March 3rd Week Part B

March 20 - Fun Day

Today was a super easy day. I only had one student and I let her choose what she wanted to do from a list of activities that I had planned. The list consisted of things that we had not gotten done in previous weeks.

First she decorated the sliding glass door with Spring window clings. I am finding that the students are taking ownership of the classroom as they are allowed to make decisions about where things should go. They really like making our window cling bulletin board.

The first choice was to do the jelly bean experiment. Today I did not have a worksheet to put into their Science journal and my student was very disappointed. I quickly got out the laptop and created a worksheet to record our data. We placed a black jelly bean in 1 - water; 2 - salt water; 3 - baking soda and water; and 4 - vinegar. Our question was which liquid would have the quickest and greatest effect on the jelly bean.

After 30 minutes the jelly bean in the salt water had started to dissolve, we observed a white film on top of the water and all of the color had come off the jelly bean. While our jelly beans continued to soak

my student chose to color a Wizard of Oz wooden plaque. She chose the good witch.

For snack we made a "Cat in the Hat" hat from sliced strawberries and bananas stacked on top of an Oreo cookie (saw a picture on google images). We also had celery with peanut butter and a different recipe of Pink Ink Drink (just a strawberry and banana smoothie).

We worked on a baking experiment, Cool Whip Cookies. They were super easy to mix up, a bit messy to roll in the sprinkles and nuts, and just delightful to eat. This project took most of our time. We put 3 tablespoons of each sprinkle into separate bowls. We measured the dough by the teaspoon as we put the dough into the bowls of sprinkles. The dough was sticky and some of it stuck to our fingers. After all the cookies were rolled and on the cookie sheet she got to lick her fingers. YUM!!!

While the cookies baked we finished up our jelly bean experiment. We had measured the jelly bean before placing them in the liquid and then measured them after they had sat in the liquid for about 2 hours. We discovered that all the sugar had dissolved (to include the color) from off the jelly bean and all we were left with was the gelatin. Looking back I think we should have used millimeters not inches for our measuring. The concept of writing a fraction was not understood at all.

Homework was taking a Buddy Book Bag home and doing a jelly bean taste testing experiment with their family.

March 3rd Week Part A

March 18 - St Patrick's Day Celebration

 

 Our St. Patrick's Day celebrations started off as we decorated the sliding glass door with St. Patrick's Day window clings (purchased at The Dollar Tree). As the students put the clings on the window we chatted about the significance and/or legend of each item. Four year old children are like little sponges, they absorb so much information as long as it is presented in a fun or interesting manner. Putting the window clings on the window was a great hands on activity while we learned the history and legends.

We talked about shamrocks, harps, parades, Leprechauns, wearing green, rainbows, and the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow.  As we talked one student shared that they had a naughty Leprechaun that came and peed in the toilet (green water) at her house.

 So they asked if they could see if a Leprechaun did any tricky things around my house. It was a great way to burn off some energy. Much to their dismay there were no signs of Leprechaun shenanigans.

We learned a cute little shamrock finger play I used the words and created my own sheer for our class song book. We started to listen to Tim Tebow read "Green Eggs and Ham" but we weren't able to watch the whole thing. Not sure if it was my internet connection or just my laptop struggling.

We decided to do a quick race with our own plate of  green eggs (plastic egg) and ham (green bean bag.

The students tried to walk quickly carrying the plate in front of them and also trying to balance it on their head. Balancing green eggs and ham on your head was more difficult than the students thought. One decided that it was easier (and you could walk faster) if you just carried the plate.
 

We used our pocket die to do some St. Patrick's Day graphing. The first part of the activity was predicting which symbol we might roll the most often. We quickly reviewed the symbols and started rolling. Each student rolled the die and then graphed their results.

 After each student had 10 rolls we compared their results.We checked their prediction to see if they were correct. We looked to see if they had rolled the same number of any of the symbols. It was interesting to analyze the data and discover that neither one had rolled a green hat and that both had rolled the same number of harps.

For snack we took canned biscuits and made Shamrock biscuits. We smashed (flattened) the biscuit...

Then we used heart shaped cookie cutters to make the leaves. We made three leaves for each Shamrock. We then gathered up the left over dough and rolled it in to a stem.

Next we rolled each piece of the shamrock in green sugar and carefully placed them on the cookie sheet.

This is our finished product. We used all the dough and some of the green sugar was stuck on our fingers and it got mixed up in the shamrocks. So they were green through and through. We drizzled some honey on top and they made a wonderful snack. We added orange carrot sticks, white cheese stick, and apple juice to complete the snack.

 After snack we played Go for the Gold Race. The object of the game is to add the dots on both dice and come up with the sum and then mark that number off your column. Both students are rolling and adding at the same time, they can only mark off the sum once. The winner is the one who marks off all the numbers in their column first. There were some tense moments as they both were counting out loud and mixing up the other student. We solved it by counting using a whisper voice.

