Reptiles and Amphibians

What kind of tiles can not be hung on your wall? Reptiles of course! But, we sure learned a lot about them this week. We talked about the chameleon and how they can change colors! We also learned about turtles and snakes and alligators. We also learned about amphibians this week, frogs and toads to name a couple. Do you know some of the differences between a frog and a toad? We do! We know that frogs generally have smooth skin, while toads tend to be bumpy. Frogs also have long legs while toads have short stubby legs.

We talked about how frogs like to live near water, and are great jumpers from lily pad to lily pad. We sang 5 Green and Speckled Frogs and played with frogs, lily pads, and water in the water table.

We also jumped like frogs on our own lily pads numbered 1-10. The children had either the choice of jumping on the lily pads, or using a bean bag to land on each number in numerical order up to 10.

We also talked about color changing chameleons. We used our color changing markers for an art center to create our own chameleons, and then watched them change color before our eyes!

For another math center, I wrote numbers 1-6 on a scenic picture. The children rolled a die, counted what number it landed on, found that number on the picture, and placed that many lizards on that number. This helped the children count,  while relating number dots with their actual number.

Can you see the 2 lizards hiding in the picture?

We also talked about two different types of scales this week. We talked about how reptiles have scales on their skin, and also used a balance scale to practice more, less, or the same.

We used rocks, marbles, beans, and teddy bear counters as manipulatives. They had a blast trying to make each side equal to each other.

We also had a reading center this week where the kids could grab a book (about reptiles and amphibians of course) and pull up a pillow to look at pictures and read.

We practiced our cutting skills this week with the mosaic turtles your children made as a take home art project.

Another center the children could visit was our "hot dot dogs". These are dog shaped magnetic readers that light up green if they get the answer on the flash card correct, and red if they do not.

For a writing center, these pictures below were placed at the table along with some markers and the kids did a letter hunt. Each letter of the alphabet was hidden in the picture, and the children were encouraged to find them and circle them.

And finally, we talked about snakes this week. We talked about how some are dangerous and that we should always know what kind of snake it is before we touch it. We talked about how snakes shed their skin a few times a year. We had this center with snakes and bubble wrap. The children took a piece of bubble wrap and popped the bubbles. When you do this, it resembles snake skin! The chilren then wrapped their snake up and watched  it slither out of its skin.

Thanks for tuning in this week! Next week we will be learning about plants, flowers, and birds.

Our stars of the week this week were:

Miss  Morgan!

 and Miss Ashley!

These girls are adorable!

Bugs!!

Where do we begin? Bees, ants, caterpillars, ladybugs, centipedes, beetles......we talked about them all and more! We read a book called "I'm a Pill Bug" by Yukihisa Tokuda. This book told us how "potato bugs" and "roly poly" bugs are also called pill bugs. They like to live by people because they eat our leftover food, along with cement and rock! They like to live by their families so we should try to keep them in the same area that we find them in.
We also talked about the life cycle of the butterfly. We talked about how there are 4 stages a caterpillar goes through to become a butterfly. I know they won't remember all of the technical terms, but they may tell you it goes from an egg to a caterpillar to a cacoon to a butterfly. We then made this beautiful tie-dye butterfly for an art project.

To do this we simply colored a coffee filter with markers.

And then used eye droppers to drop water droplets onto the marker to give it the tie-dye effect.

After they dried, we added a body (clothespin) and pipe cleaner antenna and voila! We also added a piece of magnet to the back so that they can stick to the fridge or other metal.

We sorted bugs this week by size, color, and type.

Here Maxx, Brylnlyn, and Riley are sorting by size: small, medium, and large.

We also had a patterning center with our bugs.

The kids practicied both A,B,A,B patterning and AA,BB,AA,BB patterns. There were also some cards that had math problems on them.

For our uppercase to lowercase letter practice, we built these ladybug puzzles. Then we put the alphabet in order and sang our ABC's.

For a writing center this week, I wrote on the whiteboard with permanent marker and had the children trace over it with dry erase marker. All of the words were associated with bugs, of course!

Got bugs? We can help with that! For another letter recognition center we searched for, found, and squashed some bugs! I placed some bugs all around the room with each letter of the alphabet on them. I then called out a letter, and the children (3 at a time, I had 3 fly swatters) raced around the room to find that letter and swat that bug!

Gotcha!

We also had to play the classic games "Bed Bugs" and "Cootie"

And, thats not all! We had a discovery center where the children had tweezers and magnifying glasses and looked through the grass to find different bugs.

And we were able to explore with some real bugs. Some of these bugs were actually quite pretty and had some very vibrant colors.

Here Tyler and Evy are building puzzles.

And, Morgan is lacing some bug lacing mats.

We also talked about spiders this week. We talked about how they each have eight legs, and how they don't have a sense of smell. We also made our own spiderwebs.....big and small!

Our stars of the week this were:

Alex!

And NJ!

Thanks for such great support in helping your children with their posters. They are all doing such a great job telling about themselves and answering our questions.

We also had the pleasure of celebrating Morgan's birthday with her this week! Thanks for the yummy cupcakes Morgan. Hope you had a great day!

We have started practicing our program, but will really start role playing and practicing with props these next couple of weeks so please help your child to learn his/her part. Thanks!