Mat Man Shapes

            Mat Man visited the Robin's again
the other day.  He taught the children
that he has, two arms, two legs, two feet, two hands, two ears, two eyes, one nose and one
mouth.   But, we can change his body to a blue rectangle body.

 Or even a red diamond body.

 A green triangle body can be fun to add.

How about giving Mat Man a square checker board body?

Twinkle, twinkle littler star, Mat Man now has a yellow star.

We always have fun giving Mat Man different shapes for his body, but our favorite is

a pink heart, because we love working with Mat Man.

until next time, Miss Julie and Miss Crystal

Chickadee Rainy Day Fun

 Awhile back the  Chickadees had fun with contact paper, some pipe cleaners, pom poms, a few bow tie noodles and straws.  The contact paper became a canvas for a collage that could be redone again and again.  This is a great activity to do at home too--tape the contact paper on your table (sticky side up) and add whatever you have around.  Enjoy!

A funny man

Making a caterpillar

A Sunshine

Chickadees-Sing and Learn

During our mornings together we spend quite a bit of time singing and listening to music.  It makes little tasks like lining up much more fun and is another helpful piece in preparing children for reading success.   The Itsy Bitsy Spider, the ABC song, Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star,  We are the Dinosaurs, and Octopus are some of the kids' favorites.  Ask them to sing one to you, if they haven't already.  

Itsy Bitsy Spider

Itsy Bitsy Spider hands

Working on our books so we can read them together and with our families.

Reading our books together

 We are the Dinosaurs

We stop and take a rest. . . 

We stop and eat our food. . . .

...Cause we are the DINOSAURS---ROAR!!!!

Where Do You Start Your Letters?

Where do you start your letters?
  
   On this day the kiddos in the Robin's
class learned that you start your letters
at the top. 









The kiddo's worked on starting at the top of the letter D,d using Cheerios's.

After using the Cheerios's to trace the letters, the kiddo's got to eat them.  This is always a fun way to learn how to trace letters.

How do you make the letter D?  You start at the top and use
one wooden piece that is a straight edge and one that is in the shape of a half circle. 

Remember that the curve goes to the
right of the straight edge.

Where do you start your letters?  At the top!
Great job everyone.         Miss Julie and Miss Crystal

The Robins Make Stone Soup....

The last couple of weeks the Robins class has been talking lot about Thanksgiving, sharing, cooperation, and gratitude. As part of this discussion, our class read the story "Stone Soup" and decided it would be really neat to make some of our own.

We asked that each student bring a single vegetable for our soup. The Robins brought carrots, potatoes, cabbage, corn, green beans, garlic, rosemary, and pasta. Thank you families! Miss Julie provided the soup stone and Miss Crystal brought vegetable broth. The Robins washed, peeled, and chopped all the vegetables. this was hard work, but lots of fun!

Next, we all took turns adding the ingredients to the pot...


















As we waited patiently for the soup to cook, we noticed that the steam from our soup was doing some interesting things...

Soon our soup was finished and we all got to enjoy the fruits of our labor. In the afternoon, we talked about our soup making experience and graphed whether or not we enjoyed eating our stone soup.

How fun!


- Miss Crystal & Miss Julie

Robins - November 14th - 23rd

The last two weeks in the Robins' class has been so much fun. Take a look!....

A sticky table made with contact paper and various items...

Making "November" poem books...

No green grass

No blue sky

No bare feet going by

No birds

No bees

No leaves on trees

November

The Chickadees recently recreated the house of the three bears in the back classroom. We borrowed some of their props and acted out this classic story. Each student had a chance to play a part. We had SO much fun! 

Leaf prints...

We experimented with heat responsive paper...what designs can we make using our hands? How can we make our hands warmer? 

More fun with shapes...

Cornstarch & water...such a great sensory experience!

We used coffee filters and watercolors. The robins were fascinated by the concept of absorption!

Happy Thanksgiving! We've spent the last two weeks taking about Thanksgiving, what it means to be thankful, and of course Turkeys!

 Hand print turkeys for our place mats.... 

.

.

Tracing turkeys...

Turkey math at circle time....

Hope you all had a wonderful Thanksgiving!

Miss Crystal  & Miss Julie

Bluebirds November Discoveries

DISCOVERIES WITH SHAPES
The KIDSPACE math curriculum has many manipulatives for children to use to facilitate "hands on" learning.  The first step in introducing the new tools is giving children time to explore the manipulatives on their own.  Look what the children discovered while playing.

"I can make a pattern with four colors.  Blue, orange, purple red . . .blue orange, purple, red!"
















       "I can make a circle."

We made Mickey Mouse!

 DISCOVERIES WITH COLOR

The children used color paddles and clear gems to explore primary and secondary colors.

What happens when you mix red, yellow and blue?  You make lots of different colors.  This activity was available for the children for many days.  They never tired of it!  The Bluebirds loved being "scientists" and making their own colors.  They were constantly exclaiming, "I made green!"  "I made orange!"  "I made purple!"  And one of our students even said with oodles of excitement, "Look, I made aquamarine!"

BUILDING DISCOVERIES

Exploration led to many discoveries with the marble maze.  One of the first problems encountered by the builders was that when the tower isn't built with the ramps going the right way the marbles have no way to drop to the next ramp. 

 Then, they discovered the green marbles were too big to go through the holes. But, the biggest discovery of all, was realizing that when you build something really cool . . . everyone else wants to play with it too.  This time our Bluebird builders were happy to share their marble masterpiece.  Many, many friends lined up to take turns putting a handful of marbles at the top and watch them race to the bottom.

Five Boys with a Plan

. . . busy conferring and building

. . . and building some more!  It might look like play to us adults . . . however, when was the last time you worked with four other colleagues to design and build a project?  It takes a lot of listening, problem solving, and relational skills, even for adults.  

I'm thinking future engineers at work . . . what do you think?