J is for jack-o-lanterns

J is for jack-o-lantern! And, we had a jolly ol' jovial time creating some! These jack-o-lanterns were definitely each unique!

We read the  book "Spookley the Square Pumpkin" this week. It is about a pumpkin who doesn't like being different from the rest and is a little sad. But, then he saves the day, and is a hero. He realizes that it is ok to be unique. For our art center, we made some happy face, and sad face 

jack-o-lanterns.

We also made some jack-o-lanterns with our shapes! We chose a shape-patterned face, and copied it to make our own.

Our math center was some 1 to 10 counting practice. We rolled the die, and filled up our pumpkin trays until they were full. Then, we counted the entire tray. We also used our tweezers to pick up our noodles for some great dexterity practice.

Another math center was our pumpkin seed math. Each pumpkin had a number next to it, and we filled that pumpkin with the corresponding amount of pumpkin seeds.

We used our balance scale to measure, count, and balance! 

Some number recognition practice with our peg board numbers and pegs.

These alphabet strips are missing some letters! But, no fear.....your kids are here to save the alphabet. They did a great job adding each missing letter in the correct alphabetical order. We would look at our alphabet wall, and sing our alphabet song for any that we weren't sure about. 

Spelling 3-letter words is fun! Just ask Boston!

And, we talked about what is inside a pumpkin? And, what better way to discover than to dissect and see for ourselves. We had fun feeling, scraping, and tasting (cooked seeds separate from our pumpkin guts) our pumpkins!

And, we played pumpkin zingo! Zingo is like bingo, and when we found a match, we covered it with our pumpkin treat.

Up next week.....letters K and L and some rip-roaring, stomptastic dinosaur fun!!

Farm animal fun!

This week was full of farm facts and fun! We learned that cows can drink a bathtub full of water everyday, that a chicken is related to Tyrannosaurus Rex, and that you can learn a horses age by counting its teeth! And, we made some of THE cutest farm animal crafts this week, if I do say so myself! Check out our letter h horses below! I found this craft idea here.

These baby chicks were so much fun too. The kids loved getting those toes tickled as we painted their foot. Add a wing, an eye, a beak, and some feet and voila, our little chickadees!

Our sensory table was filled with bird seed this week. It has a great texture and is so fun to play with. Hidden in the birdseed were many different farm animals. The kids found the animals and moved them down to the farm where they belonged.

We practiced counting with our little piggies this week.......our toes and these pigs below. Each piggy bank had a number on its belly and the kids counted out that many pennies to put in their bank.

We strengthened our hand muscles with our holey letter H this week! We used the hole punches to punch holes in our letter H, and made the letter H "hu" sound as we did!

We sorted these farm animals by color, size, mouth or beak, walk or fly. 

We did some spelling this week! And, of course, every word that we spelled out was something that could be found on a farm!

We even had an "udderly" good time practicing our milking skills. This center had some latex gloves with with water. The three middle fingers on each glove had a small hole poked into it and the kids squeezed the milk water out until their cow was done milking!

We know that being a farmer isn't all it's "cracked up" to be....it is a lot of hard work! This center had some eggs that Farmer Ben had broken and cracked! He needed help from the kids to get them back together and in their carton. The kids matched the eggs up by matching their lowercase to uppercase letters. 

We had fun counting and matching with our Uno Moo game!

Felt farm scenes!

We even did some math horse raising! We started our houses at the starting line, rolled the die, and our horse moved that many lines forward until they made it to the end of the race!

Kendrick and Rocky are playing a mama and baby match-up game below. We learned that a baby turtle is called a hatchling, a dog is a puppy, and more!

We are starting our journals this week! I will be pulling each child aside during centers to work on letter formation and name practice!