Trip to the Fire Station

F is for fire. We practiced our cutting and pasting skills this week, and in preparation to visit the fire station, we made letter F's that looked like they were on fire. We cut different sizes of paper and pasted them onto our letter F to look like the flames.

We also talked about how to contact help if we have an emergency. It was so fun to listen to all of the children's dialogue. "911, what's your emergency?" "My cat is stuck in a tree!"

We even worked on putting out our own fires with these squirt guns. Those are "flames" they are squirting at, and each flame has different letters to spell out FIRE.

We helped our fire dogs find their spots. Each fire dogs' hat had a number on it, and the kids placed that many chocolate chips on his body for spots.

And we made our own fire safety dog too! He helps us remember the rules:

1. Don't hide and go outside!

2. Stay low and go!

3. Get out and stay out!

We even had our own fire drill where we practiced climbing out the window in case of a fire. Do you all have a meeting place at your home in case of fire?

Then, we were off to the fire station! The firefighters showed us their trucks and all of the tools and hoses inside them. They taught us some important tips like staying low to the ground in a fire, and never hiding. We should not be afraid of a fireman in his mask because he is there to help.

They even turned on the lights for us and let us climb through their trucks. It was a very fun, informative field trip. Thanks so much for letting us come and showing us around United Fire Authority, Station 107.

Book: Clifford the Firehouse Dog by Norman Bridwell

Song: Firefighter Song 

(tune: I'm a Little Teapot)

    I'm a little firefighter on the go. 

Here is my helmet 

Here is my hose. 

When I see a fire, 

Hear me shout: 

"Turn on the water 

 put the fire out!" 

Shhhhhhhh!

We also celebrated another birthday this week!

Happy Birthday Kyler!!

Community helpers

I love community helpers theme time! One thing that I love is watching the room transform from this

to this

The kids get so excited to "be" the different helpers. For a math center, we made our own baker hats and practiced our counting skills with these cute little cakes from Lakeshore Learning. They went from 1 to 10, and we put the corresponding amount of candles on each one. We also had some pizza! It was cut up into different fractions, and we talked about more, less, same; along with small fractions such as 1/2 and 1/4.

Another fun math center were these tools grid sheets. I printed these up from prekinders.com. We rolled the die, counted how many dots it landed on, and placed that number of bolts onto our grid. The first to fill up their sheet won!

For a literacy center we practiced sounding out 3-letter words. Each word had a picture to help, and then we found each letter in our letter drawers and spelled each word out with our foam letters.

For creative play, we dressed up as many different professionals, just as you saw above. One center was all about teachers. We had our pointing sticks, glasses, white boards, flashcards, and much more! The kids loved playing "boss" and giving each other assignments.

We practiced our coloring skills by making our own postal stamps. 

Book of the week: Saftey: People Who Keep Us Safe. This is from the Growing Up Safe series. Cute book about how community helpers keep us safe and what we should do if we are lost or scared.

Songs: We sang a few songs this week about different occupations.  One that we liked was this one to the tune of "The Farmer in the Dell"

The doctor makes us well.

The doctor makes us well.

Hey! Ho! What do you know?

The doctor makes us well.

Continue with other verses.

The farmer sows the field . . .

The chef cooks the food . . .

The mailman brings the mail . . .

The firefighter puts out fires . . .

Policemen keep us safe . . .

Our Solar System

To the solar system and beyond! We learned about the 8 planets, the sun and other stars, and the moon the week before last (Last week was assessments, thank you all for coming)! So, its obvious that we needed to start the week with a blast by making our baking soda and vinegar rockets! What a great way to practice counting backwards from 10.

We also made these rockets to take home.  Just a straw and a puff of air to get these rockets launched!

We used our 3-D glow in the dark planets, along with our planets poster to help us put the planets in order.  Which planet is your favorite?

This center was definitely our favorite for the week! Unfortunately, I couldn't get a good picture to show the full effect. But, for a writing center, we practiced writing our letters in the dark! I set this up in our toy closet. You can't tell that they are in the dark because of my flash (didn't work without the flash either, that made it too dark), but I painted this piece of canvas with glow-in-the-dark paint and then we used LED light pens to write our letters and they lit up! We also had glow-in-the-dark stars on the walls, and a black light in the room for the full effect.

\For a math center, we made these countdown rockets. We has stamps from 1-10 and the kids were instructed to color their rocket and countdown from 10 to 1 with the stamps.

We also practiced our letter recognition by doing what is called "reading the room". I wrote every letter of the alphabet on a star and placed them around the room. We used flashlights to find the letters and make them 'shine'.

We talked about what life on other planets might like and made our own aliens.

We named some of the constellations and made our own constellations with at our lite brite center.

We played another great strategy game called Day and Night by Smart Games.  The picture shows just a shadow picture of the pieces, and the kids had to try to build that picture by using their colored pieces. By it just showing the shadow, the lines of the pieces are not defined, this makes for a fun challenge.

We read the book Good Night Moon by Margaret Wise Brown and played the board game. 

And, we drew pictures on our Crayola Glow book and watched our stories come to life with the moving 3-D glow effect. So fun!

Books of the week:

Dr. Suess' There's No Place Like Space

and

Good Night Moon by Margaret Wise Brown

Thank you all for your support and help! The assessments went really well last week! You are all great!