 The students continued having fun playing a quick game of Green eggs and Ham Tic-Tac-Toe Game. They understand the basic rules of the game but they lacked the understanding of the strategy behind the game. So I talked them through each move that they might make and let them make their own play.

As we waited for the moms to arrive we wrote some St. Patrick's Day words.

Homework was three worksheets. They were to do two Lucky Charms Activities  first an Observation sheet and then a Graphing activity using the marshmallows. Of course the best part was to eat the cereal as they did the worksheets and then eat the marshmallows! The third worksheet was a Sight word coloring sheet.

March 2nd Week Part B

March 13th - Dr. Seuss

Today we read "Yertle, the Turtle." To help keep their interest in this rather long story I made little turtles from egg cartons that they could stack them as the story progressed.

They had trouble stacking all twelve turtles but enjoyed the challenge. The students spent quite a while playing with the turtles as we talked about how Mack might have felt being on the bottom of the stack and holding the weight of all the turtles.

To keep in the spirit of Dr. Seuss we made our own Seuss characters. We made Thing 1 and Thing 2 puppets from tongue depressors. This was an interesting craft for the students. They didn't quite grasp the concept of using the natural wood for the face. They insisted on coloring it white and then trying to draw a face over the white crayon. It would have worked better if we had used paint instead of crayon.

Next, we started a picture walk through "Cat in the Hat;" but because the students knew the story so well (having read the book and watched the movie) our picture walk ended up as a student retell. After the story, we started a Cat in the Hat pop-up puppet.

The students were getting hungry so we found a good place to stop the craft and had snack. For snack we ate Dr. Seuss Snack Mix, a clementine, and apple juice. One student did not like the snack mix. It was not as sweet as I had expected it to be, I used Lime flavored jello and that may have altered the taste making it a bit tart.

 For out door play we placed cones around the  yard and did a "Cat in the Hat" race pretending to be Thing 1 and Thing 2. The object was to run a complete circle around each cone and then race to the next cone. To help them remember which cones they had circled, they were to knock down the cone after circling it.

With most of our wiggles out we went back to finish our Cat in the Hat pop up puppets. The students found it difficult to get glue on the whole strip and then onto the hat before the glue dried up. So we modified the process and only placed glue on about 1" at each end. That way we could attach one end, wrap the strip around the hat, and attach the other end with fresh glue.

 While the students were diligently working on their hats I put clear packing tape on the front of their cat stack and taped a small dowel to the back. The tape went the full length of the cat stack as a make shift lamination, to help lengthen the life of the puppet.

To finish off the day we did two literacy stations. This one is using the Cc book, the student used the word strips to make sentences to read. The book served as a guide to help identify the correct word for the picture.

The second literacy station was letter matching tiles. There are some Dr. Seuss characters. The student was to look at the lower case letters on the card and cover it with the upper case tile.

Homework was a worksheet "On a Rainy Day" and another Dr. Seuss's ABC book activity. This time the student and an older sibling or parent will go on a scavenger hunt. The older sibling/parent would write the name of the item then together they were to create an adjective that starts with the same letter, for example: angry apple.

March 2nd Week Part A

 Theodor Seuss Geisel March 4, 1904 - September 24, 1991.

March 11 - Happy Birthday Dr. Seuss

This week we will be celebrating Dr. Seuss's birthday. We started off by learning the first verse of a cute Happy Birthday Dr. Seuss song. Then we read his very first book "And to Think I Saw It on Mulberry Street." This book was rejected by 27 different publishers before one was willing to publish it. He wrote this book the same year he and his wife found out that they could not have children. (this information is from seussville.com) This was the humble beginning of my favorite author.

As an extension of the book we made our own spy glass, to see what we might see on our street. We decorated our spy glass with shape stamps and stickers. Our spy glass was a paper towel tube covered with decorated construction paper.

We continued our birthday celebration by singing Happy Birthday Dr. Suess and having a wonderful snack. Snack was Peanut Butter and Jelly Muffins with carrot sticks and Pink Ink Drink (I used 2% milk,  strawberry yogurt, and added a couple drops of red food coloring to get a nice pink color).

After snack we took our spy glasses out side. As we were getting dressed for the chilly weather, one of the students said, "I hypothesis that I will see a road outside." The other one chimed in and said, "I hypothesize that I will see a sign." (I just love the way they have incorporated the word "hypothesis" into their daily language.) Not to be left out I made my own hypothesis, that I would see trees and grass. Dressed and ready we went out to see just what we could see on our street.We didn't see any of the wonderful things that Marco saw on his street.

Each of our hypothesises were correct, we did see a road, street signs, grass and trees. One student commented that we are getting to be very good scientists. We had to cut our outing short because the wind kicked up and started blowing the snow into our eyes.

Inside we learned how to do a new word station. We have been talking about word families, words that all have the same last name (letters) just like our families. This is the "at" family. There is a blank line in front so that we can add the first letter to the word, then we read the new family name. This was especially interesting to one student who has a baby (family member) at her house. She made the connection that her baby's first name is different from hers but they both have the same family name. We did the work station together, taking turns adding a new first letter and then reading the new word. They are excited to be able to do it on their own next time.

