Our 5 Senses

We had fun this week discovering each of our 5 senses. We realized how much that we use them all together, and found it difficult to just use one without the others.

Taste
 we talked about the different taste buds on our tongue and tried food for each one. For salty we had salted pretzels, for bitter we ate olives, for sweet we ate butterscotch candies, and for sour we ate sour patch kids. Check out Addison's sour face!

Touch

 we had a discovery center where we discovered different textures. We had some rubber duckies for a squishy, some water beads for a smooth texture, some rock for hard, some pom poms for soft, and some bubble wrap for bumpy.

We also had this mystery box for another touch discovery activity. There were about 30 items in the box and matching cards to the items on the table. The kids would pick a card and then attempt to find that item in the box using only their hands (no peeking).

Sight

Lite Bright! Whats better than bright lights and lots of colors for our eyes to feast upon?!

Another sight activity that I did was part of our reading center. I had 5 different pairs of glasses at the table along with some books. Each pair of glasses gave the kids a different view of how other animals see the world. This pair below imitates how an insect with compound eyes might see. I made these by cutting up straws and gluing them together.

This pair is similar to how a mole would see. Moles are almost completely blind.

This pair is similar to how an owl would see. We discussed how owls don't have very good peripheral vision, but can turn their heads almost all the way around. 

This pair was just to see what it would look like if we only saw the world in one color. We also had a plain pair of glasses that they could look through. We also had books at this center that they could look at through their glasses. The books were about moles, owls, and insects just like we were mimicking.

Match Up game. The kids made patterns with these domino like cards. They had to match up by either pattern or color.

Sound

We discovered how sound waves create noise. We placed a few pieces of rice on top of these elbow PVC pipes that were covered with a rubber glove. Then, we made a noise into the pipe to see if we could get the rice to jump. They loved it. I got this idea from littlegiraffes.com

They talked through the old fashioned phone on a string.

Smell

We had a table of aromas for the children to use their noses for smell. Paige and Kody are rubbing a cinnamon stick on a piece of sandpaper below to smell some cinnamon.

I set out some of my scentsy candle samplers for them to smell the aromas of Fall and Christmas. There was a pumpkin one, a peppermint one, a sugar cookie one, pomegranate, and a few more.

We also had a couple of activities that encompassed all 5 of our senses. This potato head below is one that I adapted from another picture I found on littlegiraffes.com as well. Our potato head can see with his googly eyes, smell with his cherry scented scratch and sniff nose, taste with his cinnamon gum tongue, hear with his bell ears, and touch with his sand paper textured hands. Didn't they turn out cute!?

This center had a wheel for each of the 5 senses and then items that went in each wedge. The kids could either separate them by using the pictures like below, or they could turn the card over and do it without any help.

We filled the sand table with cheerios. They had a lot of fun at this discovery center. The also used all 5 senses at this center. They can see the cheerios. They can taste the cheerios. They can smell the cheerios. They can hear the cheerios by moving them around and shaking them in their containers. And, they touched he cheerios by diving right in!

We learned about the Letter O and number 8 this week. I thought the worksheet below did a perfect job in displaying both with the octopus' 8 legs, and octopus starting with the letter O, along with its tentacles being shaped like O's.

Song of the week:

The Five Senses Song

Tune: This Old Man

With my eyes, I can see

Robins nesting in a tree.

Chorus:

I see and hear, and smell, and taste, and touch.

With my senses I learn so much! 

  

With my ears, I can hear

Distant noises and sounds quite near.

Chorus:

I see and hear, and smell, and taste, and touch.

With my senses I learn so much!

With my nose, I can smell

Fragrant flowers in the dell.

Chorus:

I see and hear, and smell, and taste, and touch.

With my senses I learn so much!

  

With my mouth, I can taste

Donuts which are chocolate glazed.

Chorus:

I see and hear, and smell, and taste, and touch.

With my senses I learn so much!

