Fall Festival is tomorrow!

 Our class and YOU received this thank you for all your contributions for Fall Festival.

We did an Animal Action song for a little movement between writing activities today.

Dance around!

"If you're a kid, dance around..."
We have had a LOT of fun with this during movement time this week (we usually try to do at least a few minutes of movement between our reading and writing time otherwise it's too much sitting down in a row)

And a few girls in pink working on a new science center, making magnets 'float'.

Spiders and spirals and shadow tag and such (Ss week)

 Cutting spirals to work on some fine motor skills.

Our science experiment: there is double-sided sticky tape made into a web on the tray.  We tried to slide our fingers across the web, but it was tricky.  Then we dipped our fingers in oil and we could slide all over the web without getting stuck - just like a spider since God made spiders with special feet so they don't get stuck!

 We rolled a ball of string around the carpet to build a spider web, which we walked around on.

Then we sang a silly song about elephants dancing on a spider web (the song seemed new to everyone, but they enjoyed it)

We ended today by playing shadow tag outside.  Do you see the dinosaur shadow?

(And can you tell these pictures were taken on yellow and green day?  I love all the bright colors)

Graduation!

 Memory verses above, watching the slide show below

 Plant song

 Penguin Dance!!!

 The official stuff

 Just plain cute

 We're done!  Time for a party :)

All pictures courtesy of Tom Bakker

Juggling Scarves

Especially on days like today (when we have extra long music since we were practicing for Friday's concert), it is important to incorporate some movement in the day, so between reading and journal time we did a little juggling!

Right Before Break

Using our new alphabet beads to write words
Here is our reading bulletin board all about places to read, things to read about, and a Seuss hat with all the Dr. Seuss books we have already read
And, a few minutes before break we did the tooty-ta. Doesn't it look fun?

Fabulous Friday!

We ended the day outside with our buddies. In preparation for next week's Kids BEneFIT we tried out the obstacle course, but with a twist - you had to hold hands with your buddy the whole time :)
They started by weaving between the swings.
Next, going through the hippo (these buddies had 3 people connected!)
Across the balance beam (there were various methods)Up the stairs, down the slide, and run back.
Repeat 3 times. After that warm-up we took out the parachute and did an arm exercise: shaking the parachute until all the balls popped off. We did this twice. The first time took quite a while, but the second time involved more strategizing and was much quicker.
We did some other games, and of course made several domes.

Ending the wintery fun

Today we did a few fun movement activities I picked up at the conference yesterday. They're good for a break from all that hard listening work, and they enhance the general attitude of the classroom. The favorite was probably the penguin dance. As one student noted, "It's like Father Abraham" (except sillier). You can see it performed by Jack Hartmann here.

At the end of the day we had a special end-of-winter-theme activity. We removed all the nametags, table group names, etc. from the tables and then I gave each child some 'snow' (shaving cream). We practiced the letter Kk, since a few children had difficulty with it earlier this week. Then they just drew and wrote whatever they wanted. They were so excited about this. Some children noticed that if they clapped their hands together, it looked like it was snowing, because the shaving cream would fly everywhere. I have heard that shaving cream is beneficial for cleaning tables, but I remain unconvinced because of all the residue it leaves. Oh well, it was so fun that it was worth it.