Happy Tuesday!

Tuesday February 10, 2015

We were surrounded by hearts and feeling the love in our classroom today.  We had a lot of fun playing with friends and exploring the classroom.  We are working really hard at sharing with our friends and remembering that everyone likes to play with some of the favorite toys.  We are also working on taking turns and it is ok to let someone else play with a favorite toy for a little while. 

We did lots of different things that are helping us with getting ready for Valentine’s Day and we read some great books too that help us learn about loving each other not only on Valentine’s Day but all year long. 

I can truly say I LOVE each and every one of my little friends that come to my classroom on Tuesdays.  It warms my heart to have so many wonderful little friends that love to learn, laugh, play and have fun.  I have been truly blessed with some wonderful students and families this year. 

During Morning Meeting we are continuing to work on sitting down and using our listening ears as we learn about exciting things!  We are also learning our new Superman Prayer and are doing a fabulous job at it! Below are the words to the prayer see if your child can recite any of the words for you.

Thank you, God for giving us food

Thank you, God for giving us food

For the friends that we meet,

For the food that we eat,

Thank you, God, for giving us food

Amen!

Many of our friends have been fighting colds, coughs, fevers and snotty noses.  As a reminder your child needs to be fever free for a complete 24 HOURS before returning to school.  With that being said we are really enforcing hand washing, covering our mouths when we cough or sneeze and using a tissue to wipe our noses. 

Enjoy reading about our day and viewing the pictures. 

Jesus Time: This week's Bible story comes from Luke 18:15-17

Jesus Blesses the Children

People loved to bring their children to Jesus for Him to bless them. Jesus welcomed them with open arms.

But Jesus' disciples thought He had more important things to do than talk to children.

"Don't bother Him with the children," they said to the mothers and fathers. Jesus overheard them and became angry.

"Let the children come to me!" He said. "Don't try to stop them!"

"My kingdom belongs to people who are like these children. You will never enter God's kingdom if you don't enter it like a child."

Today during centers we practiced our fine motor skills by gluing a heart onto a black piece of card stock.  First we had to stamp a saying on our pink heart that said “Jesus Loves The Little Children” after that we (Mrs. Horn and Student) worked together to use the glue to trace the outline of the heart.  Next we glued our heart on our paper and then again traced the outline of the heart with glue and then the fun came in as we shook some red glitter onto our heart.  They turned out great and are on display in our hallway being sure to stop and look at them.  This was great way to work on our pre-writing skills and building our hand muscles squeezing out the glue. 

Number:  Today we started our study of the number seven.  We practice counting to seven with our fingers, finding seven hearts to count. Clapping our hands seven times, jumping up and down seven times.

During our center time we decorated our Valentine Bags for the Valentines we received from our friends.  We used 7 stickers on the front and 7 stickers on the back to decorate our bag.  They look beautiful.  This was also a great way to work on our fine motor skill, as we had to peel off the sticker and place it on our bag.

Shape:  We continued to learn about the shape of a Heart.

During our center time we heart cookie cutters dipped in pink paint to help make a heart collage on a piece of white paper.  We had big hearts, little hearts, smooth hearts and bumpy hearts.  Be sure and check out our paintings in the hallway! 

Color:  We continued to learn about the color pink.  We placed many different items on our color board that are the color pink.  Ask your child if they remember any of the things that we put on the color board.

Our center time we used pink paint to make a heart collage with cookie cutters.    

Music and Movement: We sang Jesus Loves Me, Twinkle Twinkle Little Star.  We sang the Wheels on the Bus and lots of fun catching our Baby Bumble Bee!  We also have been singing 5 little ducks a lot lately to help us with our counting skills.

Outside Time: We had some beautiful weather over the weekend and I hope everyone was able to find sometime to get outside and enjoy it.   Unfortunately, the warm beautiful weather did not stick around this week and we ended up playing in the commons with our other friends from PDO!!    

Patterning:  We continued working on our pattern today of pink and purple hearts.

Today during our center time we had to make our own heart pattern of red hearts and pink hearts. 

We are a little behind with our letter study and we are going to play catch up so this week we went back to the letter G to help us get back on track. 

We made a giraffe for for our letter book that will be coming home in May.    

As a reminder many things will come home over the course of the month but some things will not as this will be put in your child’s portfolio that you will get at the end of the school year!

Enjoy the pictures from our day!

Free Choice

Today we listened to The Two Piano Guys who play lots of different piano music.  We had fun playing with lots of different toys and we are really starting to play more together and are starting to do some imaginative play.  

The cars are always a favorite to play with and there is always plenty to play with.  

Imaginative Play in Progress

The tool bench has been a new addition to our classroom.  We have been fixing and building the last two weeks.  It is also neat to see that it is not always just the boys who play with the tool bench.  Oh, and the goggles are a very hot item in our classroom.  

