Friday, October 26, 2012

Fall crisp!

The air is crisp, and so are the apples! We talked about fall this week, and all the things associated with it. Among those things, were apples! Did you know that if you cut an apple horizontal rather than vertical, it forms a cute little star inside? This is a great way to show the kids where the seeds are.

Along with apples, we talked about the historical figure, and subject of a great tall tale, Johnny Appleseed. For center time, we had these orchards and apple stickers and made our own version of his tale. Perfect week to talk about Johnny, led us right into our letter J.

For a writing center, we traced our letter J's with our glue "paint" and then covered them with Apple Jacks.

We made these cute fox leaf pictures, which I found here.

Check out Ellie making leaf rubbings out of leaves big and small!

For a fall sensory activity, the sand table was filled with all things fall, including colorful leaves, pumpkins, and acorns. The kids practiced their fine motor skills by trying to pick up the items with their tweezers.

We talked about less, more, or the same this week. We used our balance scale and fall items of different weights to help the kids see that even though some items are the same, such as the mini pumpkins, they don't always weigh the same. And, they also added up how many small items it took to equal out to the weight of a small pumpkin.

For a math center, we worked on our apple math. We had trees labeled from 1 to 10, and we added that number of apples to the tree. We also put the trees in order from 1 to 10 as well.

Another math center was apple seed counting. The apples were labeled from 1 to 12, and the kids put the corresponding amount of seeds (pumpkin seeds) into the apple. 

We talked about the different things that we do and see in the Fall, and matched up items for each of the 4 seasons with their mats.

We talked about harvest time. and what types of things that we harvest in the fall. One thing that we discussed was peanuts, and we also made edible peanut butter playdough. YUM!

And, for dramtic play, check our our pumpkin silly faces! 

Book of the week: Apple Trouble by Ragnhild Scamell 
Song of the week:
Colored Leaves
So many leaves are falling on the ground.
Orange ones, yellow ones, and even brown.
But the one little leaf that rhymes with bean
Is my favorite color, it’s the color green.

So many leaves are falling on the ground.
Orange ones, yellow ones, and even brown.
But the one little leaf that rhymes with fellow
Is my favorite color, it’s the color yellow.

So many leaves are falling on the ground.
Orange ones, yellow ones, and even brown.
But the one little leaf that rhymes with bed
Is my favorite color, it’s the color red.


And, a very special Happy Birthday to some awesome friends this week!
Happy Birthday Braxton!

and
Happy Birthday Laree!

Sunday, October 21, 2012

Fire Prevention

Sorry I'm a little behind on the blog, but a couple of weeks ago was fire prevention week! We talked about what we would do if there was a fire, escape routes, what firefighters do, and how we can call for help. We dressed like firefighters and police officers, and practiced calling 911.

We talked about firetrucks, and all of the special tools and gadgets that are on them. For a math center, we had 10 firetrucks with the numbers 1-10 on them, and whatever number was on the truck, we added that many firefighters onto that truck.

We talked about all the emergency vehicles and how we need to be aware of them when driving. Here we built firetrucks, police cars, and ambulances with our block puzzle cars.

We talked about the letter H this week. It was very appropriate for the week! We talked about words such as Hot, Hat, and Hose.....all things that apply to firefighters and fire prevention! We used our playdough "hoses" to form our letter H.

We had magnetic people that we could dress up as our officers.

AND, we even had a visit with a REAL firefighter, Tom! He showed us his gear and talked about fire safety tips with us. A little rhyme to taught to help the kids remember how to act in case of a fire is:
1. Stay low and go!
2. Don't hide, go outside!
3. Get out and stay out!
Check out all of your future firefighters!