Just one picture

Here is a new game in our classroom: Spell or Spill (thanks to Heather Price's blog). It was lots of fun. One child read a sight word card (example: will), and another had to put bears on the tray while saying the letters (w-i-l-l : 4 bears). This is the only group who managed to fill the tray without spilling!

Friday

Here are a few snapshots of Friday morning. This one utilizes some fine motor activity to clip up the mittens, as well as reading to build a sentence.
Here is a sight word game I semi-invented (I modified it). Roll the die, read the word, move the corresponding car. Guess what? The boys loved it :)
Lego, because it was Ll week. Also good for fine motor :)
And here was our morning message. After we found all the Lls, we boxed some special sounds we could read and circled our sight words. Then we sat back and admired how much we had learned.

Drawing Club

Did any of your children come home and tell you they were in drawing club today? Do they come home and talk about anything besides recess and centers? :)

I don't think I've explained drawing club before, so this is how it started. I realized that a few children could use some specific instruction in how to draw things (because all their people and animals look the same: little circles with 4 lines coming out). Additionally, there are always Kindergarten children who could benefit from fine motor skill development, so any writing or drawing is beneficial.

Rather than just pulling one or two children to work on some of these drawing skills, I invented "Drawing Club" (once a week, during center time). A few children are mandated to attend, but since they have come voluntarily so far, they are currently unaware of their obligation. It's amazing how exciting something is if you call it a club.

Personally, I'm not very gifted at drawing, but this summer I was talking to an artist friend of mine who has taught art to young children, and she recommended a few good websites. One of them, Art Projects For Kids, has some great step-by-step instructions for drawing various things.

I try to mix it up a little, so the first week we drew snow bears and colored them with markers, last week we drew gingerbread people and colored them with pastels. This week we drew cardinals and then painted them (some children just stayed for the drawing part, and that's fine). I think the most exciting part was drawing invisible snowflakes with white crayon and then watching them appear when we watercolor painted the sky.

Enjoy a few pictures from this week:
This child asked if they could make the sky black. Well, of course! I am usually in favor of trying new ideas.

Children and Goliath

A few weeks ago in chapel, Mr. Gross was talking about the story of David and Goliath to illustrate the power of the name of the Lord. As a visual, he brought in his daughter's Bible project, a cut-out of Goliath, as tall as the Bible says he was. Everyone was impressed.

Day 101

Today we made necklaces with 101 Froot Loops (well, technically they were Fruity Os or something like that). First everyone had to count out 100 pieces with the aid of a 100 grid. Then came the fabulous fine motor task of stringing them. Lastly was the fun part: eating!
And in case you ever need to know, a 12 oz box makes 12 necklaces with a few pieces to spare.

David and Goliath

It's amazing what happens when you give children the choice between regular and BIG paper... the enthusiasm grows exponentially and some children then spend a much longer time working on their pictures. This was our art project from Monday: draw part of our Bible story about David and Goliath (there was a sample on the board, but since it was my artwork, it was not stellar). I loved how they turned out and had a hard time just choosing 1 or 2, so here are about half of them.

I love that Goliath is a stick person with shorts and either clouds or muscles on his arms.
This child spent a long time working
Great detail!

Goliath's speech bubble says "I summon"
This Goliath just makes me laugh. I love it!
I think this is the only child who included part of the Israelite army behind David

100 Day!

Math this morning: we had 3 jars, labeled A, B, and C filled with unifix cubes. We had to estimate if each one was 100, more than 100, or less than 100. Then we divided into groups to count the blocks, first grouping them by 10s.
Our 100 day collections: pennies were popular this year.

These looked and smelled really yummy!



10 rows of 10




I learned what gogos are...these:

Getting ready for our 100 day snack - yummy!
10 pretzels
+10 pieces dried fruit
+10 Cheez-Its
+10 goldfish crackers
+10 peanuts
+10 craisins
+10 m&ms
+10 raisins
+10 chocolate chips
+10 marshmallows
= 100 things to eat!
We read 100 letters and words together! (the blocked out part is names of students/teachers)Movement time: taking (trying anyway) to take 100 baby steps 100 giant steps100 jumpstossing a ball with a partner 100 times
End of the very busy, very fun, counting-full day, wearing our 100 day badges and hats with 100 stickers.
On the agenda for tomorrow, making necklaces with 101 Froot Loops!

