Week eleven 2008

What an amazing, REPTILIAN week we had!

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Theme: Reptiles

Focus: Turtles & Tortoises, Lizards & Snakes Number: 14

Classical composer: Peter Tchaikovsky, Russian composer of the Romantic era (1840-1893) . Table Activities: We had great fun with lots of turtle pages…dot-to-dot, maze, color by number, etc. . Music: Tchaikovsky’s Sleeping Beauty Waltz, Nutcracker Suite, Swan Lake, and 1812 Overture . Art: Miss Cristina showed the children some famous paintings using primary colors. The children used another primary color, yellow, to work on their canvas. They put a horizontal and vertical piece of tape on the blue background and discovered what happened when they removed the tape after painting with the yellow acrylic. . Handwriting and Reading: This short week was a review of the sounds we’ve practiced thus far. We focused on the relationship between the picture “name” for each sound train sound- /m/ Marko, /s/ Staccato, short /a/ Anna, long /e/ Ethan, /t/ Todd the Toad, and /r/ Rita the Rhinoceros. Such associations help the kids get the sound from their short term to long-term memory and have quicker recall each time they see the sound. . Theme: Warning: There are way too many exclamation points in the following paragraph!!!

Three words—THE REPTILE MAN! His visit was a great success! The children loved the hands-on presentation, which included riding the tortoise and wearing a snake. We also pet Lucy the alligator and Sheila the gila, and looked at a cobra and a rattlesnake…from a distance, that is! Hearing the rattlesnake rattle and the gaboon viper hiss was fascinating! The entire class pitched in to lift the enormous albino python to the couch where he almost made a quick get-away! We think we’d like to adopt him! Many of us were amazed at how soft and gorgeously patterned the skins of all of these animals were! We learned a lot of cool things to stick in our brains as we enjoyed using every one of our senses during this exciting experience! We certainly won’t be forgetting this tremendous treat anytime soon!

We had two cameras going so more pics will be posted soon!

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We ended our reptile week with coloring & cutting patterned spiral snakes. Each child was able to uniquely design the pattern and cut out the fun snake. Misses Tracy and Cameron gave each student a fun toy-snake to take home. It wiggles when you hold it horizontally by the tail! . Storybooks: The Tortoise and the Jackrabbit, Turtle Crossing, Verdi, A Color of my Own

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Math: Number 14 pages came home this week and the children practiced the equation 10 + 4 = 14. The middle teens can be a tricky area, so we are deliberately taking this part slow. . Free-Play Fun: The children had fun playing with the rubber play snakes, lizards, crocodiles and other reptiles. We also spent some time in the rice and bean boxes playing with reptiles and other creepy critters.