Monday, January 21, 2013

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!

Wednesday, January 2, 2013

Our Christmas Party

Here are a few more pictures from our last week of school before break. Our Christmas party was a ton of fun and a big thanks to all the helping hands that were able to attend.  Thank you!
Check out this cute bag made by one of our talented parents!!!  What a class full of cuties! 
More cuties under our tree  
Opening our class presents 


Wrapping our homemade gifts for our families 
Making reindeer food to sprinkle in our yard on Christmas Eve 
Decorating cookies for Jesus' birthday 
Working hard 
Playing pin the nose on Rudolph :)
 

Pottery Week

We were busy elves the last two weeks of school before Christmas break! We made several special ornaments for our families, wrapped presents and painted ornaments with Earth and Fire Pottery. Thank you to all the family members that were able to come in and paint with us. We always love having you be a part of our day. :)
Shiny Christmas lights 
Wrapping presents was a hit this week 
















During carpet time, we each had a white board to work on new skills. We were so proud to show our work! 


Happy birthday Jesus bracelets 
Letter to Santa