100 reasons for thanks

Our Bible time was a little different today. Instead of hearing a story, I posed the question, "What are you thankful for?" We worked together to make a list of 100 things for which we are thankful - things God made or did or has given to us. This was surprisingly hard for some children, so it reaffirmed that being thankful is something we need to consciously work on. We tried to think of 100 different things, but there are a few repeats (for example Johnny is thankful for his mom, but Mary is also thankful for hers). So without further ado, the list:
1. Being at school with all my friends
2. He made the toys
3. my mom
4. Macy
5. flowers
6. the world and everything on it
7. my 2 dogs
8. my sister
9. my baby sister
10. my mom and dad
11. my baby brother
12. a family
13. my sister, my dad, and myself
14. that we can all have a wonderful time when we die up in heaven
15. the weather
16. that we can go up in heaven and have fun
17. my school
18. that I could have a house
19. all the teachers
20. my family
21. holidays
22. my family
23. all our friends
24. He gave us a lot of games and friends
25. frogs
26. that we have all sorts of weathers
27. that we have all sorts of seasons
28. everybody can have a good day at school
29. bees to give us flowers
30. soft and cuddly snow
31. my mom and my dad and my house
32. everybody in the world
33. bugs
34. the whole world
35. flowers
36. all the animals and Adam and Eve
37. my rat
38. God
39. the school
40. the snowmans
41. for Him
42. the universe
43. all the wonderful food
44. being healthy
45. I can grow tall
46. our mom and dads
47. the workers so they can make money
48. for China and the whole entire state
49. our teachers
50. money so we can buy stuff and not be poor
51. trees
52. President
53. snow
54. water
55. honey
56. the Bible
57. that I lost 2 teeth
58. someday that I'm going snowboarding
59. that God gave us sledboards so we can sled on the ice
60. pets
61. He gave us all brothers and sisters
62. snowflakes
63. everybody here
64. that we can be teached by teachers
65. our school
66. my friends
67. my bed
68. He's made me a good soccer player
69. for my sister
70. animals
71. ground (otherwise we wouldn't have anything to stand on)
72. food
73. our toys
74. our houses
75. cousins
76. aunts
77. I can see a real mouse
78. sky
79. He made Kindergarten
80. weather
81. my shoes so I don't get too much sand on my feet
82. He made all the wonderful stuff on the Earth
83. that I can play kickball
84. that God made the Israelites get across from the running rivers
85. the Christian school
86. today (1oo Day)
87. babies
88. grownups
89. children
90. our skin so people don't have to see all your blood
91. home
92. He made the alphabet
93. He made my family
94. air so we can breathe
95. that I can be here with all my friends
96. legs
97. snowflakes
98. songs
99. Psalm 23
100. numbers

It's a pretty good list, isn't it? So, what are you thankful for? And did you have a favorite?

Gung hay fat choy!

Happy Chinese New Year! We had a very brief social studies lesson on this today and made a cool Chinese paper craft. The new decorations hanging caused some excitement, but the twirly paper craft was even more exciting.
Another center this morning was practicing writing numbers (stamping and tracing)
And Ll is for lacing cards (also known as fine motor skills)

Indoor icy fun (picture heavy)

Ice activity: freeze plastic animals in water in an ice cube tray then tell children to rescue the animals. Super easy, super fun, super wet table afterward :)
They used some of the same strategies they tried earlier this week when we just observed ice and helped it melt: rub it, breathe on it, drop it to break it.Then we brought out the hammers.
We pretended it was an iceberg...
While the class was in PE, I gathered a bucket of clean snow from the mound outside and brought it inside so we could build snowmen inside. It was harder for the children than I expected, but overall they enjoyed it. We went back to observe them several times throughout the day. We divided into three groups; your child will probably remember which is their snowman.

Group 2
Step 1: building the snowman (noonish)
Step 2: observing ('without touching it' - this was the hard part) it about a half hour later. This group has a castle in the background and I think the snowman was actually a snow alien, at least for a while.
2:15ish observe and illustrate/write in science notebook
3:20 end of day
6pm
Group 1 building. They wanted to have lots of snow around their snowman.
12:30
2:15
3:20
6:00
Group 3 building
12:302:15
3:20
6:00