April / May Week Part A

April 29 - Dinosaurs ~ Extinction

In place of doing a puzzle the students wanted to categorize all of the dinosaurs in the toy box. So the carefully analyzed each dinosaur and decided whether they were a carnivore or an herbivore.

We read the book Ten Little Dinosaurs. The students really enjoyed the finger puppets that go along with the book. The story is similar to 5 Little Monkeys jumping on a bed.

After the story we played some more dinosaur games so they could learn the rules. The students will be taking the games home over the weekend in place of the Book Buddy Bags. The first game was Dino Flip Five by Briar Patch.

The second game was Dino Dominoes by Great American.

The third game was Dinosaur Card Game by International Games.

For free play one student chose to play with the dinosaurs, one wanted to be a cowgirl, and the other one decided to be a fireman and turn our car into a fire engine. I just had to share this picture.

For snack we dug for dinosaurs, a slice of cheese that we cut with a dinosaur cookie cutter, Ritz crackers, and apple juice. After snack we made peanut butter cookies, the cookies were the base for making dinosaur fossils and dinosaur footprints. We will have the cookies as our dessert when we go to Dinosaur Ridge on Thursday.

After snack we went outside and tried to visualize just how big dinosaurs really were. We set up cones every 10 feet. We took some dinosaurs and read about how long they were. Then we placed the dinosaur on our outside measuring tape. I am not sure the students really grasp the concept, because as we talked about how long the dinosaur really was they just looked at the plastic dinosaur in their hand and looked at me very confused.

The wind was really strong today so we had to cut the out door activities short. We came back in and looked through a dinosaur encyclopedia, predicted whether the the dinosaur was a carnivore or a herbivore, then we graphed our results after reading about the dinosaur.

Homework was Dinosaur dot to dot, a stegosaurus worksheet and one dinosaur book to read and share with class on Thursday.

April 4th Week Part B

April 24 - Dinosaurs Herbivore vs Carnivore

To start our day we learned three very important words as we learn to classify dinosaurs: herbivore, carnivore, and omnivore. We created a venn diagram to learn about dinosaurs.

On the left side we had herbivore, on the right side was carnivores, and in middle we placed facts that apply to all dinosaurs. Our facts helped us understand that most carnivores walked on two legs and had sharp teeth. Herbivores walked on all four legs and had flat teeth.

With our Venn diagram as a guide we categorized some of the dinosaurs in the toy box.

The students then took time to just play with the dinosaurs. They created dinosaur families, the small dinosaurs were the babies, the medium dinosaurs were the mommies, and the larger ones were the daddy dinosaurs.

For snack the students were given the opportunity to be a herbivore (and eat carrot sticks, tomatoes, and lettuce); a carnivore (and eat a ham slice that had been cut out with a dinosaur  cookie cutter); or be an omnivore and eat both the vegetables and meat with crackers. At first the girls were not going to be a carnivore, but they really wanted to have some ham and crackers. So we were all omnivores.

Homework was a simple ABC dot to dot dinosaur picture, a dinosaur game, and a Buddy Book Bag.

April 4th Week Part A

April 22 - Dinosaurs ~ Paleontologist

This morning the students found a new bucket of dinosaurs. There was a lot of interest in the dinosaurs. There were some very loud roars and I asked the students to remind the dinosaurs that they needed to use their inside voices in preschool.

We turned to some dinosaur books to help us identify the different dinosaurs that were in the bucket. This was the first times that we used non fiction books to help us with our lessons. The students were excited when they found a picture of the dinosaur they had seen in the toy box.

We talked about the people that study dinosaurs and learned that they were called "paleontologists." It took us most of the day to learn how to say paleontologist. We used our magnifying glasses to look at pictures of paleontologists and identify as many different tools/items that they use to help them learn about dinosaurs.

We learned that many paleontologists had vests with multiple pockets. We used brown paper bags to make our own paleontologist vest. We drew pockets onto the vest.

Then we cut out the vest.

After all their hard work, they had earned some free play time. The students decided to play firemen save the princess.

For snack each paleontologist chose one snack from the food cupboard and brought it to the table to share with all the other paleontologists. We had gingerbread cookies, celery with peanut butter, fruit snacks, yogurt and apple juice.

After snack we put on our vests and searched for dinosaurs that had been frozen in ice. Our paleontologists used warm water, hammers, saws, and screwdrivers. They were very pleased when they were able to break their dinosaur free from the ice.

Homework was to color a dinosaur and name it, make a Triceratops craft, and to read a book about dinosaurs and then they were to tell us about the book on Tuesday.

April 3rd Week Part B

April 17 - Easter

We started our morning with a story "The Chocolate Easter Egg," a story from "Paper Stories" by Jean Stangl. Then we watched a video 43 Funny Little Bunnies. It is a 1934 Silly Symphony and I wasn't sure the students would enjoy it, but they were really into it and had lots of giggles.

