Thursday October 29, 2014
It is hard to believe that
this was our last Thursday class for the month of October! Where is the time going? We had a great Thursday in PDO filled with
lots of fall, Halloween and Scarecrow activities. We are doing great with our routines and we
will continue to add new things to our routine and centers. We are really working hard at keeping our
hands to ourselves and respecting our friend’s space. A few of our friends have become very hands
on with our other friends and so we are talking a lot about keeping our hands
to ourselves. We were treated to a
special snack provided by Evan Taylor’s family today in honor of
Halloween. Thank you so much Taylors for
a yummy, delicious healthy snack to help us get in the Halloween Spirit! Enjoy reading what all we did today and I
look forward to next month and all the neat things we will be doing!
Jesus Time: Today we reviewed our story about Noah and this is
what we learned today….
Genesis 8:18-22, 9:1-17, The Rainbow
When everyone was out of the boat, Noah built an altar. He
thanked God for keeping them safe. Then something wonderful happened! God put a
beautiful rainbow in the sky and made Noah a promise. "I will never flood
the whole earth like that again," God said. When God makes a promise, He
keeps it.
We had the opportunity during free choice play to play with some
Noah’s ark and all the animals he put inside them. We have really enjoyed playing with the Arks
but our time with them has come to an end.
During Center Time we made a book about the story of Noah. We had to glue the proper pieces on our pages
to help tell the story of Noah. I was so
impressed with how well everyone was able to retell the story of Noah!
Number: We wrapped our study of the number 3 today. We practiced
making the number three with our fingers this is good practice for our finger
and hand muscles. We practiced counting
to three and looking at what the number three looks like.
Center time led us to make a Halloween Counting book where we
had to place a number sticker on how many Halloween items we saw on the
page. We then had to color the picture
on the page. We counted 1 black cat, 2
black bats, 3 ghosts and 4 spiders.
Shape: We are learned about a circle this month. We learned that there is no beginning and end
to a circle and that we can think of many things that look like a circle.
Letter: We continued working on the letter “F” this week. We talked about words that began with the
letter “F” like flower, fabulous, fantastic, food, frog, fancy, fish, fun, and
family!
Color: Orange was our
color of the month. So we spent time
during morning meeting identifying different things that were orange.
We had fun painting making an orange jack o’lantern. We also
decorated a Jack O’lantern with a yellow bingo dauber.
Music and Movement: We sang our ABC’s; Twinkle Twinkle Little
Star and Jesus Loves Me. We practiced Jumping and Counting. We had a request for the silly dance song so
we got silly and crazy doing the silly dance song! We
practiced the Five Little Pumpkins Finger Play we have been learning all month.
As a center today we colored 5 Little Pumpkins orange and glued
them onto a piece of black card stock. We
had to cut the poem out and glue it on the back of our paper.
Outside Time: It was
chilly, drizzly, windy and wet today but we did go out for about 15
minutes. So we could run around and get
some exercise and play with our other friends from PDO. We then took a walk around the big school and
observed many different things on our walk.
Be sure to check out all the pictures and captions that go along with
them. We then took a walk on the
sidewalk of the early childhood wing to get a little more fresh air. We played the colored circle game when we got
ready for our walk and when we returned from our walk.
Patterning: We continued
working on our pumpkin leaf pattern during morning meeting.
Science and Sensory: We
have had lots of fun fall things in our sensory table this past month and it
will be in the sensory table next month.
We also observed and charted about our pumpkin after we observed our
pumpkin we scooped out the inside.
Thanks Mrs. Linneman for helping with the cutting of the top and for
helping us scoop it all out!
Enjoy the pictures from our day!
Free Choice Play
We had fun playing with the pumpkins and making funny faces with them!
Our last day to play with Noah's Ark
Watercolor Painting a Scarecrow
Be sure to check out our Scarecrows in the lobby next week!
We have been reading a lot about Scarecrows and so we decided to paint some scarecrows with watercolors.
Making a Jack O'Lantern
We used this activity to work on learning the different parts of our faces. We found out we have two eyes a nose and a mouth. This center also allowed for us to work on using a glue bottle by squeezing it so we can strengthen our hand muscles. We then used a black marker to make a mouth this allowed us to work on our pre-writing skills by holding a writing tool and drawing.
