Thursday November 12

Happy Thursday, It was so great to see all my little friends today at school. 

Starting this week we are taking a bit of a different approach in our class.  Our class dynamic has somewhat changed so we needed to make some changes to make our classroom more efficient and to run smoother.  The centers we will do for now will be the same every day.  If your child attends on multiple days they will do the centers through out the week but not all on the same day.  This will allow for Mrs. Wegener and I to both feel like our time with our friends is better used and we don't feel like we are always trying to play catch up.  This will also allow for us to have more time with interactive play and to work on our social skills with our friends.  Play is a very big part of our Early Childhood Program and the way our classroom will know be ran will be similar to our preschool classrooms.  I thank you in advance for your support and understanding in the changes we are making to our classroom to help make your child's school experience more fulfilling and better.     Enjoy reading about what we are doing this week and viewing the pictures.    

If you have any questions or concerns please do not hesitate to contact me at hhorn@zionharvester.org

Free Choice and Center Time 

Our mornings will start out the same the classroom will be opened up and our friends will be able to explore and play in the classroom.  We listened to music by George Winston today that was entitled Autumn.  During this time some centers will be done and we will work on certain skills such as fine motor, coloring and painting. 

Painting on the Art Easel

Today we had two big crosses drawn on paper that were on our art easel.  My friends were able to come and go today during free choice time to paint the crosses with water colors.  It was something new different for us to try and we had a great time doing it and we have some beautiful crosses that are now hanging in our classroom.  Be sure and see them when you come in the room next week.  This is something we will be doing more of to help us with our creative side and our pre writing skills.  

Special Thanksgiving Gift

Today we started working on a special gift for our parents that we will be bringing home next week.

Letter K

The letter we are working on this week is the letter K.  Today in our alphabet book we used a green bingo dauber to help us become familiar with the letter K and hear some words that start with the letter K.  Kiss, Kangaroo, keep are to name a few that we heard today.  Becoming familiar with the letters of the alphabet is a great way to start learning what letters look like and sound like.  It is also a great way for us to increase our vocabulary.  Alphabet books will come home at the end of May. 

Bingo Dauber Turkeys

Today we decorated a turkey using different colored bingo daubers.  We had to match the color on the turkey with the correct bingo dauber.  We worked on our matching skills, color identification skills, fine motor skills and pre-writing skills.  These are proudly being displayed in our hallway be sure and check the wall through out the week!

Coloring

Each day we will have different color sheets for our friends to do if they want to.  This will not be so much a center but another activity for the children to do in the classroom.  Other activities of this kind will soon be offered to our friends.  These types of activities will come home the same day they do them.  

 

Marble Painting

Today we painted a turkey brown with marbles. This activity was great to work on saying the word Turkey, making the sound of a turkey.  We also were able to work on becoming familiar with the color brown and working on our fine motor skills as we had to tip the container back and forth for the marbles to move around to decorate our turkey.  These are also being displayed in our classroom with our Autumn Tree

More Coloring!

Coloring a Cross 

Our shape this month is of a Cross and today to help us continue to become familiar with the shape of a cross we used something we have not used before to color our cross with.  We used colored pencils using the colored pencils forced us to press down a little harder on the paper to make color appear and helped us work on control and strengthening the muscles in our hands to write with

Painting Four Feather's on a Turkey!

To start this center we had to glue our turkeys body a big brown circle and then his head a small light brown circle.  This helped us review the shape of a circle and also the color brown, we also worked on the math concept of big and small.  Next we had to make his face we used googly eyes that were great to work on our fine motor skills as they were not too big and were sticky, next we glued on an orange beak and lastly a red gobbler.  We were able to work on face identification and review colors we have already had and counting to the number 2 as we counted 2 eyes.  Next, we added four feather Red, Orange, Yellow and Green.  We were able to work on sensory skills as we painted our hand to make the feathers. We also were able to work on color identification and counting to the number 4.  These turkeys are some of the best turkeys in town be sure and check them out over the course of the week in our classroom!  

Morning Meeting

Our Morning Meeting time will stay in the same format.  