After sitting for about 10 minutes, the story and the video, they needed some gross motor activity. We got up and had a egg tossing activity. The students tried underhand toss and overhand throw to try and get their egg into the basket.

Just as I was explaining to the students that our snack had been put into plastic eggs and hidden in the living room, when we looked out the glass door and there was a little bunny looking in the window. The students were sure that this was the bunny who hid our snacks.

There was a lot of enthusiasm as the students searched high and low for the hidden eggs. Fortunately I had counted the eggs when I filled them, so we knew exactly how many eggs we needed to find. After all the eggs had been found we put them on the table and each student got to choose four eggs for their snack. There were gold fish, Fruit Loops, baby carrots, and gummy worms. Not every one got a variety of things to eat but it was fun to not know exactly what was in the eggs. We added milk to help wash it all down.

After snack we went outside and colored eggs. We used one inch sections of toilet paper rolls as a stand for our eggs to dry in. The girls were very particular about the color of their eggs; whereas, my boy was all about getting the eggs colored. He multi-tasked and had an egg in every color that the girls were not using. The girls were rather disappointed when they realized that they only colored two eggs each.

After all the hard work of searching for their snack and coloring eggs, the students needed some free play time. After a couple of minutes of playing, they all started to pick up sticks to be of service. They worked together to get some of the large limbs out of the garden and onto the stick pile.

Homework was a coloring sheet titled "Help Easter Bunny", Easter Measuring, How I Celebrate Easter, and a Book Buddy Bag.

April 3rd Week Part A

April 15 - Spring

We started our morning by learning the song In Celebration of Spring. We had a short discussion about the signs of spring that were mentioned in the song; flowers, budding trees, and chirping birds. With the upcoming Easter holiday the students were a bit wired and they had lots of energy. We took turns using the stretchy bands to create a shape and then the rest of us would identify the shape and copy it. It was funny to watch the students create a less than perfect or even recognizable shape and then to watch/listen to the other students try to identify it and mimic it.

Getting back on track we learned about the "at" family. We had pictures of different words in the "at" family that were placed on the right side of the "at" card on the word strip holder.

The students were given a card with a letter on it, the students chose a letter card, the said the sound of the letter, and then they were to put the letter in front of the "at" card to make the word to match the picture.

For snack we made butterflies. I made peanut butter play dough (recipe can be found in a previous post) for the body, graham cracker for the wings, and M & M's for the colors on the wings and eyes. We completed the snack with yogurt and apple juice.

After snack time we were getting ready to go outside. This is a picture of one student doing her best to help the other student tie his shoe. I was so impressed with her willingness to help even though she doesn't know how to tie shoes herself.

After playing outside we came in to play the Daffodil game. I remembered seeing this somewhere but I can't find it anywhere. Each student is given a flower base with six petals and a cup in the middle with jelly beans in it. Each petal has a number on it, 1 through 6. The student would roll a die and then place the corresponding number of jelly beans on the correct numbered petal. If the student rolled a 2 they would put two jelly beans on the number 2 petal; then, when they rolled another two they couldn't use it so they just roll again. The first student with all petals full would be the winner.

We then did some work stations. The stations were: working on numbers (fill in the missing number), writing spring words, and lacing cards.

Homework was to take a walk with parents and look for signs of spring in their neighborhood.

April 2nd Week Part B

April 10 - Jelly Beans Again!!!

We have been focusing on group cooperation. I have been putting out puzzles for the students to work on together. I have three great students who work very hard as individuals and then boast about being the best/first/the winner. I once read that competition brings our the "beast" in us; cooperation brings out the "best" in us. My goal is to encourage the best in my students. 

One of our struggles has been clothing adjustments that need to be made. This constant need to adjust (pull up) our pants, has been a distraction to our learning. So today we cooperated and got creative in finding a solution to the falling pants problem. It worked great!

 Today we continued the  concept of making estimations. I took three different jars and put the same number of jelly beans in each one. The tall narrow bottle appeared to have the most; whereas, the rounder jar appeared to have fewer jelly beans because they were spread out in a single layer. The students were surprised that each container had the same amount of jelly beans.

We  looked at each bottle and guessed which bottle had the most jelly beans, which one had the least. And then they recorded their guess on their worksheet. Each student took a container and counted out their jelly beans.

The students were surprised and puzzled by the knowledge that all containers had the same number of jelly beans.

After snack we went outside to practice flying frisbees. Like many things we have mastered, I had forgotten how difficult tossing a frisbee could be.

During free play the students decided that they could give service by helping pick up twigs. One student found a branch and the other two rushed over to help. Then they had to call my attention to the fact that they were cooperating and doing service at the same time. They are just great at multi-tasking.

After playing outside we finished by graphing the jelly beans we had in our container.

There was no homework.