Pumpkins!

is for 

Jack-o-lanterns! We talked about the letter J this week. We had Jello jigglers in the shape of a J that we practiced tracing with our finger, and then we ate of course! How appropriate for our pumpkin theme! The kids used the shapes above to design their jack-o-lantern faces like jack-o-lantern card that they chose.

 They also decorated their own silly sticker pumpkins.

We talked about how pumpkins start as a seed, then the leaves start growing, then the green pumpkins appear, and finally we have our orange pumpkin. For this math center we put the seeds in their pumpkin according to the corresponding number on the page. If they couldn't recognize the number by sight, they could count the stickers to know how many seeds to use.

We made size comparisons with our pumpkins and our unifix cubes. We built our unifix cubes as tall as the pumpkins, and then counted how many unifix cubes tall each pumpkin was.

We practiced writing our names with pumpkin seeds! 

We also talked about more, less, or the same. We used pumpkins of course! We compared small pumpkins, candy pumpkins, and pumpkin seeds.

The Mon.-Wed. (Tues.-Thurs. on Fall break) class also got to play pumpkin zingo. We changed it up from the regular zingo game in that instead of having to collect the zingo markers by calling out first, they were ALL able to take a pumpkin and cover their picture and the person who filled  their 

sheet first was the winner.

Smile! We had a great week!

Book of the week: Spookley the Square Pumpkin by Joe Troiano

Songs:

5 Little Pumpkins

Five little pumpkins

Sitting on a gate

The first one said,

"Oh, my, it's half past eight!"

The second one said,

"There are witches in the air!"

The third one said,

"Good folk, beware!"

The fourth one said,

"We'll run and run and run!"

The fifth one said,

"Let's have some fun!"

OOOOOOOH, went the wind

And OUT went the light

And the five little pumpkins

Rolled out of sight.

and

Orange Song

(tune of wheels on the bus)

The pumpkins on the vine are orange, orange, orange,

Orange, orange, orange. Orange, orange, orange.

The oranges on the tree are orange, orange, orange.

O-R-A-N-G-E.

Happy Birthday this week to Braxton!

Our field trip to Gardner Village is coming up! Please watch for the details on where to meet and what time coming home Monday and Tuesday in your child's backpack!

Fall is in the air

We will be ready for our Thanksgiving feast with this Fall leaves placemat! We used real leaves of all sizes for these leaf rubbings and then laminated it with contact paper to catch our spills!

I spy with my little eye, all things meant for fall! One center we visited this week was an I spy picture filled with mini things of all seasons. The kids would choosse a card from the table and try to find that item in their picture.

MMM, the apples are so crisp, sweet, and yummy this time of year! Our apples didn't taste good, but they looked good! We had an apple math center where we placed as many apples on the tree as it said on the basket below the tree, and then picked them and put them in the basket.

And, we had an apple alphabet center where we matched uppercase letters to their lowercase counterpart.

We used our fine motor skills to string fall colored Apple Jacks cereal onto our string necklaces. (BTW, did you know that they even have red apples clones in the mix now?) Perfect to show fall colors such as green, red, and orange.

We worked a lot on patterns this week. We did AB patterns, AABB patterns, and the kids made up a few of their own as well. The pattern mats below gave us clues to help us finish the pattern, and then we used our fall patterned stampers to create our own patterns.

The stamps were fall colors and included fall items such as brooms, rakes, leaves, and trees.

We made some more leaf rubbings with tin foil and sponges. You have to press pretty hard to get the impression to show so we used our muscles!

We have learned letters A-I up to this point. We had each letter mat out and the kids practiced putting them in alphabetical order.

We also had our dry erase uppercase and lowercase letters out for the latest 3 letters, G,H, and I. 

And, we are getting ready for Halloween! We decorated our bulletin board to get in the spirit.

Book of the week: Mouse's First Fall by Lauren Thompson

Song of the week: Leaves poem 

and

Oh, I See Leaves

(tune of Pop goes the Weasel)

Now that it is cooler outside

The trees are full of color

When I go for a fall walk

Oh, I see green leaves.

(Repeat with other fall colors red, orange, yellow, brown)

Our teeth!

For our teeth unit this week, we did an "egg"citing experiment. We talked about how eggs are similar to teeth in that they have a hard shell like the enamel on our teeth, and they are white like teeth so can get stained like our teeth if we don't take care of them. For this experiment, we took 3 hardboiled eggs and soaked one each in water, vinegar, and soda. We then let them sit until our next preschool day. On that day, we came back to the eggs to see if they'd changed. The one that was soaked in water remained the same. The one that was soaking in soda was stained brown, and the one that was soaking in vinegar was no longer hard. The shell was still on it, but it was now soft and rubbery. We talked about how important it is to brush our teeth because if we don't the foods we eat will stain our teeth just like the soda stained the egg, and certain foods will eat the hard enamel off our teeth just like the vinegar did to the egg. Really cool experiment. The kids were amazed.

For both a math center and our letter G this week, we made goofy grins! We learned that most of us at this age have 20 teeth....10 on the top, and 10 on the bottom. So we counted out 10 marshmellows and glued them on the top half of our paperplate, and counted out 10 more and glued them to the bottom of our plate. We then let them dry and folded the plate to see our goofy grins!

Smile! Show those goofy grins!

We also talked about how we should visit the dentist at least 2 times a year. We talked about what a dentist does while we are at his office, and then we practiced doing those things at our dramatic play center filled with dental jackets, tools, toothbrushes, and stuffed animals.

We could also visit our playdough center to work on "mustache man" (named by your children). He needed a lot of work done on his teeth! They made him a new set of teeth, filled cavities and there were even tools that the kids could use to make braces for him.

These yellow teeth needed some good brushing to turn them white again. So, that's what we did. We took toothbrushes and toothpaste (white paint) and brushed them clean!

We talked about cavities and how if we get a cavity we have to go to the dentist to have it fixed. At this center, the kids could come color different food on their teeth and then brush it off with their toothbrushes.

We talked about how we have our baby teeth until we are around 6 or 7 and then we start loosing them and our permanent teeth grow in. At this center we practiced sequencing the teeth from smallest to largest, or largest to smallest.

We also had a center filled with real toothpaste, real floss and some big white teeth! (painted soda bottle bottoms). The kids really did great at making sure not to miss any spots while brushing!

We also talked about the letter H this week. For this center, we had to find the hidden H in the picture by coloring the lowercase h's one color, and the capital H's another color. 

Oh no, this crocodile has some loose teeth! The kids helped to push them back down in place, but watch out, if you touch his sore tooth he just might bite you!

Our reading center was full of books about dentists, teeth, and friends, like Arthur, who could tell us about a visit to the dentist.

We started our journals this week. We will continue to write in them once a week. They are instructed to  write their name once with the help of the dotted lines and once on their own. They then have to practice writing whatever letter we are learning about that day, and draw a picture of something that starts with that letter. They will be pros at writing their name in no time!

Books of the week: 

Arthur's Tooth by Marc Brown

and

Just Going to the Dentist by Mercer Mayer