  

With my hands, I can feel

Bananas with a slippery peel.

Chorus:

I see and hear, and smell, and taste, and touch.

With my senses I learn so much!

Halloween!

Check out all of my festive friends!! We had a great time celebrating Halloween. Here are some of the things we did this week. We made glow stick spiders using Styrofoam balls and glow sticks.

We decorated cupcakes to look like either a witch or a spider. They turned out really cute! Gotta love crafts that you can eat!

For our Halloween party, we played some fun Halloween games. We played pumpkin bowling. The pins were ghosts and we knocked them down by rolling small pumpkins. Talk about ghostbusters! :)

We played hit the cans.  Some of your kids sure do have a throwing arm! I wouldn't mess with them!

And, we played this cute ghost target board game. 

But, the moment they all could not wait for was, of course, passing out their treats. 

It was so fun to see everyone in their costumes. It is fun to hear them talk and take on the role of their character.

In light of the letter M, we also talked about Monsters this week. Thought it fit in perfectly with the holiday. We learned about the number 7 this week, so we each put 7 eyes on our monster wreaths.

We dissected pumpkins for a science center. We talked about what parts of a pumpkin we can eat (the whole thing basically) and what types of food are made with pumpkins. We also explored their insides and used tweezers to see if we could grab their seeds.

 I saw something similar to this in one of my kids classrooms, so adapted to use it in our school. We use our dot markers and a die with uppercase and lowercase M's on it to see which M would finish first. The kids rolled the die, looked at which M they got, and placed a dot on that graph on their paper. Great for discerning between the two M's since they look similar.

We played monster match up with some memory cards. 

And, who says monsters aren't lovable? Cookie Monster must be loved because he was sure given lots of treats from his friends. They made cookies, soup, and other snacks in the shapes of letters and vegetables and pasta to feed him. It was quite comical to watch because as they fed him, it would then travel down his insides and come out his back end. The kids thoroughly enjoyed watching him "poop". Whatever works to get them making those letters, right?

Our reading center was full of great monster books such as My Monster Mama Loves Me So, Go Away Big Green Monster, I Need My Monster, and many more!

Even Sully from Monsters Inc. came for a visit. You can see him sitting by Paige in the picture below.

Song of the week:

No More Monsters Under Your Bed!

Same tune as "no more monkeys". We used the same amount of monsters as each class member and they sat down one by one as we sang.

Ten little monsters sleeping in my bed

1 crawled out from under my spread

I called to Mama and Mama said

"no more monsters sleeping in your bed"

continue until there are no little monsters and say

no little monsters sleeping in my bed

none crawling out from under my spread

I called to Mama and Mama said

"there are no more monsters, go to bed!

We are continuing to write in our journals each week. The kids are getting great at holding their pencils correctly. Continue to work at home on forming those letters! They are doing great.

Watch for their part to come home for the Christmas program. It should come home on November 15th and 16th.

Phonics and Field Trips!

We are now almost half way through our alphabet! Your children are hopefully starting to recognize both the sight and the sound of the first 12 letters. We are going to keep reinforcing this recognition through our hands on centers. The one below we are matching uppercase to uppercase letters. This can be done at many different levels. Everyone can work at their own pace. The kids that already know their letters well decided to not only match the letters, but to do them it in alphabetical order.

We talked about the letter L this week. We used our big straight lines, and our little straight lines to make our L's.

We used our imaginations to create our own fall pictures by cutting, tearing, and gluing strips of paper. 

We found hidden alphabet letters in our sand table. Then, we used our alphabet mat to sort them. The kids were enjoying finding the letters in their own name.

We talked about size comparisons this week. These miniature items were sorted by small, medium, and large.

AND

We had our field trip to Garnder Village! We successfully found the 16 witches and the weather was cold, but at least we made it before the snow!

The favorite witch? None other than Witchy Poo herself, of course!

Mark celebrated his 5th birthday this last week. Happy Birthday Mark!