Teddy Bear Picnic

The children truly enjoyed our teddy bear picnic.  The idea of a teddy bear picnic is based off of the book by Jimmy Kennedy.  During our picnic the children taste tested Teddy Grahams, honey, and blueberries.  The blueberries were a big hit!  We then graphed which flavor teddy graham they thought tasted the best.  During centers the children listened to the story The Bear Came over to My House with me.  This story worked on rhyming words.  They then played a bear rhyming path game.  With Grandma Sue and Miss Sue the children played the teddy bear toss.  There were five buckets set out with numbers programed on them.  The children tossed their teddy bear into a bucket and recorded the number on their recording sheet.  The children also visited the listening center where they listened to the story Panda Bear, Panda Bear What Do You See? 

Get the Wiggles Out

With the cold weather the last to days more wiggles have entered our classroom.  To get them out we learned "The Cool Bear Hunt" song yesterday.  During this bear hunt the children go thorough a candy factory, swim across a peanut butter river, and walk through a jello swamp.  I have attached a You Tube link for a different version of the bear hunt that you may want your child to do at home to get the wiggles out.http://www.bing.com/videos/search?q=you+tube+the+bear+hunt&view=detail&mid=453D25F21A6A412A45AA453D25F21A6A412A45AA&first=0  I have also attached the You Tube video that goes along with the song Who Let The letters Out?  This song is another favorite in our classroom. http://www.bing.com/videos/search?q=you+tube+who+let+the+letters+out&view=detail&mid=8380BD712DB5B1F3E3288380BD712DB5B1F3E328&first=0&qpvt=you+tube+who+let+the+letters+out
The last link is for the song "The Number Rock."  This song is sure to get the wiggles out! http://www.bing.com/videos/search?q=you+tube+the+number+rock+greg+and+steve&view=detail&mid=9DF021AB219D0DAD09ED9DF021AB219D0DAD09ED&first=0

Hibernation

With today's cold weather we are all feeling the need to hibernate.  To start the beginning of bear week the children found that our books and puzzles center turned into a bear cave.  In the bear cave their are teddy bears that are hibernating for the winter.  We have to use quiet vocies in the cave so we do not wake them up!  It is OK to snuggle with these bearsthough.  In the bear cave there are also bear games that the children can work on quietly.  They can use bear manipulatives to make patterns.  They can also use bear number mats to count bears.  There is even a matching game from the story Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See?

Today I read the story Goldilocks and the Three Bears to the children.  During centers the children made a lunchbag look like a house.  They also colored the characters from the story and taped them onto popsicle sticks to make puppets.  We will use the props to retell the story using our own words tomorrow. 

Penguins

On Friday the children learned that there is a bird that does not adapt to winter, it does not migrate, and it does not fly.  This bird is a penguin.  The children visited three different centers on Friday.  With Mrs. Severson the children used cubes(nonstandard units of measure) to measure the length of three different penguins.  They measure the largest penguin, the Emperor penguin, the smallest penguin the Fairy penguin, and they measured a Macaroni penguin.  At my center the children used stickers to make a penguin counting book.  With Miss Sue the children cut out the letter a.  They then colored animals and glued them on the letter.

During play time on Friday Kyra Jo had the idea to play birthday party. I had a play cake, a crown, and candles in storage.  On Tuesday we will expand on her idea by adding invitations to the house center, as well as gift bags, wrapping paper, and ribbons.

Museum Fun

Please enjoy the pictures from today's field trip.  We had lots of fun investigating, climbing, and pretending.

Missing Number

Four afternoons a week I work for the Kiel School District as the Title 1 reading teacher for the parochial schools in the area.  Through this roll I have had the opportunity to assess student using our district's new standardized assessment called AIMSweb.  Three times each year the Kindergarten through fourth grade children are assessed using this tool.  By using it as a Title 1 teacher I have been able to create centers exposing the children to the skills needed to take the assessment. 

One of today's centers had the children find the missing number in a sequence of numbers.  This skill is one of the skills that will be assessed in kindergarten using AIMSweb.  To Begin the center the children played the following game on the smart board.  http://www.primaryonline.co.uk/sitetour/pol/findra.html  They then used dry erase markers to fill in the missing number on sets of cards I made.  To practice this skill at home you may want to write strings of numbers on a dry erase board or chalkboard and have your child fill in the number that is missing.  For example:  4, ___, 6 or _____, 8, 9 or even 52, 53, _____.

Another skill that will be assessed in kindergarten is when given two numbers can your child pick out the one with the most value.  For example:  if your child sees 8 and 4 can they conclude that 8 is the largest number.  To practice this skill in a fun hands on way you may want to play the card game called War.  When you first start to play you may want to take out the face cards.

War for two players

In the basic game there are two players and you use a standard 52 card pack. Cards rank as usual from high to low: A K Q J T 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2. Suits are ignored in this game.
Deal out all the cards, so that each player has 26. Players do not look at their cards, but keep them in a packet face down. The object of the game is to win all the cards.
Both players now turn their top card face up and put them on the table. Whoever turned the higher card takes both cards and adds them (face down) to the bottom of their packet. Then both players turn up their next card and so on.
If the turned up cards are equal there is a war. The tied cards stay on the table and both players play the next card of their pile face down and then another card face-up. Whoever has the higher of the new face-up cards wins the war and adds all six cards face-down to the bottom of their packet. If the new face-up cards are equal as well, the war continues: each player puts another card face-down and one face-up. The war goes on like this as long as the face-up cards continue to be equal. As soon as they are different the player of the higher card wins all the cards in the war.
The game continues until one player has all the cards and wins

Migrating

Today's lessons focused birds.  We learned that some birds like the Robin migrate in winter, while other birds like Cardinals and Juncos stay in Wisconsin and adapt to the cold weather.  Our two read alouds were titled Why Do Geese Fly South in Winter? and Birds.

During centers today the children followed four steps to make a pine cone bird feeder.  When your child brings their feeder home please help them hang it up outside.  By doing this they learn compassion for other living things. 

At Miss Sue's center the children cut out five geese.  They then used a mixture of shaving cream and glue to make a cloud on a piece of paper.  They used their finger to make the letter v in their cloud.  Lastly, they placed the geese they cut out on the v to make it look like they were flying in a v formation.  At closing circle we pretended we were geese and we flew in this same formation.