles, jewels, and fairy tale endings! And, with the snazzy crowns upon their heads, your kids made some pretty darn cute prince and princesses.

I found this awesome recipe here for this sand that resembles moon sand. It can be packed and holds its shape until the kids want to break it. Perfect for making our magical castles.

So easy to make and the kids absolutely loved it. They wanted to take it home but I told them I would let you know how to make it on here, and let you choose if you want sand castles in your home in the middle of winter. :)

We also made castles with two castle block games called Castle Logix and Camelot Jr. If you have never heard of these games and your kids like to solve puzzles and build, you must check them out! They have a book in them with different castle block puzzles to build at different levels of play. Some of them only work if they are put together just right. Great fine motor and brainstorming activity.

We had fun with these magnetic dress ups, and yes, the boys played too! They had different outfits that the kids could mix-and-match. And, the price and princess had matching outfits too.

For a math center we did this crown counting found from prekinders.com. They had a sheet filled with crowns, and they would roll a die, count the number it landed on, and add that many jewels to cover their crowns. They did this until their sheet was filled with the jewels.

At our reading center, we had finger puppets and fairy tales. The kids could find their favorite fairy tale and act it out with these assorted puppets.

I also got this princess and the pea math center idea from prekinders.com. I had 3 beds with 20 matresses on them each (just like in the book) and the kids hid the pea (green bead) somewhere between the mattresses. They would then roll the die, and take that number of mattresses off the bed until they found the pea.

We also searched for treasures in the sand table.

One of the letters we talked about this week was the letter s. We found and circled all of the S's in our Star Light, Star Bright poem.

We reviewed letters Q,R.S and practiced forming them with our dry erase letters.

And, we made this cute Santa countdown to start Dec. 1st. We can add a piece of santa's beard to his chin, and when its done, Christmas Eve will be here!

It's going to be a zoo next week as we talk about monkeys, tigers, and other zoo animals! Can't wait!

Pilgrims, and Indians, and Turkeys.....OH MY!

Last week we talked about how Thanksgiving came to be, and what things we are thankful for. We learned of the pilgrims who came to America for religious freedom, and of the Native Americans who helped them survive.

We made these picture scenes from Oriental Trading where we recreated the scene of the First Thanksgiving.

The sand table was filled with popcorn and in it the kids found miniature food items. These items were things that they may have had during that time. 

We used a rock and a hard surface to grind corn into cornmeal just like the Native Americans used to do. This was a lot of fun. We probably wouldn't think that if we had to do it often as a necessity though!

We also had this center below that the kids could visit to try a cornbread muffin. They could also put some butter on it which was make by them! We shook whipping cream, like they are doing below, until it whipped into butter!

       We made a vest and a headband to dress as they dressed.

We had fun with these stamps that were in the shape of fall leaves, Indians, Pilgrims, pumpkins and more. We colored them different colors with washable markers and stamped them on our papers. I always feel bad because some kids always forget to take home their papers when they visit centers. So, just because your child didn't bring home a paper doesn't mean they didn't make one.

For a math center we gave turkeys some feathers. Each turkey had a number on the inside of the cup, and the kids added that number of feathers to the turkeys back.

And, for a letter recognition center we went fishing for turkeys and marked off the letter on their belly on our turkey sheet. I guess I didn't get any pictures of the kids at that center.

I am so thankful for your children. They bring me so much joy. I'm thankful for the time I get to spend with them and for the things that they do and say to make me laugh and smile!