February 4th Week Part A

February 25 - Bicycles, Tricycles, & Motorcycles

As the students arrived they noticed words already written on the white board. They were curious (our new favorite word, because curious kids ask lots of questions so they can get smarter) about what the words said. I complemented them on how quickly they noticed different things in the room and reminded them of their responsibilities. They quickly went to put away their coats and back packs but were distracted
 

by a new math work station on the side of the reading center. They eventually got everything where it needed to be and started the morning routine.

To start our morning meeting we looked at the words on the white board

Each word was written in a different color, I did not read the words to them but had the take a guess after each item was added to see when they knew what our topic of the day would be. We started with a purple rhombus (bike frame), then added a blue smile (handle bars), and a purple line to connect it to the frame.  We added a red oval for the shocks, orange circles (the wheels) and tan pinwheels inside for the spokes. By this time the students knew that we were drawing a bicycle. We used a black marker to add tires to the circles/wheels. I drew two light orange "L's" for the hand brakes, a sky blue jelly bean for the saddle, a green circle with a lazy "Z" for the pedal / mechanism, and a lime green dotted line for the bike chain.

Not a bad looking bike for an artistically challenged teacher.

For fun we read the book "Curious George Rides a Bike" by H.a. Rey. The students really like George and found this book very entertaining. They talked about how George's curiosity got him in trouble when he was riding his bike and didn't look where he was going.

After a short brain break we laced together our "My Transportation Book." A book I made using the concept from a book "Go, Car, Go! at www.dltk-teach.com/minibooks/transportation/. [DLTK's book did not have all the different forms of transportation that I have planned for this unit so I used their idea and created my own book.] I used KG Primary Dots Lined font so the students could practice writing the names of the different vehicles, giving them more ownership in the book. As we continue the transportation unit we will write the words for the vehicles that we discuss.

We nearly forgot about snack time, until we heard rumbles in a tummy. Fortunately all the different parts of the bike snack were all prepared and all we had to do was to assemble our bikes and add animal crackers and milk to complete the snack. I saw a lot of ideas for making a healthy bike snack by searching on Pinterest. Using the ideas I saw there we created our own bike form the ingredients that I had on hand. We used orange slices for wheels, string cheese and a baby carrot for the frame, carrot strips for the handle bars, and a Craisin for the saddle.

We put up play traffic cones to make an obstacle course for running through. As you can see from the picture the students did not understand fully the meaning of an obstacle course. They just sectioned off an area of the back yard with the cones. It was very cold outside, the sun had been shining and it deceived us into thinking it was warm. It was barely above freezing. We came in and did some opposite toe touches and some jumping jacks to help get the blood circulating.

Once our hands were warmed up we worked on tracing the vehicle words and writing the missing numbers in our new math work station. Before we knew it our time was up and mom had arrived.

The homework assigned was four different worksheets and a family activity. One worksheet was to  identifying bike parts on the bicycle from http://www.coloriages-enfants.com/rubrique-sports/jeux/jeux-cyclisme-03.php; the second was a bicycle dot to dot from http://www.kidspot.com.au/slideshow/Kids-games-hard-dot-to-dot+72+Bike-Dot-To-Dot+1031+slideshow-preview.htm; third was a scooter color by number from http://coloritbynumbers.com/printables/book/vehicles; and fourth was a self created worksheet where they need to label nine different parts of a bike. The family activity was to go for a bike ride with their family.