Mrs. Horn's ELP Classroom Ministering to families in Jesus' love while embracing and enhacing each : Welcome To the Funny Farm!

Tuesday, April 14, 2015

Welcome Back! I hope everyone enjoyed their Easter Break and were able to get out enjoy some of the nice weather we had. I had a great time off spending it with my family and enjoying time with my own children. Even though we were on Easter Break I still prayed for each of my little friends and missed them all dearly and was eager to see them all today.

We had great first day back and we were excited to see new toys and a partial room re-arrangement. It is important that things in our classroom stay new and exciting, these keeps my friends happy, learning and engaged. We were excited to see all the farm related things in our classroom and new and fun things to explore and play with.

Since the weather is starting to become nice again our daily routine will change a little. On the days that it is warm and dry we will spend as much time as we can outside if the playground is not in use. Outdoor play is so very important at this age and so we want to help promote that in our program and make sure we are getting outside and playing!

Below is our Schedule

8:00-8:30 Free Choice Time inside the classroom

8:30-9:00 Outside Weather permitting (if it is raining our Free choice time will be extended during this time period)

9:00-9:20 Free Choice/ Painting activities or some center will take place

9:20-9:45 clean up time and Morning Meeting

9:45-10:05 Bathroom and Snack Time

10:05-10:30 Circle Time and A Center will take place

10:30-11:00 Outside Time (students may be pulled inside to do a center)

11:00-11:10 Wash Hands Large Group Activity

11:10-11:45 Center Time

11:50-12:05 Final Circle of the Day

12:05-12:10 Bathroom/Wash Hands

12:10-12:25 Lunchtime

12:25-12:30 Pack up to go home

As a reminder please makes sure your child has an extra set of clothes in their backpack. We do go outside and sometimes we have accidents and need to change our clothes. If you do not want to leave them in your backpack you are more than welcome to leave them in your child’s cubby. Also, with us being able to get outside more please make sure you send plenty for your child to drink through out the day.

We started learning about Farm Animals today and about the Farm. We will continue this theme as long as the students are interested in it. Our centers will revolve around the Farm as well as the toys and other activities in the classroom. Our preschool classrooms here at Zion run somewhat in this manner and I am trying my best to tailor my classroom close to how the preschool classrooms are ran here at Zion to help your child’s transition from PDO to Preschool a smooth and pleasant experience. Even if your child will not be attending Preschool next year they are still be introduced to the same ideas and concepts that will help them when they are ready to go to Preschool.

We had a lot of fun learning about different farm animals and what they say or do. We also had lots of fun playing with the new toys and checking out the sensory table today. It was a great first day back and everyone transitioned back into the classroom really well!

Enjoy reading about our day!

Jesus Time:

A rich man named Joseph of Arimathea, had a new tomb where he had planned to be buried. He took Jesus' body from the cross and put it in his own empty tomb.

Joseph and Jesus' friends' wrapped His body in strips of linen and laid it carefully in the tomb. Roman soldiers came to guard the tomb. They rolled a huge stone over the door and sealed it in a way that would show if anyone tried to move the stone.

A Big Surprise

Matthew 28

The day after Jesus was buried was a Holy day, so his friends had to stay home. Then very early on Sunday morning, the first day of the week, the women went back to the tomb. It was the third day since Jesus had died.

When the women got there they couldn't believe their eyes. The stone had been rolled away! An angel of God was sitting on the stone. The soldiers were so frightened they were like dead men.

The angel said, "Don't be afraid. Jesus is alive!"

Those women were as happy as they could be! They ran to find other friends of Jesus.

Some of Jesus' friends didn't believe what the women said. But everything the women said was true. Jesus was alive! He had risen from death.

During our Center Time we made a tomb and stamped a Cross-on it to help us tell the story of what happened after Jesus Died on the Cross. These will be displayed in our hallway in the coming days As we did this center Mrs. Wegener did an awesome job re-telling the story to each child as they worked on their tomb.

Number: During our morning meeting we re-introduced to the number 9! We counted 9 fish on our board and we counted 9 farm animals. This was a new activity that I had introduced to the students the week before Easter Break and we will continue to work on problem solving skills such as this one through out the end of the year.

