Happy Thanksgiving!

We had our annual fall harvest party last Wednesday.  A great time was had by all! 

Have a wonderful Thanksgiving everyone!  See you in December. 

Rainy Wednesday Activities

Wow!  We seemed to have an endless amount of time to do everything yesterday.  I almost ran out of activities for the children to do.  We've not had many rain days that have kept us inside.  I did have quite a few movement activites planned.  I've posted a few pictures of the children in action. 

We are wrapping up our fall harvest unit study of apples and pumpkins. Yesterday, we worked on positional words using an apple and worm. The children were asked to place the worm on, beside, behind, etc. the apple. We'll continue to work on these spatial concepts throughout the school year. We also read the book, Thanksgiving Cats. The children talked about being thankful and we started our "thankful for trees" during our art time. They are going to make lovely Thanksgiving table centerpieces when they are completed!

Next week is our fall harvest party. The kids can get all decked out in their favorite costumes. We'll be having a hayride and pizza party and we'll be making our own dessert for the party. I'll email reminders about the party this weekend so stay turned!

Pumpkins

We read the story, Pumpkin Circle, this week.  This book is a story about a pumpkin garden.  It taught us about the life cycle of a pumpkin.  We learned that pumpkins need a sunny spot to grow getting at least six hours of sunlight.  The seeds do best when planted in warmer soil during the spring months.  They need sun, water, and soil in order to grow.  We used the book to help with the illustrations during art. The children made pumpkin prints using their painted knuckles.  They used colored pencils to create vines and tendrils.

The children are mastering the Day of The Week song.  I've been teaching them the signs too so hopefully by the end of the year, each one will be able to sing it and sign it.  We also worked out letter sounds this week for the letters A, B, and R.  Ryan insisted that we do his letter sound so we skipped on over the R.  Children do best learning letters and sounds when they are relevant and meaningful.  Because of that, we'll spend more time on the letters in the names of each child. 

There are only two class meetings before Thanksgiving week.  We are going to be learning the "Mr. Turkey Song" between now and then.  We'll also get started on a project next week which will include things that we are thankful for.  Don't forget, we'll be having a party during our last meeting of the month.  I'll send out more details soon. 

How Do Apples Grow?

We had a wonderful day together on Wednesday.  The children were all very happy and content and got along well with each other.  The bright sun and mild temperatures made for the perfect day! 

We began today with our art project.  Jackson was very gracious and collected leaves for us to use since the ones that we collected last week were too dry to paint.  Our project consisted of the children painting the leaves with warm fall colors and then making impressions on white paper of the leaves.  The prints were beautiful as were the painted leaves.  I hated to throw them away but we may use that project another day. 

We read the books, How Do Apples Grow and The Apple Pie Tree.  We learned about apples and how they grow.  We found out that bees are very helpful in helping apples grow and that apple blossoms help the bees make sweet honey.  Several of the children wanted me to comment about the apple flowers in their journals so after reading this, you know why they were talking about apples and flowers.

We also baked apple treats.  We cut the cores out of the apples and filled the holes with brown sugar and cinnamon.  We microwaved them for four minutes.  They were delicious!

We are off next week but I'll see you all back in two weeks.  Can you believe it will be November then? 

Leaves And Seeds

Last week,  we found out how things grow and why leaves change colors.  We first learned that seeds need sunlight, soil, and water to grow.  During music and movement, the children pretended to be seeds and grew into big oak trees.  They really enjoyed that and asked to do it several times over.  Speaking of oak trees, we learned that acorns are the seeds of oak trees and they take a very long time to grow.  The children were fascinated to learn that if they planted an oak tree seed, it would still be growing when they are adults. 

The children learned about the green tint in leaves called chlorophyll.  Chlorophyll is what helps the leaves absorb or hold sunlight.  We also learned that leaves are important to a tree and provide the it with a kind of sugar that is the tree's food.  

For our art project, we made leaf wreaths.  Each child also created a leaf rubbing in their journal.  We'll be using paint to make leaf prints for our art project tomorrow.  We'll also be cooking up some tasty apple treats as we begin our study of apples and how they grow. 

Here's a story about fall that the children created during our circle activity:

It is fall.  Leaves change colors.  Leaves fall to the ground.  Animals gather food.  Apples fall.  They are ripe.  Pumpkins are ready.  The days get shorter.  It gets cold. 

During our time together tomorrow, we'll learn about how plants grow and why leaves change colors.  

Emotions

We had a very small class this week.  We missed Bennett and Jackson.  Both were on field trips.  That left Andrew and Ryan and lots of time to fit in more activities. 

We completed our "All About Me" books.  I've got to bind those this week so that they can go home next week.  We also completed our study of feelings.  We finished the study by discussing feelings of anger.  We learned that we can take deep breaths when we get mad and that we can pray.  We also learned that our brain is the computer or control center and it allows us to feel emotions.  We looked at pictures in book, The Wonders Inside The Human Body. 

We are singing and signing the "Days of The Week" song each Wednesday. We have also been discussing the four seasons which will take us into our study of fall next week.  We'll learn about fall harvest (pumpkins & apples) and the changes that take place outside during the fall.  This is one of my favorite studies so I am looking forward to the upcoming months! 

I hope to see everybody next week!