St. Patrick's Day 2014

 

HAPPY ST. PATRICK'S DAY everyone!  Even if you aren't Irish, it is fun to pretend!  Today we made these cute little leprechaun hats.  Everyone loved cutting out their our rainbow strips.  

Our letter of the week is "I" so we also ate green ice cream!  And by the look on everyone's faces it was very YUMMY!

 
I hope you all wore green so you didn't get pinched!  And I hope you all stop back by, we will be talking about INSECTS this week!  FUN!!!

Dr. Seuss Week!

WOW!  I do believe this was the greatest week EVER at school.  Okay, maybe not THE greatest, but I bet it was in the top 10!  Over the past several weeks the weather in central Alabama has been crazy.  Like most of the country, we have had a lot of snow AND ice.  Unlike most of the country, the people of central Alabama cannot function very well in snow and ice, so we have missed a lot of school.  But, this past week we were actually in school for 5 consecutive days, so we had fun talking about the wonderful Dr. Seuss! 

We started our unit by reading one of my all time favorite books, My Many Colored Days.  Of course everyone has to tell me their favorite color so after we read our book, we made our very own "colored day" project.

 

I'm not sure if you can tell by the pictures, but the background has different shades of colors.  We also used a lot of our "fun" paint brushes (i.e. scrubbers, rollers, craft sticks, scrappers, etc.).  This project is fun because the children always talk about their "favorite" color while painting.

 

Tuesday is a day reserved for our BIG projects.  We started our day by reading 10 Apples Up On Top.  Some of Dr. Seuss' books are long but my class didn't mind.  We all would squeal with excitement when we recognized words that rhyme.  Our art project for the day was very special.  First, we wrote the numbers one through ten on little apples cut from our wonderful Ellison machine.  Then we glued down a picture of ourselves and put those little apples right on top of our heads!

 

 

The end results were so fun and BIG!

 



Everyone loved carrying them home because they were "the biggest picture ever" (yes, that is a quote from precious little "S"!).

 

The next book we read was Horton Hears a Who.  I was really worried about the length of this book, but once again my class surprised me.  Everyone giggled when I changed voices with each character and again, they squealed when they heard words that rhymed.  Our project for the day was simple but fun.  We always have a fun day when we get out the scissors.  We cut our clover field and added little blossoms. 

 

Next, everyone cut out a stem for their clover and glued on their favorite color blossom. 

 

 



 I think everyone did a great job.

 

On Thursday we read a book that most of the class had not heard of, The Cat in the Hat Comes Back .  I think this was our favorite book (so far!) and we had fun putting together our very own "Cat in the Hat".

 

 

Of course, this project was BIG too, but no one seemed to mind!

 

We also had a very special snack on Thursday.  We read the book Green Eggs and Ham and made our very own!  I was afraid one little girl was going to cry when I said we would be eating green eggs but when she realized what we were doing, she came around.  First we made some good 'ole vanilla pudding, then we added green food coloring to it.

 

We started stirring . . . .

We dumped it on our plates . . . .

 

and added a yummy  Nilla Wafer . . . 

Super fun Green Eggs and Ham!

 

Our Fabulous Fun Friday came all too soon!  We started our day by reading The Cat in the Hat and as you can imagine, it was now our favorite!  We all loved Thing One and Thing Two!  They made us giggle, so we made our very own Thing One and Thing Two hair!!!   It was easy, we cut strips of light blue constructions paper

 

and well . . . see . . .

Aren't we cute?????

 

 



We wore them to eat our Dr. Seuss birthday cake which I did not take pictures of, sorry!  But it looked just like the one I did last year . . .

It isn't very fancy but everyone said it tastes really good!

We didn't have time on Friday to read all of Bartholomew and the Oobleck but we did spend some time looking at it and talking about oobleck.  Then we HAD to make our own oobleck, right???  Of course. 

At this point our day got really messy!  We had cornstarch ALL over the kitchen and ourselves.  But we had fun and that was all that mattered.

Thank you for visiting with us.  I hope you stop back again next week, we will be talking about the farm and all the wonderful animals who live there.

"U"nited We Stand!

This past week was all about the good 'ole USA and we had so much fun studying about our country!  We started the week with an amazing activity.  This is an art project I have done before BUT it has evolved.  My class cuts extremely well for 3 and 4 year olds so I let them cut their very own stripes for our flags.

Cutting 7 red stripes takes a lot of patience but my class was up to the challenge!  Gluing down the stripes was fun too!

We added fingerprints for our stars and the results were beautiful!

I think Betsy Ross would be very proud!

 

We also started talking about The Constitution.  Now I bet I know what you are thinking . . . is she kidding???  NOPE!  And my little sponges loved it.  We really just focused on the Preamble, you know the part that says, "We the people . . ".  We couldn't actually recite the Preamble but at least we got the first few words AND their meaning.  After all these years my class can still amaze me! 

 

Wednesday was spent talking about our first president, George Washington.  I shared fun facts and read wonderful books about him.  We even made our very own "George" art project.

 

Thursday was spent discussing our 16th president, Abraham Lincoln.  The fact that he lived in a log cabin had everyone talking!  So, of course we had to make our very own log cabin and Abraham Lincoln.

 

This time I cut the strips and the children glued them on.  I'm going to veer off topic for just a second (skip down to the next paragraph if you don't want to hear me rant.)  Do you see the "dried glue" on these (and ALL) of my class' art work???  Do you see the smeared handprint on the bottom photo???  Do you see the crooked eyes and logs???  This is proof that my students do their OWN WORK!  I cannot stand to see children's art work that looks . . . hmmm . . . well . . . like an adult did it!  Because if it does, then the child did not do it by him/herself.  Children are messy and they should be!  I will NOT do an art project for my students!!!  I will guide them, I will cheer them on, I will support them with every fiber of my being but, I WILL NOT do work for them.  OKAY, I done.  Back to our week . . .

We also learned about what it means to vote.  On Thursday, we pretty much voted on everything.  We voted on what color we like best.



You can see blue won by a landslide!

 

We voted on what books we read too!  I think everyone liked voting because I was asked if we could "keep doing it"!  YEA!  Success!

 

I found these cute little "Pledge Badges" over at Little Miss Kindergarten.  I enlarge ours and each child colored them.  (I KNOW . . . "Mrs. Karen's class actually used crayons!"  SHOCKER!)  Everyone was very proud to wear them in carpool!  Oh, yes, everyone in my class can and does recite the Pledge of Allegiance each and every day!

 



Our "Fabulous Fun Friday" was turned into our Unusual Day!  We have done this for several years and I do believe each year is more fun.  The children came in to find new books.  All the books about our country and the presidents were gone!  In their place were Christmas books, books about Thanksgiving and even books talking about summer!  AND our blocks were gone too!  I traded them in for . . . .

 

 

well, I don't really know what they are but they sure were fun to build with! Everything we did on Friday was unusual!  We even drew pictures under the tables!!!

After our unusual art work was finished we gathered in one of our "large" rooms and played a little under the table game.

Everyone seemed to enjoy crawling under the tables and over the chairs! 
This was our "U" week (you know . . . for United States of America)!  We had to eat something fun . . . red, white and blue cookies?  NOPE!  Uhhhh . . . how about Ugly cookies!  YEP, that sounds better!  We headed to the kitchen . . .

 

we put drops of EVERY color food coloring we had into the bottom of little cups.  Next everyone got a spoonful of vanilla icing.   Here comes the fun part . . . . . we stirred it up and spread it on our cookies!

 



 

We had some rather strange colors but no one minded because they tasted so good! 

 

Thank you for stopping by!  I hope you come back again.  Next week is our Dr. Seuss week and I'm sure it is going to be even more fun!

Transportation and "T" Week

AHHHHH!  "T" Week!  This is an exciting week for us and yes, it is ONE of my favorites.  Let me show you some of the terrific stuff we did during our "T"ransportation Week!

We started off the week reviewing the shapes we have been talking about and making our wonderful shape car!  This ended up being more fun than I expected because everyone got so excited when they recognized the shapes.  I know this is simple, but it was very fun and effective.

Tuesday is a day when I try and have "extra-fun" art for us because we do not have any of our "special" activities (i.e. Spanish, Music, Chapel) and that can make for a long day.  This Tuesday really was extra special because we started our day with SCISSORS!!!!  I have to admit that this class LOVES to cut with scissors and they are very good!  We cut and cut and made these adorable little sailboats.

Of course everyone got to pick their favorite colors!  While our sailboats were drying we started working on making some water for them to float in.

The water was really fun to make because we just squirted blue, green and white paint onto the paper and started mixing it up!  WOW, the results were amazing!  I love projects like this because the children are so proud of them.  Here are the final results!

 

Everyone had such a good time all week practicing our "T" sounds.  We decided our favorite "T" word was turtle so we decided to make one.



 He is very simple but look closely . . . .

there is a tic-tac-toe board on his back!!!

 

Our Fabulous Fun Friday was extra special this week!  We headed to kitchen was all of the plastic trucks and cars that I could find.

 

We had a great lesson in sharing and mixing colors!  Can you see the green????

 

Now, finally my favorite part of "T" week began . . . "T"ubes and "T"ape!!!  OH MY!!  This is the one of the best days ever!  All we did was collect lots, lots and lots of paper towel, toilet paper and even wrapping paper tubes.

(This is only a small portion of the tubes.)

 

My friend and co-worker, Mrs. Christi and I cut long sections of masking tape and the imagination took over!

 



Some were small, some were tall, some were just plain HUGE!  No one cared, we just had a great day.  My favorite part of this activity is seeing the children's faces as they proudly take their creations to their parents at the end of the day!!!!!

 

WOW, this was really a terrific week.  Thank you so much for visiting with us and I hope you stop back by again.