Shape: During Morning Meeting we were also re-introduced to the shape of an OVAL. We decided that an oval looks like an Easter egg. It kind of looks like a circle but it is taller and skinny, not short and fat. We looked at some of the Easter eggs in our classroom today and decided if they are the shape of an Oval.

During our center time we made an Easter Bunny face. His head was the shape of an oval, and we talked more about how an oval is different than a circle. This was also a great way for us to do some more body awareness as we had to put eyes, nose and mouth and ears on our bunny. We talked about where those different parts are on our face. These are already displayed in our hallway be sure and stop and look at them.

Color: Purple is the color we are learning about during the month of April. We had objects to put on our purple board today.

During our center time we painted a large cross the color purple. We were able to all do this activity together. I apologize if anyone got paint on his or her shirt. I forgot the paint shirts at home I had laundered them over the Easter break and forgot to grab the bag on my way out this morning.

Music and Movement: We sang Jesus Loves Me, Twinkle Little Star and our ABC’s. We also sang Old McDonald Has A Farm and Five little Ducks. Our music time was a little shortened today, as we were able to play outside a little more.

Outside Time: We did go outside today. We had such a good time playing this morning early on the play ground and then returning outside for another 25 minutes before we had our final circle and lunch for the day. We had a lot of fun playing with all our friends today. We did not go to the big playground today, there was another class using the playground so it was not available for us to play on.

Patterning: We continued our pattern today of pink and purple bunnies.

Sensory and Science led us to the sensory table where we discovered the Easter Grass was gone and it was replaced with CORN! We had so much fun scooping, digging, pouring and just feeling the corn. We had fun putting the tractors and animals in the corn and exploring this new fun thing in our table!

Pre-Reading: Today we started learning about the farm so we put or scissor cutting skills to work and had to cut out different farm animals and then glue them to match the farm animal on the top. This was a great way for us to build our vocabulary of words and to also work on different animal sounds as well. We are all doing great cutting with scissors and this is something we will continue to do each week.

Enjoy the pictures for Today!

. Free Choice Time

We had fun checking out all the new things in our classroom this morning. There were new toys, puzzles, a new climbing toy (thanks to Reese's Family for the donation!) and the sensory table had CORN in it to replace the Easter grass that was in there two weeks ago.

. Sorting/ Matching

We had a bag with different colored cups and different colored bears that we had to sort. Once we had the bears all sorted we worked on our color skills as well as our counting skills.

. We also worked on matching the Easter eggs and putting them together and placing them in the egg carton. This helped us work on our fine motor skills as well as our matching and counting skills.

. This was by far the funniest things we saw today! Landry loved being pushed in the baby stroller by his friends and his friends were happy to assist him!

. The big Duplo Blocks made a their way back to the shelf and Jack made himself a great big tower with them.

. Morning Outdoor Time

As discussed in the blog earlier we went outside early this morning and had fun playing This is a great way to help us be more calm and productive when we are in the classroom and it has worked out nicely in the other PDO classrooms as well.

. Free Choice Round 2

Sensory Table Fun

We had fun exploring and playing in the sensory table today where we discovered that there was corn in the table that we got to enjoy. Lots of imaginative play taking place!

. Thank you Albritton Family for the donation of the climbing toy! We love donations if you are doing some spring cleaning and you have something you think we might want, please do not hesistate to ask. Our program grows from donations from parents, grandparents and teachers. None of our toys have been purchased we have great friends that donate to us all the time.

. Playing with the Barn

. More Sorting Colored Bears

. Emma working on a farm puzzle that was near all the farm toys. This was interesting to me. I had the puzzles on the shelf and they brought the puzzles over to the play area and used them to help build their farm.

. Morning Meeting

. I truly missed each one of these smiling precious faces.

. Transition and Snack Time

. Today we had to place a farm animal on our name board. As we brought our animal up we had to identify the animal and had to imitate the sound that animal makes.

. Standing in Line

. Bathroom Time

As we wait our turn we sit or stand on the wall until our name is called to take care of business. We had fun singing and following direction as we wait for our friends to finish up.

. Silent Reading

. Circle Time

This is the time of day where we sing songs, work on our ABC's do some music and movement, listen to a story an play a game and participated in a flannel board story