Monday, September 28, 2015

A IS FOR APPLE

Apples was our classroom theme last week.  We learned all about how an apple starts out as a tiny seed.  That tiny little seed gets planted in the dirt and we make sure it gets watered.  With all the love and care, the seed will grow into a big tree that will produce the apples that we eat.  Inside each apple are more apple seeds to start the process all over again so we won't ever run out of apples!  One of our projects this week was creating our own apple tree and counting as many apples as we could to go on our tree.  Mrs. Knudsen brought in some apples for snack time and we each were able to take a turn with the apple peeler.  This was a BIG hit with everyone!  The apple peeler not only peeled the apple for us, but cut the apple in a circle and made the apple look like a spring.  We all thought it was hilarious when the "apple spring" jumped right out of Mrs. Knudsen's hands and onto the floor!!!  Our other project this week was taking a half of an apple that Mrs. Knudsen cut in half and dipping it in red paint.  It was a lot of fun to paint with our apples too!



We all go to Mrs. Southard individually to do our projects each day.  While patiently waiting for her to call us over, we have so much fun playing with different things in our classroom each day.  We are all playing together and creating new things with our new friends.  The pictures below are just a couple of our favorite things to do together while we wait for our project time.




Thursday, September 24, 2015

KOALA BEARS, KANGAROOS AND DIDGERIDOOS, OH MY!!!



Last week we learned that Koala Bears aren't really bears at all...they are Marsupials.  Marsupials have a pouch to carry their babies.  Everyone loved learning the new word and saying it over and over.  We went over some other animals that are Marsupials as well, like the Kangaroo.  On Friday, we made a special treat that Kangaroo's would like.  We decided we liked them too!


A didgeridoo is a musical instrument that was developed in Northern Australia many, many years ago.   They are made out of the hollow trunk of a tree and decorated with paint.  We made our own special version of the Didgeridoo with the colors of paint that we liked the best!  All these things we have been doing are really helping to strengthen our fine motor skills.  It takes a lot of muscles to have control and hold crayons and paint brushes the correct way.  We can already see a difference in the whole class just in the short time we have been at school!  Keep practicing at home by following the guidelines on the sheets that went home in the book bags!

ALL ABOUT DINOSAURS

Over the last couple of weeks we have discussed everything there is to know about Dinosaurs.  We talked about how they liked to roam around and hang out by volcano's.  When the volcano's erupted, the HOT lava flowed faster than they could run, so they would die and their bones would become fossils.  We re-enacted what happened with our own volcano and dinosaurs and then we made our own dinosaur fossils.



The next thing we discussed was how the fossils were found.  We all learned that the people that dig up the dinosaur bones were called Paleontologist's.  That's a hard word to pronounce, but after a few tries, we all learned how to say it!!!  We became Paleontologist's and did our own digging and found a lot of dinosaurs and fossil's ourselves!




Wednesday, September 9, 2015

PAINTING WITH MUD

Everyday when we come in, we get our morning work of coloring and cutting out of the way.  Once we are done with our work, we put it in our book bags and then we can play with the items on the table.  We can't wait to come in every morning and see what new things we get to do!


After our morning work is done, it's time for Circle Time.  Every morning we pick our line leader with the help of our "Helper Hanger".  The line leader then comes to the front of our group and holds up the American Flag while we recite the Pledge of Allegiance and sing Salute the Flag.  We are getting so good at memorizing them both!





Today at school we made MUD and for our project we painted a picture with it!  In order to make the mud first we had to have the dirt.  Next we had to add water to make the mud.  In order for our mud to stay in place on our cardboard, we had to add some glue from the great big bottle of glue!  Everyone took a turn to help mix it all together so we could paint our cardboard with it!







With all of the rain we had lately, we take every chance we get to burn some of our extra energy on the playground.  Everyone plays really well together and has so much fun!








Tuesday, September 8, 2015

OUR FIRST WEEK OF PRESCHOOL

The first week is always a busy week.  We work on getting to know our classmates and what is expected of us at school each day.  Here's a few pictures from our Get Acquainted Day.  As you can see, if there were any tears at drop off, they quickly were wiped away and everyone started having fun.





Once the rain stopped we were FINALLY able to go out on the playground!  It's a big hit with everyone and we love to run and play with all of our new found friends.





We worked on a few of our projects.  We made our calendars by gluing down our dinosaurs, volcano's and monthly blessing.  The best part about our calendars was making the lava flow out of our volcano's!  We also made our monthly place mats that we eat our snack on every day.  We are working on our name recognition by everyone having to find the place mat with their name on it.  This month it also has their picture on it to help them put their face with their names.




With a few rainy days, the playground has been closed so we have had to find some other fun activities to do in the classroom.  The help us develop our muscles in our fingers, we played with the Play-Doh and cookie cutters.  We had a lot of fun rolling it out with our rolling pins and learning how to make is spread out with just our hands.  We also were able to get some of our wiggles out by leaning "The Car Song".  Mrs. Knudsen made up some really funny moves to the words in the song and we all love driving our cars!  One of the rainy days, Mrs. Knudsen made a BIG MESS on the carpet with A LOT of really small bugs.  We decided to help her clean them up using our tweezers, and we didn't even realize how we worked our fine motor skills by helping her!!!



We all love snack time and the yummy treats we get each day.  Some of the snacks not all of us have tasted before, but everyone is always up to try something new!  How awesome is that?  


 Lastly, I think our most favorite activity from our first week was our Pete the Cat books.  We all just laughed and laughed at that silly Pete and his school shoes!