"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!

Zoo Animals

We started out the week by going on a lion hunt!  (A knock off version of "Going on a Bear Hunt"). We went through the grass, chopped down a tree, tromped through the mud, found a lion, and raced back home to where we were safe!  We decided that we like the zoo a lot.  We can see wild animals, but we know that they are contained. 
After our lion hunt, we made our own lion that could be taken to own home....a paperplate lion.

We also enjoyed a center where we used rulers, markers, and measuring tape to see if we were as tall as gorillas and giraffes.

We measured ourselves from the floor, and even made ourselves a little taller by standing on a chair.

But, we still weren't as tall as those giraffes!

We also had a center with some flashcards.  On one side there were black and white pictures of the animal with only part of the animal showing.  The kids tried to guess what animal it was.  Then, on the other side it showed the whole animal and it was colored the color of that animal.

We are still enjoying putting together our 3 and 4-letter words.  We did this with puzzles this week.  Each puzzle was a picture of an animal that lives at the zoo.

There are so many animals that live at the zoo.  We used our playdough and cookie cutters to make cut-outs of some of them. 

We talked about how animals each have different colors and textures of skin and how they look different too.  Some animals are spotted, some are stiped, some are furry, some are rough.  We made this thumb print giraffe below to show that giraffes have spots.

We practiced our counting all the way up to 20 this week with our Zoo Animal Number Book.  We had different stamps of zoo animals and the children stamped the animals on their pages according to the number that was at the top of the page.  If your children didn't finish this activity, they can finish by drawing their own animals, or using stickers.

Not only did we talk about the what different animals look like, we also talked about where they live.  The children learned that a habitat is a special environment that animals live in, and then we had a center with three different habitats in it.....grass, hay, and water.  The children had small zoo animal figures that they were able to place in the apporpriate habitat.  We also talked about zoo keepers and how they make each animal comfortable by providing them with the apporpriate food and habitat.

We have really been focusing on beginning sounds the last week or two.  For a reading center, I had these sheets with the uppercase alphabet on them and the children took animal crackers and after deciding what animal it was and what letter and sound it starts with, they placed the animal on its beginning letter.

For a dramatic play center this week, we just had some good old classic animal games.  The two games they could choose from were Hungry Hungry Hippos, and Monkeying Around. 

The object of Monkeying Around is to see how many monkeys can climb on the tree without the tree falling into the alligator pond.  The children enjoyed singing our 5 Little Monkeys song as they played.

Our stars of the week were Aydon and Kynlee this week.  We are learning so much about each of child and they really are so smart and talented!!

Aydon!

Kynlee!!

We had a special show-and-tell this week from Tyler.  He brought his puppy!  And a friendly puppy he was!

We had picture day this week!  I am really excited to see how they turn out, I think they will be great!

It is Spirit Week March 28th-31st so don't forget to wear your crazy hair on the 28th and 29th, and your pajamas on the 30th and 31st!