Our garden is in full bloom! The children helped to pick the wonderfully aromatic basil today to make pesto for tomorrow's pasta snack. Yummy! We have tomatoes that are getting big and round, and there is broccoli! The Bright-Eyed Bears love to walk through and look, smell and taste the yummy fruits of their labor. They are such wonderful helpers with watering, spreading plant food, and even weeding.
This week the children have been focussing on the letter Jj. They worked on many activities to build recognition skills, sound skills, and printing skills with the letter Jj. On Monday the children were introduced to the silly songs "James and Judy" about two children who jumped rope all day and all night, and "Jolly Jelly beans" about jelly beans who jiggled and jumped from jars and jugs. They learned the shape of Jj and how to print it correctly from top to bottom, how to make the sign of Jj in sign language and the sound it makes. The children practiced using scissors properly while cutting out the shape of a giant jelly bean on colorful paper. The jelly bean was printed with the upper and lower case Jj. The children traced the letters, then used the extra large push pins that are just perfect for practicing a tripod pencil grip to punch the Jj letters. They really enjoyed cutting out paper jigsaw pieces that were later formed back together to make a huge upper case letter J, today. Tomorrow the children will use jelly beans for a graphing activity. They may even get to eat a few too!
One of the most popular center activities this week was counting jewels. The children worked with me in small groups to count jewels to match a number card. The jewels were connected in sets. The purple jewels were singles. The green were in sets of two. The yellow jewels were in sets of three. The red were in sets of four and the blue were in sets of five. We started with the children trying to make the smaller numbers such as 7. One child used a blue set of five and a green set of two. Another child used seven purples and another child used a yellow set of three and a red set of four. As the time went on the numbers got bigger! It was a wonderful way for the children to explore the world of addition and to practice their counting skills too! They really took their time and I could see the wheels turning in their minds!!!
iPads!
It has been so exciting having iPads for learning in the classroom this year. The children absolutely love working with them. Mrs. Cummings and I absolutely love watching the children work together and share their knowledge and ideas with one another. There truly is an app for everything! Today the children experienced an interactive storybook about Jingle, the husky pup. This is a touching Christmas story about a puppy and a boy who find each other for Christmas, with a little help from Santa. The children listened in pairs and then talked about the story together. They then drew pictures together and dictated about their favorite parts from the story. Some even drew pictures from every scene because they liked the story so much! Later, the pairs had the opportunity to share their work with the rest of the class.
It's so warm and fuzzy learning about the winter holidays! Our classroom is bright with the magic of holiday decor! Last week we focused on the holiday of Hanukah and this week we are talking about Christmas. The children have been sharing their favorite stories and family holiday traditions. There have been all sorts of fun holiday learning activities for us to share in class as well. Take a look........
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| Each child traced and cut out three triangles which they used to form into a Christmas tree. They added a star that was printed with a number to the top of the tree. Last, but not least, the children added "ornaments" to the tree to correspond with the number on the star. As you can see, they were very proud of the the final product! But we know that it was all about the process! :) |
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| Exploring the wonder of Holiday Science! |
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| Building a Brio Train for all sorts of holiday fun! |
