Snowmen

We continued our snow and ice study with snowmen as our theme this week.  There are so many great childrens' books on the topic of snow and snowmen that naturally lead to exciting stories about playing in the snow, fun crafts and pretending to be melting snowmen.  :)

Our sensory table was a hot spot this week as our class explored the properties of our "in house snow"....shaving cream!

Independently, these boys used a large, medium and small circle to make their snowmen. Each day there is a task to complete at the art table all by themselves.  I'm so proud of the efforts our class puts forth!

Figuring out the letter sounds that go with each picture is an activity they will see in kindergarten often.

Since we haven't been able to go outside lately, we brought a little exercise into our room this week. They loved these bikes!

More independent work....we are really looking like kindergartners when we problem solve on our own how to complete a task.

We had a yummy birthday treat this week. Happy birthday friend!

Working hard at our new table top centers

Water coloring our snowflakes

This friend is looking at characteristics of each snowman and deciding how to sort them. She could sort based on their hats, smiles or buttons.

We used dice to determine which numbers we would add together.  Then we used our number line or our handy dandy fingers to determine the sum. 

This group organized their own dance circle to one of our favorite class songs....The Dinosaur Stomp

Reading buddies

Another class favorite is "The Bear Hunt." Here they are singing and acting out, "we're going to catch a big one!!!"  How cute are they?

Brrrrrr! Snow and Ice Week!

This week we definitely felt the cold both outside and in!

We finished up our polar animal theme this week by exploring icy waters with and without the help of "blubber."

We discovered that we couldn't keep our hands in the icy waters for very long without the help of our blubber hand (Crisco in a zip lock).

"Testing the waters" with our Crisco bag.  We were amazed that we could leave our hands in the icy water for a long time and not feel the cold!

We loved using kid friendly hammers and tees to break through ice and find hidden treasures.

We are still loving the connectors. ha!

Our student of the day pages have been so good!  I'm so proud of our little writers and illustrators!

Enjoying our new easel

New table top centers

We graphed our favorite kind of weather.  Snowy was our favorite!

We had a special helper this week bring in a fun snowflake craft for us to do!  Thanks to our wonderful Mom helper!

Putting numbered snowflakes in order from 1-20

We always have one activity that is independently completed.  We are really starting to look like kindergartners when we can go to a table and complete the task all by ourselves!

We loved practicing our letters and numbers in "snow!"

Winter animals

Last week our theme was polar animals.  I didn't capture too many pictures since we missed a day for snow and ice but here are a few pictures of some cuties in action.

This activity is a balancing act and requires strategy to balance the weight

Good work buddy!

This friend is working on "write the room." She walks around with this clipboard and finds letters, words and sentences all over our room!

We focused on learning how to write our last names this week.  We had to take each scrambled letter of our last name and glue them in order. Then we wrote our name to match.

Mrs. Traci painted our feet to make cute penguins.  It tickles so much that we can't control our giggles!  Too cute!!

We now have a class phonebook with each friend's address, phone number and picture so we can pretend to call them from school.  I love watching their creative play!

We practiced writing our last names with pencils, markers, painted salt and dot markers.  We learn best by being exposed to many different types of learning strategies. 

We loved playing this game with our friends. Some of us worked on letter recognition while others worked on letter sounds.  We raced to see how quickly we could identify each one.

Happy New Year!

Our new theme after winter break was "Unique Me." We learned that we are special and there is no one quite like us.   We wrote and illustrated our own books that told all about our name, birthday, address and phone number.  We used this activity to work on memorizing all of our important information so that we are ready for kindergarten!  We sure are smarties!

We started something new where we "sign in" each day when we arrive at school. Some of us are even signing in with our full names!

We are loving the new connectors!  We can build huge creative structures with our friends.

We wrote the new year 2013, then flipped up each number to record one goal for our new year.

We also started something brand new with "student of the day."  We each draw our special friend of the day using details and appropriate colors based on their outfit, eye and hair color.  We also write their name.  I am SOOOOO impressed with our drawings!  We are using simple shapes like rectangles to learn how to draw the body parts and this helps us develop our drawing skills.  Look for your child's book to come home soon!

Our self portraits

We celebrated a special birthday!

We enjoyed new centers such as this one where we write familiar words on white boards....

and strengthen our fine motor skills while sorting.

This friend recognized that he made a letter with his connectors.  What a great connection!

We made a class phone book complete with our address and phone number.

Something new in our writing center is a list of all of our class friends.  We use skinny markers to write their names in rainbow letters.

We work hard each day to make our student of the day paper extra special for our friend.  We use our best handwriting and draw our friend the best we can.

Happy New Year!!

Great team work!