Happy Thursday! 

We are starting to have a lot of issues with my friends keeping their feet on the floor when we are in a large group setting.  We have been doing a lot of talking about keeping our feet glued to the floor and keeping our hands to ourselves and not putting them in our mouths.  Our feet are in the air more than on the floor and we are kicking our friends and falling over on our friends because we have them in the air.  

Our calendar for the month of November has different Thanksgiving pictures on it so during our calendar time we work on identifying the number and talking about the picture we see on the square.  This is a great way for our students to have a sense of time.  I say….Today, is Thursday, November 12.   They are hearing the month and the day of the week and the date.  Today was a pumpkin pie, we practiced saying the word and then we talked about how we see lots of pumpkin pie during the Thanksgiving Holiday.   

Mr. Weather Frog was ready for a windy day at Zion 

Our Studies for the month of November 

We counted 4 turkeys today as we worked on the number 4

Our Brown color board

Our pattern of Pilgrim Hat and Turkey

Our Letter of the week the letter K

I did read a book about the first thanksgiving entitled The Very First Thanksgiving.  I forgot to take a picture of it.  

Transition and Snack Time

We dressed our turkey for the day by putting different colored feathers on him.  Last week we painted our turkey's feathers and this week we are dressing him up.  This activity works on color identification, name identification, listening skills and following directions.  

Standing in line waiting to wash our hands.  We are working really hard at not touching our friends and keeping our hands to ourselves. 

Getting ready to walk back in the classroom after washing hands and going to the bathroom.  We are working really hard on using walking feet we have a lot of running going on inside and that is leading to lots of our friends getting pushed and falling down.  We are doing a lot of talking about walking feet.

Jesus Time 

Remains the same after snack time.  We come to the carpet and sing the Read the Bible Song and listen to the Bible story for the month.  This month we are talking about the things that we are thankful for.  We talked about our families, home , church pastors, school, friends and teachers.  We then sing the B-I-B-L-E and Jesus Loves Me.  We then get ready to line up to go outside.  Each child was dismissed to get there coats after their names were called and they told me how old they are.  

Outside Time

I had lots of friends that did not have warm enough outerwear today so we did not stay outside too long.  

Circle Time 

Remains the same we come inside and wash our hands and faces and head back to the carpet to hear a story and flannel board activity or game to be played.  Today we read a story about things we see, hear and smell during the Autumn season.  We heard the flannel board story of Five Little Turkeys. We then dismissed for Center Time each child was dismissed when their name was called and they were able to tell me their favorite color.

Center Time Round 2

During this time we work on a different series of centers and play in the classroom.  We listened to some Christian Rock Music 

Water coloring Pilgrims and Native Americans

We talked about Pilgrims and Native Americans and the First Thanksgiving last week.  We talked about their clothing and what they brought to the First Thanksgiving.  We worked on saying these words and today we used our water colors to paint pilgrim boys and girls.   Be sure to check out our classroom for these great paintings  

 Bible Story Activity

Today we placed different types of thanksgiving foods on our a piece of paper to help us remember that we are thankful for the food we have to fill our tummies.  We also were able to talk about different foods we might eat at Thanksgiving and what some of our favorite foods are.  

 Pattern

Today's pattern was pilgrim hat turkey like our pattern we are working on during morning meeting.  The pattern was started for our friends and they had to complete the pattern.

Music and Movement 

We did not get to do very much music and movement today.  We had a very very hard time cleaning up and then keeping our hands to ourselves and following directions.  

 We did The Wheels On The Bus and Five Days Old. 

Our Final book for the day was about the leaves that were falling all around.  It was really hard to read to my friends today there was lots of screaming, talking and not staying seated.  

Today was a little rough in our classroom.  I ask that you please talk with your child this weekend about using their listening ears and how we need to be kind to our friends.   There was lots of hitting today at it made me very sad as well as my friends.   I do realize that my friends are young, but these are skills that need to be taught and will help their school experience be a positive one.  I thank you for your support and understanding for partnering with me on making this school year a successful one.  Blessings on your evening.