Community helpers (part 1 of 2)

We have so many people that help us in our community.  These people choose their jobs according to what they love to do, and that is what we hope to do one day as well.  In fact, Ms. Jennae asked us what we would like to be when we grow up, and we know you will get a kick out of our answers in our year-end scrapbook.  Here is one answer for a sneak peak:

We know that whatever we choose to be when we grow-up, we will do a great job! Whether it be a....

Baker!  or a........

Firefighter!  or a....... 

Doctor!  or a.....

                                           Construction worker!

There are so many jobs to choose from, how will we ever decide??

The kids and I had a lot of fun this last week learning about community helpers and what their job entails.  As you know, we even got to visit the dentist office for a field trip to see what kind of work that they do.

Their office was welcoming and fun.

The dental assistant taught us the proper way that we should be brushing our teeth.  We each got to take a turn if we wanted to. 

She also taught us how to floss.  We got to volunteer to be the teeth!

We had a great time learning about our teeth.  We even learned that an apple is "nature's toothbrush" and can help us clean our teeth just by eating it!  We learned what foods are good for our teeth, and what foods are bad.  But, most importantly, we learned that it is not scary to visit the dentist, they are there to help us.  Thank you Stevenson Pediatric Dentisty for letting us visit your office!!

Don't forget to ask what I learned this week?  We talked about the number 15 this week, and we spelled the word hat.  We even had the magnetic leap frog letters out to spell our names and listen to the letter sounds.  What a great week!

Out of this world!

We had a lot of fun this week exploring space.  We talked about how there are 8 planets in our solar system, and briefly told about each one.  We talked about how BIG the sun is and we talked about other stars too.  We even learned a fun song called "The Solar System in Motion" that I found on the internet from http://www.lilteacher.com/. Here are the words:
(To the tune of The Farmer in the Dell)

The Earth turns around,
The Earth turns around.
Once a day, every day,
The Earth turns around.

The moon goes round the Earth,
The moon goes round the Earth.
Once a month, every month,
The moon goes round the Earth.

The Earth goes round the sun,
The Earth goes round the sun.
Once a year, every year,
The earth goes round the sun.

We talked about how constellations are groups of stars in the sky that help us map out the sky.  We made our own constellations with the number 13 (our number of the week) and with our lite bright center.

For a fine motor activity, we "reached for the stars".  I filled the sand table with different sizes of pom-poms and the kids used chopsticks to pick them up and put them into another container.  They loved star catching.

We also used the sand table for a sensory activity.  We filled it with sand, and then used different sized and weighted balls to drop into the table like a meteoroid and then observed the different craters that they left.

Check out those craters!

We also had a center with stencils where the kids could create their own patterns and then trace and color them.

We made space necklaces out of glow-in-the-dark beads and then traveled to space (a dark room) to see them glow.

We also had fun making our own moon art project, moon rocks, puzzles, and launching our own rockets!

Field trip!

Don't forget that next Tuesday, January 18th is our field-trip to the dentist!  No school on Monday for the Martin Luther King holiday, but Monday-Wednesday class meet at the dental office Tuesday morning at 10:00 AM and Tuesday-Thursday class meet at 11:00 AM!  If you need the address again, give me a call. 

Transportation

Welcome back!  We had a great week coming back to school.  And, its 2011!  Can you believe it?!  We talked about transportation this week.  It was fun just having the kids say it :).  We talked about many different ways that we can get from here to there.  The kids did a great job with coming up with many on their own. 
For our reading center we had some alphabet trains for the children to build. 

This first one is from Lakeshore Learning and each car has a letter of the alphabet on the side and then their is an item for each car to carry that starts with the letter on it's side (A=apple, B=banana).  The kids are doing a great job sounding out their words and finding the beginning sound.

The other train that we did had the same concept with the beginning sounds, but it was a puzzle that already had the items in the train so the children just had to get the alphabet in the correct order. 

We also had a color recognition center where the children matched the color word with its color car counterpart.  Yes, the words were colored the color that they spelled, but this still helps with word recognition.  I printed this fun game from a wonderful sight that I like called prekinders.com

We practiced both the numbers 11 and 12 this week.  For our math center, I labeled each puzzle piece on our rug with a number.  The kids then took a form of transportion (car, plane, truck, skateboard) and drove, flew, or skated from number 1 all the way to number 12.  The numbers were in random order so this helped with not only counting to 12, but number recognition as well.

For an art center, we decorated airplanes! 

For our science center this week, we played with the water table to determine which objects would sink or float from an assortment of things.  We talked about how even heavy things can float if their weight is correctly displaced, and how different materials sink and float.  I think a couple of the items surprised the kids, but they did a great job separting them into the correct tins above.

We also had a ramp that the children used to test how and if different items would roll down the ramp.

And, we had a playdough center, where the children were able to build up roads and mounds of dirt to see what kind of different tire tracks that the different transportation vehicles made. 
We also spelled a couple of words this week.  We blended letters together to spell car and bus.

We sang the song The Wheels on the Bus this week along with learned a new song to help us properly hold our pencil correctly.  The song is called Crayon Song and it is from a track called Get Set For School from Handwriting Without Tears.  I love Handwriting Without Tears.  They have a lot of fun programs to help children properly write and learn their letters.  This is where I got my wood pieces that you have seen me use to create different letters. 
Anyway, if you want to practice at home, the verse of the song that teaches to hold a crayon goes as follows:

Pick up a crayon
Pick up a crayon
This is easy to do

Pick up a crayon
Pick up a crayon
I just tell my fingers what to do

My thumb is bent
Pointer points to the tip
Tall Man uses his side

I tuck the last two fingers in
And take them for a ride!

Can't wait for next week as it is going to be "out of this world" learning about Earth and the other planets in space!