Monday, December 18, 2017

December Fun!

Hello everyone! Wow, is it snowy and cold now! We are excited to see all of the snow, if only it would warm up so we could really go outside and explore it. Soon enough we know we will have the chance. We have been keeping ourselves very busy. Check out all of the new things we are learning as we explore!



We have been exploring literacy in a number of different ways! We recently completed a unit on illustrations/illustrators where we created a class book of our own illustrations and then were able to explore and make our own illustration flip books. At the end of our unit Miss Joy read a book that she created for her class called "Playing and Learning". We were so excited to see that our pictures were part of the illustrations!


Making Our Illustration Flip Books:







Recently we have been really exploring the letter "A" in a variety of ways. We have also begun talking about capital/uppercase (BIG) and lowercase (LITTLE) letters. We have been playing games, and doing projects to help us to recognize and identify these different forms of the letter "A". Some of our friends are already very familiar with the letter a and have been working on recognizing words that begin with the letter "A". Check out some of our work:













Our most recent math unit has focused on patterns. The children were introduced to  A/B patterns through a few large and small group activities, and then had the opportunity to make their own patterns. Their favorite activity during this unit was to decorate a string of holiday lights in an A/B pattern using paint and corks. We asked that the children try really hard to make an A/B pattern with two colors of their choice, and then they had the opportunity to make their own creations using all of the colors!







We had a lot of fun one day exploring catapults! The children sat down in a small group with materials and pictures of catapults and had some discussion around how those catapults were made. After some thinking each child made an individual plan about how they could make their catapult with Miss Karin. They gathered the materials in their plan and then sat down to form their catapults! It was so much fun to test them out! When some of them didn't work as well as we would have liked, it was okay, we tried something new!










Our most recent science unit has been all about exploring weather! We did a super fun experiment where we created a snow storm inside water bottles. Check it out:













At the end of the day we decided to have a talent show! It was so much fun! We had a great time cheering each other on and supporting all of our friends as they shared their talent. We had musicians, singers, dancers, instrument players, and story tellers!






STAY TUNED TO SEE WHAT WE LEARN AND DO NEXT!








Monday, December 4, 2017

We Have Been Busy!

Hello everyone! My, have we been so super busy so far this year! We started our school year out really getting to know the children and helping them to get to know each other. We also focused on understanding and managing the rules, expectations, and routines of our classroom and took some additional time to really understand the interests of the children. We have been learning, growing, and exploring, so much together and look forward to sharing some of what we have been doing so far this year!


We started our "Getting to Know You" unit with self-portraits. This was a great opportunity for the children to be able to not only share a little bit about themselves but to also get to know themselves and recognize their bodies a little better. Some friends included some of their interests or favorite things on their self-portraits. After we completed them we did a little share and identified what we drew and why!









During one of our science units, we had a lot of fun dissecting Sunflowers that Miss Karin brought in from her sunflower garden. We were able to discuss the life cycle of sunflowers, how they grow, and really explore how they felt and smelled while using "dissection tools". Afterwards, we tried to re-create the sunflowers using our art materials.






For one of our favorite sensory experiences so far we explored different smells. So far we have explored cinnamon, pumpkin spice tea, vanilla, nutmeg, and lime. The children had a lot of fun exploring the smells, trying to decipher what they were smelling, sharing what the smells reminded them of, and then using them in dramatic play as "cooking ingredients".







During one of our math units, we began exploring measurements. We had a lot of fun building with different materials (cups, blocks, magnet tiles, and legos) and measuring our creations. We made a chart where we were able to compare the height of our creations to our own bodies! The children tried very hard to make creations as tall as they were! It was very exciting. 




During our "Velocity and Speed" unit we explored using ramps. The children created ramps of different angles and sizes and used materials such as cars and balls to test them out. We had a lot of great discussion about why cars or balls went faster or further down certain ramps and slow down others. We also had a "Ball Vs Car Challenge" where we made predictions as to whether or not cars or balls were faster and shared our ideas and predictions. Towards the end, we used baskets to catch our balls and cars and used tally marks to see how many we could get into the baskets. It was exciting to count at the end!








During a cooking unit, we became soup chefs. We met together to list of ingredients that we thought we may find in a soup. Then we went "grocery shopping" in our kitchen and circled the ingredients that we were able to find. After a group discussion about kitchen health and safety, all of the children sat down and helped to make some very delicious and healthy soup! It was tasty and good for our bodies! 












We look forward to sharing more with you soon!