Week of October 24-28 2016

What a fun and busy week! We started our Tree Study this week and the kids have really been participating and asking questions about trees. I also rearranged our classroom and got out some new toys, which the kids have been having a blast exploring!

 The Dinosaurs have been a big hit!

They have been building roads everyday

On Tuesday we took all of the boxes from our Box Study and we flattened them and brought them out to the recycle bin. We talked about why recycling is important for our environment and the Earth.

Wednesday the kids asked me to bring my daughter, Addie, to the classroom before I left for the day. They were having so much fun watching her run around, and they did a fantastic job keeping her off the steps to the loft and blocking the door to the coatroom!

On Wednesday we also decorated some little pumpkins by gluing tissue paper to them. We used these as our centerpieces at our Harvest Party!

Thursday Morning we carved our pumpkin! We turned it into a little bit of a math game by making up a chart and rolling a die to see what shapes we would carve.

We rolled a 1 for triangle eyes, a 6 for a star nose, and a 3 for a mouth with one bottom tooth!

The kids had the chance to explore and play with the pumpkin seeds and guts too!

The kids then took out the pumpkin seeds so that we could roast them.

Thursday morning we also decorated some foam bats and spiders to turn them into puppets! We took some stickers and foam stickers and the kids had tons of fun peeling and sticking!

Thursday afternoon was our Harvest Party! Thank you so much to everyone who brought in a snack or treat for the party, and thank you to the parents who were able to come and celebrate with us :) I know the kids had a ton of fun! (And we had just about 7 dozen cupcakes!)

Friday morning we roasted up our pumpkins seeds and almost all of the kids LOVED them! We had a whole Ziploc bag full of them and it was devoured in about 15 minutes!

A few friends enjoying Pumpkin Seeds!

October 17-21 2016

This week was our last week in our Box Study. The kids have had so much fun playing with all of the different boxes that we have accumulated in our classroom, and they have really learned a lot! It has been so fun to listen to them talking about which box is stronger or sturdier for what they want to play that day, or which size box can hold more for what they want to fill it with. They have been learning some great concepts and been using their imaginations!

 Some of the kids put on a concert this morning! They practiced all yesterday morning and this morning they made up all these signs for their concert and preformed for us!

The rest of the kids were hanging out in their "hideout" this morning!

We made up some fun pumpkin slime this week. We carved the top off of the pumpkins and scooped the insides off the sides of the pumpkin, but kept them in the pumpkin. We mixed up 1/2 a cup of room temperature water with 1/2 a cup of clear glue. Then we added 1/2 of liquid starch into the pumpkin, then poured in the water/glue mixture into the pumpkin and mixed it all up! It turns into a really fun slime mixture!

 Ben was ready to dig right in!

 Ty wasn't to sure about it!

 Practicing our letter Rr!

Working on writing our names!

October 10-14 2016

This week we went on a walk to Duncan's Woods! The kids had a ton of fun walking past all of the houses on the way and seeing the Halloween decorations, and all the trees that are beginning to turn fall colors.  Once we got to Duncan's Woods the kids got to explore a little bit and they all collected some leaves. They all found some fun colors and lots of small and big leaves! (Look for some more pictures of our trip by the bulletin board outside our classroom)

On Friday we took our leaves and we made some math collages with them. Each child rolled the dice and counted how many dots they had, they then counted out that many leaves and glued them onto their papers (some ended up with a few more than they counted out on the dice!).

You may have noticed a shape, color or number on the outside of our classroom doors; these are our new classroom passwords. When we come back to our classroom we have to identify the color, shape or number that is on the door in order to get back into the classroom. This is a fun way for us to continue to work on all three! When you bring your child into the classroom feel free to point the picture out to them and have them tell you what the password is for the day, there will be a different password on the classroom door and the coatroom door.

October 3-7 2016

We have been having a ton of fun in the Fours Class this week! The kids started off this week talking all about spiders and pumpkins, so we go out or rubber band boards and some plastic spiders and started making up some spider webs!

We explored some dice on Thursday and practiced counting the dots and adding the two dice together. We played a fun game where we would roll the 2 dice, then roll a bigger die with different actions on it and do that many of whatever action it landed on. For example, jump 5 times! The kids had a lot of fun with this game, and I am sure we will be playing it again soon.

Today during our small groups we were working on tracing our letter P's, using tweezers to trace our names with spiders, and doing some silly tongue twisters!

 Laughing at some tongue twisters

Trying to some tongue twisters!

We have also been working on our scissor skills and making up some jack-o-lanterns for our Pumpkin Patch, the kids have been very creative!