The housekeeping area has had some new additions to it as well.  A few more babies a high chair, a baby crib and some blankets, a few place mats and blankets to cover our babies up.  This to is just not an area you will find the girls playing in.  

Making of a great husband some day!  I love seeing the boys vacuum!

"The Dads" were hard at work caring for the babies and making phone calls this morning!

Puzzles

This group loves to do puzzles.  They are always offered to the students on a low shelf and I don't even need to pull them off the shelf anymore they are always brought out by a student and brought to the table or done right on the shelf!  This activity is great to work on problem solving skills, pre math skills as well as learning to sit a complete a task in one sitting.  

Mrs Wegner worked with a few of our friends to complete a more difficult puzzle together.  Mrs. Wegner has really been a great addition to the classroom and my friends love doing centers and activities with her.  

The Doll House has also been played with a lot with my friends.

Evan was busy using his hammer to fix the family car.  Which seems to be broken down a lot. 

As I said above the goggles are a hot item in this classroom and here was our first sighting of them being worn.  How can you not love a kiddo in these goggles! 

Carson just hanging out on the orange chair upside down!  I hope our orange chair will last through the end of the school year it has definitely been well loved! 

. Morning Meeting

We continue to work on sitting on our bottoms during Morning Meeting and using our listening ears.  

. Today we counted how may squares we have on our calendar

. Transition and Snack Time

. Circle Time

This is the time of the day after snack that we have friends getting their pants changed and we work on our Alphabet.  We usually sing the ABC's, work on our alphabet sounds and  learn about the letter of the week.  We also spend time reading a book and may do a few different songs and a transition game to get ready for our commons and outside time.  

. Transition Time

Today we used the magnet board.  Each student was given a shape card and then I placed my shape on the board and then my friend with the matching shape brought their shape card up and matched next to my mind.  This is a great activity to work shape recognition, colors, waiting turns, following directions, pre math skills and self control.  

. We did a great job finishing our shape board!  

. Commons Time

. Walk through the Big School

We had fun going through the main school today to check out the new art work and say Hi to different staff we see along the way.  We are working on keeping our hands to ourselves and not touching the art work on the wall.  

. Proud Teacher Moment, today when we stopped by the big cross at the entrance of the school, a few of friends were looking at and found this picture on the cross of Jesus being Baptized.  It was neat for them to see the picture and be able to recognize this particular story of Jesus.  

Each day as we go on our walk from the Sonshine Center to the main building.  I have the students stop at different spots and stand on the wall so I can count and make sure we are all together.  They are so familiar with the routine and how we do it that they know which walls they need to stand on without me even reminding me.  They are really growing up and it makes me so proud to be their teacher. 

. They also know that when we get ready to go back into the building that they need to stand on a color circle before we enter back into the building.  They also can do this without being told and as we head back inside they tell me the color of their circle to help us work on our color recognition.  We are always working and learning! 

Circle Time

We came back to the classroom had a small circle time.  Where I drew a picture of a Valentine Friend using all hearts.  This allowed us to work on the recognition of a heart, body part recognition as in what we needed to complete my drawing, color identification and our counting skills as we counted all the hearts we had on our board. 

. Center Time

We listened to music from How To Train a Dragon today during Center time.  We had fun doing lots of things and we really enjoyed our classroom during center time today.  So much that when we got ready for our final circle of the day Mrs. Wegner and I were not sure if they would be able to get the room back in order but they did and did a great job of it!  

. Mrs. Wegner and friends reading a few books.  

. Block Building taking place.  We have really loved playing with the big blocks this month.  It so neat to see all the things they chose to build.  

. Avery and Susanna had a blast playing with the puppets and found two of the same puppet heads. 

. Heart Collage

. Paint Daubers to work on our color matching skills as well as our self control skills and pre-writing skills.  

. Art Easel

We had lots of friends drawing coloring and creating on our board today. 

. More of our friends building with Mrs. Wegner they would build up a tower and wait for it to fall over.  They were practicing their counting skills and color identification skills as they played this game! 

. Counting and Decorating

Counting out seven stickers to decorate our Valentine Bags. 

. Jesus Craft

We LOVE GLITTER!!! We had a lot of fun finishing this craft. 

. Pattern Work 

. Music and Movement

Since it took so long to get things cleaned up.  We listened to different sounds and identified the sounds that we heard.  Ask your child if they can tell you any of the sounds they heard.  

. Final Book of the Day. 

Transition and Lunch Time

. Another great thing to see happening .  Standing in line waiting to head to the bathroom to go potty and wash our hands for lunch.  This is an important skill that we work on all year to get ready for preschool.  We are doing great and will continue to work on it the rest of the year!