Calendar is one activity we do everyday during circle time. When we ask children why they think we need to do the calendar, they all say, "To know what day is today!" This week we focused particularly on the days of the week. We practiced the days of the week song and sang different varieties each day. We even read them in Spanish. (Our calendar cards are double-sided so the kids are frequently interested in that.) Some friends said that everyday is a day, but it is a different day. So true! They also told us all about what day of the week they go to the different extracurricular activities such as swimming, dance class, karate, etc. All through the week we worked on recognizing the days and knowing the order of the days beginning from Sunday to Saturday. We also practiced writing and recognizing the number seven on paper, on our fingers, tracing it in air, and even by counting each day!
Later during the week we made a seven-item salad and named each item with a day of the week.
Lettuce- Monday
Corn- Tuesday
Carrots- Wednesday
Cherry tomatoes- Thursday
Clementine oranges- Friday
Mini croutons- Saturday
Cheese- Sunday
Each friend got a turn to toss in one day of the week and complete the entire week with seven items/days...
We later enjoyed the healthy 'seven days of the week' salad...
Teddy Bear picnic...
This is a day that friends wished came every week. It is so much fun to come in with our lovies/ bears and spend the day with them feeling all cozy and hugged!
Each child got a chance to speak a little bit about his/her lovie and share about some special moments with them.
After that we put the children to taste test. We had three varieties of Teddy Grahams -- chocolate, honey, and birthday sprinkles. Yes the birthday sprinkle was a new colorful one and thus the most exciting one! However, in spite of the new variety, our friends tried them all one by one and worked really hard to think to chose one best flavor.
After the taste testing we made a graph of our best flavors! Of course, the birthday sprinkles took over, but we still had a few who were loyal to the taste of chocolate and honey :)
We ended the circle time by dancing with our lovies/bears on the 'teddy bear toss' and 'going on the bear hunt' songs...later we headed outside for our picnic!
A was super excited to show her teddy bear sandwich...
Enjoying our outside time with the soft lovies...
Well our fiends got too tired to clean up and so we decided to rest a little before taking on the cleanup task. Here we see friends resting on their bears and stretching and relaxing...
Other activities we got involved with during the week:
Continuing the ongoing project of double-sided plexiglass painting where friends drew each other and reiterated their entire experience...
Sensory with cornstarch and water...
It is like quicksand and things get buried as soon as you place it over the mixture...friends tried different materials from around the classroom, animals being the most common. They even pretended to sink their hands...
We even added water colors so see new color transformation - blue and yellow - that turned the mixture green. Friends loved to see the streaks of color and mix it all up...
They even poured it from one container to the other and kept exploring the materials and the mixture's consistency.
Another Experiment
The above cornstarch sensory experiment led us to do another color experiment. We decided to explore water, shaving cam, and food color to see what would happen. We filled a huge glass cylinder with water and what we first observed was magnification. Everything on the other side and in the water looked magnified...
We then added a layer of shaving cream on the surface of the water..we added a few drops of red food color and saw that....
...it poured down like rain and reached all the way to the base. We talked about the density of liquids which we usually do in every experiment that involves liquid...
Then we added blue food color...
Right away it started pouring down and mixing up turning the water purple...
We added the last basic color yellow, but since the water was dark purple already, it was hard to see the yellow pour down clearly...
We twirled the colorful cloud and discovered many new colors. The kids loved to see the streaks again...
we decided to save the pretty colors by taking a print of it on card-stock paper..
We repeated the same experiment with yellow and blue which gave us green..
We took a print of that one too...both were different and were great colorful as well as textured masterpieces...the kids told us all about their perception of this artwork. Some said it looks like rainbow, while for some it was animal prints. The interesting documentation of the step-by-step process and the rich imaginative thinking of our children in words is on the windows outside our room!
Making the Jewel land...
One day friends put together variety of animals using different shapes of wooden blocks. They told us all about why and how they made the animals as well as what they like to do together. Soon the big jar of jewels that we were using to decorate our animals fell on the floor and the entire floor looked sparkly. All the children sighed WOW! They wished that their animals could live here. This gave us an idea to make a jewel land -- a home for our wooden pet animals! Friends decorated the land and stuck jewels on contact paper. Then they made special homes using cups and bowls for their animals so that they could visit each other and have play dates and sleepovers.
E making a home for his animal...
K making a portrait of her animal by drawing what she sees..
S making a portrait of her animal too...I love the details the children chose to put in their drawings - whiskers, the right color of the jewel on the pets body, eyes, nose...
It is so much fun to see this group be together for a year and cruising towards another year ahead with addition of some new friends. We will be starting Pre-K the third week of September. Please be sure to arrive on time to get the best out of this great 30- 45 minutes program ( 9:15 to 10:00 am max).
Stay tuned for the 'Community Helpers week' info :)
Keep seeing you'll around,
Hugs,
Teacher Rashida.