Next we read "Mr. Brown Can Moo! Can You?" Since both students are familiar with the book they were able to join in the reading. We made the sounds of each picture as we made our way through the book.

As a book extension we did a roll and graph activity. The die for the activity only had words which I thought might be hard for the students to follow, but once again they surprised me. After a couple of rolls with my help reading the words the students read the first letter of the word, looked at the picture, and then guessed what that word might be based on the sounds that each picture would make. They were very accurate with their guesses. Each student did their own chart and then we compared the different results with questions: Which one of yours has the most? The least? Does any have the same? etc.

Homework was to make a Dr. Seuss Cootie Catcher. I demonstrated how the cootie catcher works first on my fingers, but they couldn't see clearly what my fingers were doing. So we practiced without the cootie catcher, just made the finger movements and they got it. They were able to actually make the cootie catcher work. The second bit of homework was to read "Dr. Seuss's ABC" book. As the book was being read to them they were to a Gross Motor Challenge. They could create their own gross motor activity for each letter.

March 1st Week Part B

March 6 - Maps

 

We have been working on left, right, and opposite hand / foot combinations. We have been giving directions including on the left side or turn right to get to an object. So learning a little bit about maps seemed like a logical direction to go. (No pun intended.) We had a brief discussion that on a map it is important to indicate which direction is north to help us get our bearings (knowing which direction to go). One of the students mentioned that on a pirate map they saw an arrow with a N on it. 

Both of the students have played with doll houses that have the back wall of the house missing so they can play with the dolls and furniture. We used that as a reference to help grasp the concept of map making. We talked about how our room might look if we were giants and took the roof off of our classroom so we would look at it from the top. Kind of like looking into a shoe box.

As any good topographer, we did a preliminary scan of the room to get a mental picture of where everything is placed in the room. We came back together so that we could make a map of our classroom. We started off with the immovable objects in the room. First we placed the long narrow rectangle that represented the fireplace on the map. I asked where the fireplace was in the right corner? Or in the left corner? The answer was that it was kind of in the middle of the wall.Next we added the doors and the stairs. With the permanent objects placed, the students got to pick out a colored shape from the bowl (each shape had been labeled) and decide where that object was in the room. Then place it on our classroom map. (We saved gluing the pieces down until we were satisfied that everything was in its' proper place.)

The students struggled a bit at first with a two dimensional representation of a three dimensional object. Once they understood, they really got excited and we spend a lot more time making the map than I had planned. The little red circle (a stool) by the brown rectangle (our group work table) was actually under the table and so it had to be moved  out from under the table so that it would show up on the map. This is the finished product. It is a fairly good representation of our classroom. There is one of the red milk crates that is IN the door way and not against the wall like it should be. But, se la vie, they are just learning and I think that they did an awesome job.

Because we had spent so much time (just over an hour) working on the map, I decided to have a simple snack of cheese sticks, Wheat Thin crackers, and apple juice. My original idea was to roll out peanut butter dough (the base of the map), add chocolate chips (mountain range), licorice laces (roads), and mini M & M's (cities) and make a map.

After snack, while the students did their jobs, I had some extra time to work one on one with the students and we did a quick science experiment. They were to answer the question "Will an ice cube melt faster in my bare hand or on my hand with a mitten?" Both of my students thought that it would melt faster on the mitten. After some consideration, I came to the conclusion that since we have talked about insulation on animals to keep them warm, they were confused. Our other science experiments dealt with shortening on our finger to insulate it from the cold and mittens to keep our hands warm in the snow.

 

Outside we practiced flying the airplanes that we had made a couple of weeks ago. We flew the to see which plane went the furthest, the straightest, and which one would hit our cone target. First we flew our plane, then marked it's landing place with a cone, and tried to fly it farther than our cone. One of the students thought that we needed to make the planes fly higher to make them go farther. So ...

 we had a brief discussion about safety (keeping both feet on the deck bench at all times) we headed up onto the deck to fly our planes from higher ground.

They took aim at their furthest cone and with all the umph they could muster, they flew their airplane. Unfortunately they released the plane too far down on their arch so the planes went straight down. I suggested that instead of aiming for the ground they should aim toward a branch on the tree and throw it higher. This help get more distance on the planes, but it didn't help with the aim. I guess we need more practice.

For free play they decided that if one flew their plane and the other student cheered them on the planes would fly better. So a chair was placed at the bottom of the stairs for the cheering section and the other student went up on the deck to fly their plane. Then they traded places. It really warms my heart to watch them when they are so supportive with each other.

To finish off the day we got our Math/Science journal and copied the words that labeled our airplane.

Homework was to make a map of their bedroom; mostly where the bed(s) was (were), placement of the dresser(s), and any other pieces of furniture.The other homework was a Book Buddy Bag and a worksheet, Alligator Appetites.