Taking SHAPE to have some more fun!

We continued our unit on shapes this week. We've had a lot of fun incorporating shapes into different art projects and center time activities. We also learned about the number 2 this week, so for an art project we took a number two construction paper cutout and added some shape arms, legs, ears, and other parts of the body that come in two's.

For a math center we had a Melissa and Doug puzzle set that has puzzles with shape insets where you insert shape buttons for numbers 1-10.

We learned about the letter F this week. We made our own flags in the shape of an F, and decorated them with stickers. 

We also practiced our patterning skills with unifix cubes this week. This particular set has shapes inset on each cube, so I had some pattern strips with the different shapes on each cube, and the kids practiced finding the shape and stacking their cubes together in the same order. These cubes are kind of hard to snap together and unsnap, so it was not only good for shape recognition and patterning, but also a great fine motor skill.

We worked a lot on fine motor skills this week. (We are getting those fingers strong to start writing in our journals each week from here on out) This center had fine motor bands that they could hook together by either buttoning, snapping, or fastening with velco. They not only worked on finger dexterity by connecting them, but they also practiced building shapes! They built triangles, squares, and rectangles by connecting each band to another.

These blocks were a hit in the dramatic play area. They are different shaped blocks that each have velcro on each side of the block so that they are sticky! They had a ton of fun building people, buildings, and other items with these sticky shapes!

We've learned 3 more letters! So, we had our dry erase upper case and lower case D, E, and F out for the kids to practice their writing skills. 

We also practiced our cutting skills again this week. We learned a song to sing as we cut (find the lyrics at the bottom of this blog entry). Something that is super fun to cut is playdough! It is easy to cut through, and when the pieces are too small, you just smash them back together and start over again!

One of the favorite centers this week was our giant memory game! We mixed up 6 different matching shapes and took turns finding the matches. 

And, we used our geoboards to make rubber band shapes.

We are excited to tell you that our caterpillars have formed their cocoons! Now we will patiently (at least we'll try to be patient!) wait for the beautiful butterflies to emerge! It just might be a long winter.....

Book of the week: 

Goldie Locks and the Three Squares by Grace Maccarone

Song of the week:

Our Scissors Song

(To the tune of London Bridges)

I hold my thumb up when I cut, when I cut, when I cut.

I hold my thumb up when I cut

And squeeze the blades together!

Shape up!

We started our unit on shapes this week. One of the art projects we did were our shape sculptures that were both 2-D and 3-D. We talked about how shapes are all around us, even in buildings and homes. We talked about how sculptures are art that are made with different materials, and then we made our own sculptures out of shapes.

Another art project we did were these shape clowns. We first colored our shape clowns, and then we practiced our cutting skills and cut them out. The kids did a great job cutting on the lines. 

We also practiced our shape recognition with these shape pegboards. These pegboards are from Lakeshore learning and come with a triangle, a square, and a circle and then have the same shape of pegs to fit into the foam boards.

We used bendable wax sticks (bendaroos) to practice outlining our shapes. The wax sticks will bend into any shape and stay that way, making them perfect to use for tracing. And with the sticky wax texture, they stayed put on our papers nicely too!
                                      

We also had a reading center the kids could visit. I will continue to have this center quite regularly. I have added a couple of bean bags to the center and books that apply to the weekly theme. So, this week all of the books were centered around shapes. The bean bags are in the shape of a spider and a lady bug, so we found the saying, "Don't bug me, I'm reading" very appropriate. :)

We talked about the letters D and E this week. For the letter D, we use our dot markers to make dotted D's.

And for the letter E, we used one long popsicle stick, and three short popsicle sticks to make our big E.

We sorted shape buttons by filling up our shape jars.

And, you might think that this last center is a little "fishy", but the children were "hooked"! We used our water table and our magnetic shapes and fishing poles to see what shapes we could catch.

And then we put our shape on the corresponding shape flashcard.

As you can see, we had a ton of fun with shapes this last week! And, we are going to continue to learn and play with shapes this week as well!

Book: Mouse Shapes. This is another great book by Ellen Stoll Walsh. 

We celebrated two birthdays this week. A Happy Birthday (cha cha cha) to

Miss Haylee

and Miss Addison!

Color Mix-a-roo!

We continued to talk about colors at school this week. And, we had a lot of fun doing some more color mixing.

I made some red, yellow, and blue playdough and let the kids mix to their delight. Here James is mixing red and yellow to see what color it will make.

We also did some finger painting with the primary colors. They loved the cold, smooth feel of the paint on their hands.

We also did an experiment with skittles that I found off of prekinders.com where the colors separate from the candy, and the S on the skittles floats to the top. I told the kids we were going to perform a magic trick and make the S float to the top of the water while the skittle stayed at the bottom. They were amazed and could not wait to tell you parents that they could do a magic trick. So, if they want to try it at home, just take 3 skittles, put them around the edge of a bowl filled with a little water, and watch the magic happen.

We learned about the letter C this week. C is for cookie! We decorated our own cookie and used candy topping to trace our cookie C before we ate them.

For a math center, we had a ball! Or two, or three, or whatever number our dice landed on! For this center, we rolled a die and counted the number that it landed on. Then we took that many of our colorful balls and threw them into the basket.

We also practiced our coloring skills.

And our fine motor skills with these color coordinated puzzles.

For a word recognition center we had a bean bag toss where we tossed the correct color of bean bag onto the corresponding color word.

For a dramatic play area, we played with our colorful crystal builders. 

We reviewed letters A, B, and C this week. We practiced writing them with our dry erase upper and lowercase letters.

Books this week: Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See by Bill Martin Jr.

and

The Crayon Box that Talked by Shane DeRolf

Songs this week: 

Rainbow Song 

(to the tune of “Twinkle Twinkle Little Star”)

Red, orange, yellow, green, and blue.

Indigo and violet too.

Rainbow, rainbow in the sky.

Rainbow, rainbow way up high.

Red, orange, yellow, green, and blue.

Indigo and violet too.

and

our song about manners because we talked about always remembering to say Please and Thank You this week.

Please and Thank You

(to the tune of Frere Jacques)

Please and Thank you

Please and Thank You

We must say, We must say

When we ask for something

When we ask for something 

Everyday, Everyday

And, a BIG THANK YOU to Brett and his mom for bringing us a new class pet! We now have two soft, fuzzy caterpillars in our school that we get to watch transform into beautiful butterflies. We are so excited!!