Dinosaur discoveries

Your children don't only stomp and roar when they are throwing a tantrum (not that any of them EVER do), nope, they also stomp and roar when its Dinosaur week!

D is for dinosaur.

Aren't they D-cently cute!?

We had fun discovering what dinosaur we would build with these 1-10 number puzzles.

We talked about fossils and how much we learn about dinosaurs just from their remains. We dug up our own miniature ones in the sand table.

Check out these little paleontologists digging up some Tyrannosaurus Rex bones!

They worked really hard (and got a little dirty...sorry!) to get the bones out! But, they did and the dinosaur is now put together and on display in our room.

We also made our own fossil imprints to take home and tell you about all the neat things we learned about dinosaurs.

We talked about what color the dinosaurs skin may have been, and what different textures. At this center we made our own colorful dinosaurs, and added texture to them to with these rubbing and tracing stencils.

There are so many different kinds of dinosaurs! We briefly talked about some of them, and played a matching game that displayed many of them.

We also practiced our patterning, sorting, and counting skills at this center filled with over 100 miniature versions of the big guys!

Like I said, we stomped and roared like dinosaurs and we had these great puppets to play along with.

We talked about what their habitat was like and set up our own with our play mat, volcanoes, dinos, and more.

We worked on our cutting skills by chomping down with our scissors. After we followed the lines, we had our own pointy, sharp teeth cutouts.

And, we got some writing practice with these cute dinosaur shaped crayons.

Book of the week: When Dinosaurs came with everthing by Elise Broach

Very cute book!!

We also made our own vinegar and baking soda volcanoes. As always, the children went crazy watching it. We did it over, and over, and over again.

We spelled the words dig and big this week. They both have the same ending sound, and both were very applicable with our theme this week :)

 Our Star of the week this week was the very radical and well dressed (the kids all said how much they like his clothes and his hair when asked what they like about Braxton....love it!)

Braxton!!

 and, we had a birthday too...

Happy Birthday to our beautiful Lexi girl! We are so glad you celebrated turning 4 with us!

"Sea" what we've been up to!

We learned about our under the sea friends this week! And, what a better way to start than by reading about The Rainbow Fish?! We even made our own rainbow fish too.

We talked about some of the different textures of the sea. We had some bumpy starfish, grainy sand, hard  seashells, smooth pearls, and......

some squishy sea animals. For this sensory center, the kids chose a flashcard from the table, and tried to find the animal in our mystery box by feeling with only their hands. 

One of our math centers was pearl counting. We put the same number of pearls in the clam as it said on its top.

And, we fished for numbers as well. 

AND, we practiced counting too. We picked a number, and counted out that many fish to add to our sea.

For a fine motor activity, we used our skills to make our own necklaces. They were stylin with seashells, pearls, starfish, and beads!

We matched our uppercase to lowercase letters with these fishy friends.

and we practiced forming our straight lined letters with these colorful craft sticks.

And just for fun....

We also played this silly octopus game. The idea is to catch the crabs without tickling the octopus as he wildly flails his legs and spins round and round.

Book of the week: Rainbow Fish by Marcus Pfister

and

Song of the week: B-L-U-E spells blue

(tune of The Farmer and the dell)

B-L-U-E SPELLS BLUE

B-L-U-E SPELLS BLUE

HI-HO DID YOU KNOW

B-L-U-E SPELLS BLUE?

THE BIG SKY IS BLUE

THE OCEAN IS TOO

HI-HO DID YOU KNOW

B-L-U-E SPELLS BLUE?

Check out our stars this week! We learned about our Dancing Diva friend Morgan!!

and our awesome adventurer Mark!!

President's week

We talked about the Presidents of the United States this week in honor of Presidents Day. We thank them for letting us have a day off to sleep in......ok, and for many other things too! I learn so much from your kids as I teach them each week, but its funny how the simplest/silliest things just click sometimes. This week I just realized the name behind Lincoln Logs. I know, I shouldn't even admit it should I? But, I'd always just played with them and never thought much about their name. Until while planning my lessons I decided it would be fun for the kids to build log cabins just like Abe Lincoln used to live in......what a minute, Lincoln Logs!! ha ha, ingenious! We had a great time building with them!

We also read a book about Abraham Lincoln and talked about how he was an honest man. He worked very hard for his education and money. Check our our art project that we made. I think they are SO adorable, and wish that I could take the credit, but these came from littlegiraffes.com. 

On one side, we have "honest Abe" in his top hat.

And then we flipped it around and upside-down, and we have George Washington.

For a math center, we talked about the different coins and dollar bills, and who was on each one. The kids enjoyed seeing the details on our currency with these huge look-a-likes.

We also tried to grasp the concept of buying items with our money and cash registers. Each item had a price on it and each cash register had a coin on it, and they were instructed to put the amount shown on their item into the correct cash register.

For another money recognition center, we had some money and crayons for money rubbings, and we also had some money stamps that they could stamp and color the correct color. Also at this station were magnifying glasses for them to take a closer look. They were so excited to discover Lincoln in his chair on the back of the penny.

Our reading center was filled with books about the White House and pictures of our Presidents, including our current one, Mr. Barrack Obama.

The President dresses in a suit and tie quite often, so for a shape and color review, we used our fine motor skills to lace buttons onto button-up shirts.

We talked about George Washington and the legend of the cherry tree. We played Hi Ho Cherry-O and practiced our counting with cherry and apple trees.

We enjoyed learning more about our country this week including the Presidents, money, and the flag. 

Our star this week was our one and only Miss Pretty Princess Paige!