Presidents Day

We are starting to learn about money, and a distinction between the different coins and number valures. And, in honor of President's Day, we also talked about some of the most famous President's represented on our coins, George Washington and Abraham Lincoln. We made these cute finger puppets with the penny and the quarter.

Right now I just want to familiarize the kids with the different looks of each coin, and how many common coins there are (4). We practiced sorting pennies, nickels, dimes, and quarters at this center.

We also made some patterns with these coin pattern mats from Lakeshore. This too is a great exercise for the kids to see the differences between each coin. Once they know the four coins by sight pretty well, they will easily be able to start memorizing the values of each coin.

We touched upon the lives of George Washington and Abe Lincoln, and one story we told was that of George Washington and the apple tree. We talked about what it means to be honest, and practiced our math skills with these number mat trees and apple manipulatives.

For a writing center, we did a word search this week. We looked for words such as flag and Eagle.

For a fine motor activity, we practiced our lacing skills. We talked about how the President of the United States wears lots of suits, and used our shape recognition skills to add buttons to our different dress shirt lacing mats.

We had some enlarged coins and dollar bill magnetic money that the kids sorted and played with. They had fun sorting and really examining what and who is on each currency.

In our block center, we had the Lincoln logs out. We read a book about Abraham Lincoln and how he lived in a log cabin when he was a boy. We read about how because he didn't have much money, he taught himself by reading lots of books. We built our own log cabins and used great teamwork.

We recite the Pledge of Allegiance each day in class. We also talk about how there are 50 stars on the flag that represent the 50 states in the US. We had this talking map out this week that the kids could visit. They could push on each state to hear the state name and a fact about it. They had a lot of fun finding our home state of Utah.

Spelling words of the week: Map and Log

And, we also had fun learning some new things about our star of the week this week!

Our star Zachary!!

Be My Valentine!

We started out our week of love with a game called 'heart attack' this week. During circle time, we played a version of hot potato where we passed a bucket until the music stopped, and when it stopped on us we picked a paper from the bucket that either said "prize", "treat", or "heart attack". If they chose treat, they got to pick a treat out of our treat jar, if they chose prize, they picked a prize from the prize box, and if they chose heart attack, they were attacked by me with heart stickers all over their face and shirt! 

 I wanted to work on patterns with the kids this week, but I wanted it to be very child-directed. We had the 'I can make a pattern' worksheet below and they were instructed to make 3 patterns, in any order they chose. I can make a pattern! Or two, or three! 

Our math center was full of these hearts counting from 1-20. Each heart had the corresponding number of holes punched into it, and the kids were instructed to put that many links on. This is great for counting practice, along with number recognition. If the kids were unsure of what number it was by sight, they could count the holes and add that many links!

We also talked about the mail carrier this week. We discussed how we can make picutres and cards for our loved ones for Valentine's Day, and how we could even mail them to them through the mail. We had our cards, envelopes, and stamps at one table to write our letters. And, we had the mailboxes at another table for them to pretend to mail them. I let them play here at their leisure but each mailbox did have numbers 1-6 on them, so the kids were encouraged to put the same number of stampls on their letter as there was on the mailbox they were putting it in.

We worked on our addition skills with our balance beam at the below center. Each child would take a flashcard, and they would put the number of hearts of the first number (addend)on one side of the balance scale, and the same number of hearts as the second number (addend) on the other side of the scale, and count them one by one to add them together to get the sum. 

The kids were 'in love' with this sweethearts matching game. We raced to match couples like Mickey and Minnie, Donald and Daisy, and Shrek and Fiona.

And, of course, we partied! Your love bugs raced to play the heart relay game. This game is played by using straws and heart shaped cut outs. The object of the game is to suck on the straw to hold the heart-shaped cut out on the straw. The first team to get 5 cut-out hearts into the heart shaped plate is the winner!

We also played cupids helpers by shooting his arrows into the heart-shaped target. 

And, of course, we passed out Valentine's to our friends!!

One of our words of the week was the word HUG this week. And, what better hug is there out there than a bear hug?!

We made this cute bear hug craft to share with our favorite Valentine. 

And, check out our adorable stars this week!

Stars of the week:

Aria!!!

and

Kennadee!!!