CENTERPIECES

Here's a look at all of the tedious work it took us to make our special centerpieces.  There were several steps involved and we took a lot of time making them just right with the perfect amount of decorations on them.  Of course, like any good centerpiece, we must NOT light them.  They are for decoration only.  I have no doubt that your child was sure to tell you that when they brought theirs home.

NOVEMBER BULLETIN BOARDS

During November we also learn about Thanksgiving and what that means, who celebrated the First Thanksgiving and of course all about TURKEYS!!!  Mrs. Knudsen and Mrs. Southard had the best time asking what each student was thankful for.  I think you will love the responses as much as we did.

Each month, the bulletin board in the hallway is done by a different class.  November was the month for our class to show off their artwork for the school.  We used our Spin Art Turkeys to decorate along with some pretty fall leaves and our friendly Scarecrows.

ACORNS AND SQUIRRELS

November was the month for Acorns for sure.  We learned all about the different parts of the acorn and what the inside of the acorn is like as well.  

Since we learned so much about the acorns, where they come from and which animals eat them, it only made sense that we make a Squirrel with his favorite snack!

Our finished projects were too cute all sitting on the table together!!!

We all LOVE to pick up the acorns while we wait patiently at carpool so we went on a little Acorn Hunt on one of the few sunny days we had.  In fact, some of you may have quite the collection in your cars at this point!

RAIN RAIN GO AWAY

We've had several rainy days in a row this year and haven't been able to get on the playground to get all of our wiggles out like we normally do.  Most of the time, we can change our plans up and go outside first so we are able to get our playground time in before the rain.  Sometimes we aren't so lucky.  So what do you do with 14 3 year old's when it's too wet to go outside???  You play popcorn with the parachute in the classroom!!!  This was the first time we have done it and it was such a huge hit with everyone!!!

HAPPY HALLOWEEN

HAPPY HALLOWEEN 2015

We all had such a great time Trick or Treating at Summer Breeze in our fabulous costumes!  Thank you to all of our Mom's and Dad's that came to help for our Class Halloween Party.  The food and treats were really yummy!

OUR CLASSROOM PUMPKIN PATCH

We have our very own Pumpkin Patch on the bulletin board in our classroom.  Everyone has their very own Pumpkin in our patch!  One of our favorite things at morning circle time is to find our name in the patch.  You never know where your pumpkin might move to overnight.  This is just a fun way for us to really learn our name recognition.  You would be surprised that we not only are learning our names, but we are learning what our friends names look like too!!!

Any day that it's not raining or the playground isn't too wet we get in our playground time!  The class is really learning to play with so many of our friends from other classes as well as our own.  Here's a really cute picture that I snapped the other day of our little firefighters responding to a call!

PETE THE CAT

The most favorite character in our classroom is hands down Pete The Cat.  We read Pete the Cat books during circle and the children just laugh and laugh at that silly old cat!  Since they love him so much Mrs. Knudsen decided that we would make our own Pete the Cat Hats to wear!!!  This was a great way to let the children look at the example and put all of the parts on themselves right where they thought they should go.  Everyone's Pete the Cat is just the way they saw the example through their own eyes.  As Pete the Cat says "It's All Good!"

BULLETIN BOARD BATS

This month our bulletin board outside our classroom will be taken over by BATS!!!!  Everyone was very excited to start making our bats.  First we had to start out by choosing which color wings, eyes, nose and bow or bow tie we wanted our bat to have!  Some have the same color for everything while others have a different color for each item.  They are all different and made to fit our unique personalities just right!

We let the glue dry overnight and then the next day we had to decorate them with tiny little stars.  Picking up the tiny stars and placing them in the glue helped us strengthen those important muscles in our fingers.

Mrs. Southard forgot to take a picture of the updated bulletin board for the blog.  I will try to remember to do that in the next couple days.  In the meantime, feel free to walk in with your child to check out the new board with our bats!  They are very proud of their artwork!

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.

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!

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!