The Circus and Sweets Candy!

The circus is in town!  And, made a special visit to our school.

Our week was full of clowns, juggling, balloons, popcorn, elephants and more!

We still did a lot of learning this week too!  Check it out:

For our literacy center, we had elephants on the tightrope! Each elephant had a letter of the alphabet on his belly and the children were challenged to balance the whole alphabet on the tightrope in alphabetical order.

For a math center, the children were able to visit the legendary McDonald's restaurant for some nuggets and fries.

Each nugget and fry container was numbered from 1-10 and the kids were instucted to put that many nuggets or fries into the container. They enjoyed doing this and serving to their friends.

For a sorting center, we sorted clowns by their size and color.

The children could sort them f rom big to small in the same color, just by color, or just by size.

And, for some dramatic play, we had popcorn, balloon animals, and juggling!

I borrowed the popcorn machine from a friend, and boy did the children love it!  They got so excited when the popcorn started popping.  They were giddy!

They did a great job at making balloon art.  We had animals, swords, flowers, and more.

We all attempted to juggle. Not many of us could do it (those clowns are amazing) but we never gave up!

For our song this week we sang Popcorn Popping on the Apricot Tree.

Our star of the week this week was:

Maxx! He loves the outdoors and has some great pets, including a turtle!

We also had the opportunity to visit the Sweet's Candy Factory this week!

Thank you to all you parents for your support and help with these field-trips. I literally could not do it without you. We had a great time on our 40 minute tour through the factory where we learned interesting facts! Did you know it takes 7 days to make a jelly bean? And, they made over 6 million pounds of taffy just for Wal-mart for the Easter holiday! Of course, you get to taste test along the way.....YUM!  Thanks

Sweet's Candy for a great visit!

"Chicka Chicka Boom Boom"

The above books by Bill Martin Jr. and John Archambault were the complete inspiration for this weeks theme.  I'm sure most of you have read the alphabet version of "Chicka Chicka Boom Boom" before, but in case you haven't it is about the alphabet climbing up a coconut tree one letter at a time until the tree gets overloaded and 'BOOM BOOM' goes the letters.  But, they don't give up even with their injuries and try again.  So, our week was all about letters and numbers!

For an art project we did an I spy alphabet bottle.  This activity was inspired by one of my preschool moms and some of the supplies were supplied by her as well, so thanks Jill!  There should be one letter of the whole alphabet in the children's bottles, so hopefully the kids successfully transfered them from their bags into the bottles.  They had a lot of fun finding the letters after they were made.

For a writing center we did sentence strip names.  For this I simply wrote each child's name on a sentence strip and the children traced their name with glue.  When the glue dried, they had a crayon rubbing of their name.  (some of these names didn't dry in time to take home so your child may not have them yet.)

For a math center, I had a center I called 'straight-up' counting.  Trying to stick with the whole coconut tree theme, I decided to have them count with a manipulative they could build up.

We had a tree trunk that needed some bark.  The kids took their 'bark' (toilet paper rolls) and dressed the tree.  They either could count by 1 up to 10, from 10 down to 1, or by 2's.  They did a great job!

We also used alphabet stamps this week.  I had copies of coconut trees that the children could stamp alphabet letters climbing up the trees just like in the book.

I also have the coconut tree below (purchased from Lakeshore) that has velcro lowercase letters of the alphabet that can be attached to it like in the book.  I saw an idea on a blog (I apologize for not referencing who's, I can't remember!, but I give her full credit for this idea) where she hid the letters in plastic easter eggs and pretended they were coconuts.  She hid them around the room and the children found them and discovered what letter was in their coconut and placed it on the tree.  We did something very similar.  They children really enjoyed hiding the eggs and finding all 26 letters.

We practiced pairing our lowercase letters to their uppercase counterparts this week with these coconut tree cut-outs I made from kinderhive.net. 

I stuck tiny magnets on the back so they would stick to the dry erase board.  They are getting so great at letter recognition and sounds! 

And, more letters!  For this writing center, we had the uppercase letters of the alphabet and the kids used dry erase markers to trace the letters.  These letters are great too because they have arrows telling the kids which way to draw the lines, and a green dot where they should start and a red dot telling them where they should end.  Great for correct letter form.

The kids could "drop" by this center for water-dropper letters.  I wrote each letter of the alphabet on wax paper with dots for the children to fill in with water drops. 

The children loved this.  I had blue and yellow water, so they had fun mixing the two to make green.  They also discovered that the drops could move!  Once they placed the water drop, they could grab it with their dropper and drag it to another spot.

For a math center, we had our monkey math links.  We know monkeys love trees!

The monkeys each have a number on their belly and the children attach that many math links to the monkeys hand.

And, for a science and exploratory center, we had real coconuts.  I had one that was already cracked open, and one that they could use tools to try to crack open.  I didn't think they would be able to crack it because of how hard they are to open, but they were determined and sure enough by the end of class the second coconut was open! They were also able to try the coconut if they wanted.

We sang the song "I said a Boom Chicka Boom" this week.

I said a boom chicka boom

I said a boom chicka boom

I said a boom chicka rocka chicka rocka chicka boom.

We then repeated the verse using different voices like our granny voice, our robot voice, our rockstar voice, and even animal noises!

Our stars this week were:

Zackerie!!

and:

Zackery!  

Thank you to our Zack's for sharing their talents and hobbies with us!  Both very unique....including the spelling of their names!

Spirit week!

Give me an 'S', give me a 'P', give me an 'I-R-I-T", we've got spirit, yes we do.....we've got spirit, how 'bout you?  And to show our school spirit, we celebrated with CRAZY HAIR DAY

AND PAJAMA DAY!

This week's art project was toothpick and marshmellow sculptures.  The children were asked to be creative and build something out of just toothpicks and marshmellows.  They came up with some great creations....and ate them up just as quickly :)

We also talked about magnets this week.  We learned how they each have a positive and a negative attraction, or a north and a south.  We talked about how the North Pole has the North Magnetic Pole which is why our compass always points North.  The children were really intrigued by the magnets and how they worked.  They were very exploratory.

Here is a table full of magnets (from a kit from Lakeshore Learning) where the kids had different experiment cards that they were supposed to try to duplicate.

We also talked about how metal is attracted to magnets.  Notice how many magnets NJ has attached to the chair.

And Mark discovered that magnets can even attract through things.  He was moving this ball around with a magnet on the back of the chair.

For a math center we played with Geoboards.

Geoboards are pegboards used to make shapes and other objects with elastic bands.  They children were even creative in making letters with their bands.

We did another math center I call calendar counting.  This center is simple, take the numbers off of the calendar and have the children correctly put them back up.

And, for our writing center we had sand writing.

We has two cake sheets filled with sand and the children could explore writing their name and other letters as shown above.

On pajama day, we had a read-a-thon.  We each picked a book of our choice and read, read, read.

I read some books aloud, and the children could either join me or find their own corner to snuggle up and read  (look at) a book. We also watched a Mickey Mouse movie.  The children did enjoy the movie, but they enjoy centers so much that they were disappointed when I told them that the movie replaced centers this day.  They wanted to learn! :)

I am pulling a child aside each day to work on correct pencil posture and encouraging name writing.  Hopefully you are seeing improvements in your children!

We started learning a song about the months of the year so if you want to go over the months with your child, please do!

Our stars of the week this week were:  (drumroll please)

Brynlyn!

                 And Kylie!  They both did a great job telling us about themselves all on their own!