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!