Bingo Daubers & Stickers
We decorated a pumpkin with a yellow bingo dauber to make our jack o'lantern light up the night. Bingo daubers allow us to work on our spatial awareness as well as our pre-writing and fine motor skills. We used the stickers to decorate a scarecrows clothes. We had to match the orange stickers and yellow stickers to the patches on his clothes. This helped us with making a match which is pre math skill as well as identify the colors orange and yellow. We also practiced counting how many patches our scarecrow had on his clothes. Using stickers also helped us work on our fine motor skills as we had to peel the stickers off the sheet and place them in the correct spot on our scarecrow.
Morning Meeting
Transition Time
We have been working on hearing the first letter in our name and what it sounds like. This has been a great activity for our friends this month as we work on letter recognition, phonetic sounds, colors of leaves, patience, listening to directions and self control! Whew that's a lot and they are all doing great at it!
Special Snack Day!
Thanks to Evan Taylor and his family for the delicious snack of fresh fruit and teddy grahams to help us get into the Halloween Spirit. It was greatly appreciated by all our friends and Mrs. Linneman and myself!
Circle Time
We read this story of the Lonely Scarecrow and we found out in the end that he was not so lonely after all that he lots of friends and that made him so happy!
Sorry the picture is upside down. During circle time we read a story that pertains to our ABC's this allows us to see the letter, hear the letter and associate the letter with a picture.
We took time today to really look at a pumpkin. All of our charting for the month of October is in the hallway be sure to stop and look at them.
We had a great time learning about this pumpkin!
Five Little Pumpkins Activity
We spent the month of October learning about a finger play 5 Little Pumpkins. Today we colored 5 pumpkins orange, we cut them out and glued them onto a piece of card stock along with the poem. As we did this activity many of our friends were saying the poem as they worked on their work. We did practice saying it a few times.
Outside Time
Our Walk to the Main School
The purpose behind this activity is to have the children become familiar with the school they could possibly be attending in the years to come and the people who work in the school. It also allows us an opportunity to see how the "big kids" go to school. We do lots of looking and observing, saying hi to friends we may know meeting teachers and staff at Zion. We are Zion we are Family! Below is what we found on our walk. These walks also get us out and moving we may have to climb stairs and we are walking to help our gross motor learning!
First stop we found a colored circle to stand on outside our building. Each child then told me what color they were standing on. This helped us with color identification, counting how many friends we have with us and self regulation.
As we got to the doors of the early childhood wing we spotted 3 jack o'lanterns outside the doors.
We discovered that there were three and that is our magic number for the month and that they were orange what we had been talking about all month.. We decided that they were happy pumpkins!
As we got to the commons and walked to the foyer we found some scarecrows!
We found 4scarecrows in the foyer we also found a pumpkin decoration that had three orange pumpkins on it.
As we walked to the main part of the school we found pumpkins on the wall. Some had faces and others were just colored orange.
The fourth graders had done and art project coloring hot air balloons and they had a lot of colors on them. We talked about how hot air balloons float in the sky.
One of our friends found pictures that the third graders had worked on that were full of circles. Some of the friends thought they were bubbles.
We found a big cross at the front of the school that had the story of Jesus on it.
We got to see the Wild Things that Mrs. Bernhardt's friends had made.
A lot of the doors in the main school are decorated for Red Ribbon Week we found one that had CANDY on it!
We identified all the colors on this poster and talked about how this tree was ready for fall.
Some of my friends found a red barn
Another friend saw this painting done by a fourth grader
We then headed outside and walked around the backside of our early childhood wing and started back to our classroom
Halloween Counting Book
Re-telling the Story of Noah making our own book
Scooping out a Pumpkin
This is an activity that some kids love and some kids don't. We talked about what the inside of the pumpkin might be. After we charted about what we thought Mrs. Linneman opened up the pumpkin and we looked inside and then we got brave and some of us put our hands in the pumpkin. Others were not to sure about it.
Music and Movement
Silly Dance Contest was requested and I granted that request! I love to watch this group dance and sing they really have a good time and it is a great way to burn off some energy before we eat lunch!
Transition to lunch
At the end of our Music and Movement time we wait for our name to be called and we take our leaf off the tree and identify the color of our leaf.
Whew! We had a busy day today and we had fun with every minute of it. Have a great time trick or treating and stay warm. I look forward to seeing all my friends next week as we start talking about what we are thankful for.
HAPPY HALLOWEEN!!
