Balloons!

I love the letter Bb because there are so many wonderful things you can do: bears, bats, butterflies, balloons, bingo, beach balls, beanbags... the only hard part is deciding which activities to do. This week we mostly stuck to bears, with a brief foray into bats (through books) and bubbles and today was BALLOONS.

Given the nature of the activities, I was impressed with how well the children tried to stay in their own space.
We tried lots of different ways to keep the balloon up in the air. Left hand, right hand, switching hands, one finger, hitting it and turning around before hitting it again, setting it like in volleyball:
bumping it by yourself and then with a partner
Keeping it up without using our hands:
A balancing act! We also moved around the room balancing the balloon between fronts and backs.This was the challenging activity at the end: in groups try to keep the balloon up (with feet or hands) without moving from your spot.Not a bear picture, but cute enough to share: children reading a wordless book about a baby bear:

A few more pictures

I love end of the day centers because children can choose how to spend their time. Maybe they want to write some letters
Or work together to build a gym (It may have been a town or a roller coaster or something else by the time it was finished)
Or make a mask and decorate it while it's taped to someone else's face.
The finished writing project (see the words at the end?)
Happy playing!

The Bears Are Having a Sleepover!

While the children are away,
The bears will play!

The sleepover is going well; the bears are having fun, although they did make a bit of a mess. Tomorrow your children get to find their bears and write about what they were doing. And no, there will not be a sleepover for children at school :)

Bear Day

We read several bear books today (non-fiction and fiction) and then compared real and stuffed bears.
Thanks to the five-year-old-photographer for this picture. There was lots of giggling as we learned about labeling today.
Here is our labeled bear:Goldilocks and the Three Bears
Everybody and their bears:
The rhyming game in the bear cave: listen to the words. If they rhyme, wake up.

Goldilocks and the Three Bears

We had fun with Goldilocks and the Three Bears this week. We read it. We listened to it. We acted it out/retold it. Enjoy just a short clip of 2 children's retelling.

Bible Review

Bible review question last week:
Why was Moses put in a basket?

“Because they didn’t have any cars or strollers.”

Faking Fall

The calendar says it's Fall, and we really want it to feel like Fall, so we fake it around here. I noticed last week that every elementary teacher had fall leaves or pumpkins displayed in their windows. However, if you look at the trees, they are still mostly green. Nonetheless we had leaf day on Friday. Children were encouraged to find a fall color leaf, but green constitutes a fall color around here, so we allowed that too. A few children actually managed to find brown or yellow leaves, and we also had some interesting shaped green ones (some that were really soft).

Here are a few pictures from leaf day. First we went on a leaf hunt. Then we worked with our table groups (because then it is less obvious who found more/fewer leaves, plus cooperative learning is good) to sort our leaves, and then turn them into graphs by color
and by shape.
We did some scientific leaf observations with real leaves, and used magnifying glasses to look more closely at leaf veins. We had a few nicely colored leaves someone's Grandma sent from Michigan a few years ago.
Then we got a little sillier and wrote fictional leaf stories. Once finished, everyone got a turn to stand up and read their story to the class.
This was probably the favorite activity: we climbed up the 'tree' and dropped some leaves on a target. Well, we tried.
And after each child dropped 3 leaves, we had a total of 4 leaves touching the target. It was a fun game, even if it was a lot harder than it looked.
After the game we cleaned up, recited our Leaves are Falling poem and threw some leaves in the air.

Happy Fall!

Firefighting center

How many times has your teacher allowed you to scribble on the school walls? There's just something about it that is fun. After we drew some 'fire' with warm colored chalk (yay - working on a vertical surface is good for development), our firefighters set to work, squirting it out. This was a very popular center last week. Some children were still spraying at recess today.

Hall of Flame Museum of Firefighting

We went on a field trip to learn more about fire safety. Firefighter Mark read us a story and said the most important thing to remember if there's a fire is to GET OUT and then GET TOGETHER, so your 'homework' is to figure out a meeting place. There was one firetruck we could climb on, and there were real firefighter coats and hats to try on. (Sorry about the image quality of some pictures...my flash is having issues) Even Ms. VP joined the fun. We watched a movie about fire safety (ask your child what to do if there is a fire in the house, or if their clothes are on fire), saw some fire trucks, and then went outside to practice fighting a fire the old way with a bucket brigade. Firefighter Mark showed how not to pass the buckets, and a few children got wet. :)Then there was a race to see which team could fill their bucket first. This was enjoyable, but somewhat ineffective... Finally, everyone got to shoot the fire hose at the 'house'.A little extra water to end the hot day.

Special Day!

Today was a special, social studies day. We talked about Canada, Europe, America, and India.

Happy (Canadian) Thanksgiving! Technically, Canada is not part of Kindergarten curriculum, but we enjoyed having a mini-lesson about it. We made a long list of things for which we are thankful (God, Jesus, the Bible, prayer, my mom, my cat, my sister, my house, plants, my brother, the pledge...) The class was sad that we didn't get to eat turkey, but we enjoyed some candy corn.

The class was so excited to hear that our classmate was safely back from India, but sad that she was not at school today. We pulled out a globe and had a quick lesson about jetlag that went something like this: "When the sun is shining over here on us, it's dark on the other side of the world in India, and then when the world turns and it is night by us, it is light and daytime in India, so morning time feels like bedtime if you just came back."

Everybody say "Explorer". Student council dubbed today "Explorer Day" so we made hats to look like explorers and enjoyed learning about Christopher Columbus. Ask your child to tell you something about him.
Here were some centers this morning: reading color words
Making hats:
Roll and color graph:
Measuring and matching pumpkins: