Friends Around the World and "O" Week

This week our unit was scheduled to be "Friends Around the World" and the letter "O".  If I have learned nothing else from teaching pre-school for the last 16+ years, I have learned that things change!  And change they did this week!   I did start off the week planning to stick to my lesson plan of "Friends Around the World" by talking about the amazing country of Italy and Leonardo Da Vinci.  We looked at the beautiful flag of Italy and discussed the meaning of each of the colors.

Green - Hope, Joy and Love

White - Peace and Honesty

Red - Hardinesss, Bravery, Strength and Valour

But of course if you are a preschooler, when you see an Italian flag you automatically think of Francesco Bernooulli!

Ahhhhhh, the power of media!

We also talked about Michelangelo his wonderful sculptures and art.  I had several wonderful pictures of the Sistine Chapel and the students loved looking at them.  It's fun to look at pictures of great art, but how about let's make some Michelangelo art of our own!  We hit the floor for this lesson and drew UNDER the tables! (Edited because this crazy teacher wrote Leonardo de Vinci instead of Michelangelo!)

As soon as I said "u"nder the tables, several students yelled "under starts with U"!  OHHHHHH they remembered last week's letter of the week, "U"!  A sweet teacher moment for sure.  Some of the children would have stayed under the tables for the entire day, others spent only a few minutes on their art and they were ready to move on.  It didn't really matter because we all had a wonderful day!

Tuesday we talked about the letter "O".  We spent the making the "O" sound and laughing.  For some reason making the "O" sound is extremely funny.  It was a very happy day in our classroom.  We did a very impressive art project on Tuesday.  We started with a plain black piece of construction paper and covered it with chalk.

Next, we poured black paint on the bottom and let it run off the top of the paper.

Everyone loved letting the paint dripped into the garbage can!

After it dried we added a little owl, a moon and lots of stars!

The end results were nothing short of amazing!

It is hard for me to believe that these were done by 3 and 4 year old children!  

BUT THEY DID IT ALL BY THEMSELVES!

I'm ending this posts now because as I said earlier, "things change".  The rest of our week was devoted to Leap Year and good 'ole Dr. Seuss' Birthday.  

"O" Week and Healthy Habits

I was worried my class would have a let down after our big Valentine's party on Monday. After all we were just talking about "Healthy" (yawn) and the letter "O", so I decided to step things up a bit and have a little "extra" fun. I think I pulled it off!.

We started Tuesday off by introducing the letter "O". We walked around all day with hands in the air making a giant "O" AND we made the "O" sound all day (did I mention we did this ALL DAY!) Our craft for the day was a giant orange oval octopus! I cut out the large orange oval head and then the students cut out the legs.
Every student just beamed with pride as they glued on their legs! This was one of those days when you wish you had an audio recording of them to play back to their parents.
On Wednesday we touched on our discussion of "Health". Not a very exciting topic so I decided to make it a little more fun. We talked about our mouths and germs. After a very lengthy discussion, everyone FINALLY agreed that it was time to stop putting things in our mouths (we will see?). We made our own mouths -

I borrowed the idea from http://www.themotherhuddle.com/marshmallow-teeth/ and made a few changes. Everyone loved them!
On Thursday we decided to talk about our letter "O" again. The octopus was really fun and I knew he would be hard to beat. I am so sorry that I don't remember where I saw this, but it is so cute and everyone talked about it the entire day. First I let everyone rub chalk all over a black piece of construction paper. Then I let each student pour black paint onto their paper. Then they let it drip all the way down. We added our palm print for the moon and then glued a little owl cut out onto our tree. This project gave each child an amazing sense of "WOW, look what I did!" You just can't beat it!
By the time Friday rolled around we were ready to talk about healthy eating habits. Each child was asked to bring in a their favorite fruit. We washed it, cut in into small pieces and made the most delicious "Friendship Fruit Salad". It was a wonderful snack that promoted health and friendship! Since we were talking about things that were good for you to eat we made our wonderful healthy boy/girl. We had lots and lots of fun talking about the fruits and vegetables while we glued them to our papers.



I will admit that we had more fun then I expected this week. Everyone really seemed to enjoy the letter "O". I guess if it is fun, they will learn!
Next week will be one of my most favorite weeks - the letter "P" and "Our Country". I have so many wonderful surprises planned for my class, I hope you will stop back by.