On the farm

Have you ever seen such cute farm animals? I think not! I adapted this from a cute art project found here.

We talked about farm life this week including how hard farmers work, what animals we might find on a farm, and what kind of work has to be done to keep up with the animals and crops.

We practiced milking the cows with our water-filled Latex gloves. It was "udder"ly awesome!

We sorted our farm animals by color, size, feathers or fur, and whether they could fly or walk.

We practiced our counting skills with our piggy bank numbers. We also had nickels and dimes for the piggies with the high numbers on them.

We talked about how pigs love to play in the mud and how it helps them to stay cool. I didn't get any pictures, but for an art project we made a pig in the mud. I'm thinking the kids like playing in the mud just as much as the pigs!

We talked about how chickens lay eggs and practiced our upper to lowercase alphabet recognition with these plastic eggs.

We also worked on alphabetic order with these letter strips that had missing letters for the kids to fill in. This is a good one to work on at home as well because you probably have everything you would need to do it, and it will help them start to recognize those few letters that they just can't seem to remember by singing the alphabet and recognizing the letters as they sing.  

This puzzle helped us to envision a farm.

We made our own homemade peanut butter with just a blender, peanuts, and a bit of honey. 

YUM!

Book of the week: The Big Red Barn by Margaret Wise Brown

Song of the week: Old McDonald had a farm

and 

ABC's backwards!

Words of the week: Pig and mud

Star of the week:

Our star this week was our Big Brother and Friendly fisherman, the courageous Kyler!

Spring has sprung!

We have so much fun seeing our friends at school! I couldn't resist putting up this picture that captures these cute girls so nicely!

We talked about Easter and Spring this week (which actually happened the week before Easter). Below, Haylee is doing a puzzle shaped like an egg. It was a lot trickier than it looked! They had a lot of patience doing these puzzles.

Ta-da!

In the sensory table we had bird seed with different sized eggs to fill. They had fun seeing which egg had more seed, even if it wasn't the biggest egg. There were also some wooden carrots hidden in here, just ready to sprout. They were so happy when they scooped up a big scoop and found a carrot inside!

We played a counting and color game called Topsy turtle. The object is to see how many stepping stones they can place under the turtle without making him tip over. He lifts his legs up ever so slowly like a turtle would and then he tells the kids the color that they need to use. When he finally tips, the kids count how many steps they were able to stack. 

Our writing center this week was sight words practice. We had words such as the, me, I, you, and they that the kids traced and read.

We also had a writing center that the kids could come and spell out there names in jellybeans.

For an art project, we used the microwave and made our own puff paint. We traced and designed our own Easter eggs, and then put them in the microwave for 30 seconds to a minute. As you can see, the kids were very excited when it came time to microwave!

We had to have some Easter fun this week as well. We used our throwing skills to score prizes out of our carrot shaped dartboard balloons. The first thing that the kids said when they walked into the room this day was "Whoa, that is a big carrot!" I'm just glad that they could tell what it was :)

Book of the week: If You're Happy and You Know It by Jane Cabrera.

Song of the week: Do Your Ears Hang Low?

Word of the week: Hop

Star of the week:

Our star of the week this week was the performing Princess, and super swimmer, Miss Taryn!

Phone numbers and safety

There are certain people that help to keep us safe.

Other things such as signs, rules, and helmets also help keep us safe. We talked about some of these things this week, along with learning our own phone numbers. We made a phone number bracelet to help us to remember it, and we also learned this song:

(tune of Old McDonald)

___ ___ ___ and ___ ___ ___-___ ___ ___ and ___.

Go ahead and give me a call.

I won't mind at all.

With a ring, ring here; and a ring, ring there.

Here a ring, there a ring, everywhere a ring, ring.

___ ___ ___ and ___ ___ ___-___ ___ ___ and ___.

 Practice this at home with your kiddos a few times, and they will know their number in a jif.

We also practiced our phone numbers using this center filled with magnetic numbers and cookie sheets.

We had phones at this center that we could practice typing our phone numbers with the numbers on the phone, and we also had these red phones that when we talked into, we could hear our self talk back. 

These puzzle vehicles were fun too. We talked about how if we are ever lost we can always look for a police officer or person in uniform. These emergency vehicles drive fast to help people in trouble. We made two firetrucks, two police cars, and two ambulances.

We also talked about our feelings this week. Everybody has them, and we should always treat others how we would like to be treated. In this center we talked about how we felt this day, along with how we like to feel, how we don't like to feel, and how we like to make others feel.

We used some different flash cards that had a bunch of different feelings on them (like the usual happy, sad, and mad. But also others like being left out, annoyed, and mean), and acted out these situations out with our people puppets.

For a writing center, we also had this feelings chart. We decided how we were feeling that day, and wrote our name on one of the cardboard people, and put our person in that feeling slot. Some of us even did two because we were feeling more than one emotion that day.

Check out Paige and her feelings faces:

Excited!

 So Sad!

and mad! We all have those days, right!

But, when we are having those mad or sad days, we can get out our happy face puzzles we made, and put together our happy face!

We talked about how if we all stick together, it will help us to be safe, along with help us all to be happy. We used our sticky blocks to make people that stuck together.

We also practiced some problem solving skills this week by figuring out what shape fits into our tanagram pictures, and we did some skills building with our flashcards and hot dot dogs.

Books of the week: The Berenstein Bears: Safe and Sound by Jan and Mike Berenstein

and

When Sophie gets angry, really, really angry by Molly Bang. 

Words of the week: This week we spelled both Mad and Sad.

Stars:

We had the pleasure of learning about this pretty princess/fashionable fisherwoman, and most lovable Lexi!

and our dancing diva, modeling missy, cuddly camper, and always happy Haylee!