Week twenty-eight 2009

We missed you, Miss Cameron, & can't wait to hear about camp!! Theme: Nursery Rhymes Classical composer: Edvard Grieg (1843 – 1907) was a Norwegian composer and pianist who composed in the Romantic period. He is best known for his incidental music to Henrik Ibsen's play Peer Gynt (which includes our favorite of the week In the Hall of the Mountain King). Listen here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fzyi3C4gNnE Your kids would probably love seeing the instruments in action. . Spanish: la rima (rhyme), el gato (cat), los gatitos (kittens) . Theme: Nursery rhymes are so fun and familiar. We had a good time reciting many of them, noticing rhyming words and making up actions. We also had fun making our kitten masks with the happy and sad faces to represent the Three Little Kittens rhyme.

Using rhythm sticks and various nursery rhyme tunes, we practiced following the beat and staying with the leader. It was a fun way to practice rhythm and many of our musical terms! We played some fun games this week: tumbling on our mats like Jack and Jill, helping Little Bo Peep find her lost sheep (cotton balls hid around the room), catching the mice in The House that Jack Built, jumping over the candlestick (play-dough canisters stacked higher and higher),

the Ride a Cock Horse Banbury Cross passing game, a Doggy, Doggy, Where’s Your Bone? hiding game (see words at the bottom—they LOVED this game), and Ring Around the Rosie. We also practiced ordering objects using the Mockingbird rhyme and song. Each child had an object from the song and had to listen closely to when they got to give their object to the baby doll. I loved that all the kids wanted to be the one to hold and soothe the baby. They are such sweet kids. We used 1, 2, Buckle my Shoe to practice cutting and ordering numbers and each child made a take home page. . Table Activities: Bar magnets, rock magnets, various metal objects, magnetic letters on boards, math manipulatives (patterns, cubes, fraction puzzles, 3-D shapes), happy day city, farm, and other plastic animals. . Art: We had extra time with Miss Cristina this week. Thank you, thank you for all your help!! (They kids found a new toddler, Aaron, to adore!) On Thursday, Cristina had the students use markers to create a class story. Each child had a turn to choose the next thing I the story, but each child’s picture represents the entire story. It is really an incredible activity with some amazing outcomes from our talented students. The children really wanted to bring these home this week, so make sure to check their bags and ask them about their story. The story is also attached to the back of the picture.

On Friday, Miss Cristina had the children use glue and tissue paper to create beautiful containers. It was a little tricky for some, but with some assistance they turned out really cool.

You will notice that the colored pencil house project also came home this week. Miss Cristina read Hiccupotamus to the children and showed them the beautiful illustrations done entirely with colored pencil. They looked at their own house projects and decided they also wanted to take them home this week. I'm sure your refrigerators are FULL!

. Rhymes & Activity Songs: “Humpty Dumpty”; “I’m a Little Teapot”; “Little Bo Peep” (a jazzy version); “Hey Diddle, Diddle”; “Jack and Jill Went up a Hill”; “This is the House That Jack Built”; “Jack be Nimble”; “Ride a Cock Horse to Banbury Cross” (The children learned that the town of Banbury was located on a hill so the town employed a male stallion to hitch to people’s carts and help them get up the hill more easily.); “Ring Around the Rosie”, “Mockingbird”, “1, 2, Buckle My Shoe”, “Miss Mary Mack”, “Doggy, Doggy, Where’s Your Bone?”. . Math, Handwriting and Reading: For reading we played a fun matching game with CVC words and pictures. One group focused on the beginning sounds matching the picture and the other group read the words and found the matching picture. They liked it so much they asked to play it again and again until the time was up! For math the groups used numbers cards to represent place value (100, 200, 300…10, 20, 30…1, 2, 3…etc). The number cards fit on top of each other so that the ones covered up the zero of the ten, etc. This is an excellent activity to show the children that the numbers are actually built upon each other (a 19 is a 10 and a 9). One group worked on the 10-19 set and the other group worked up into the hundreds. This was an excellent activity to assess where the kids are in their understanding of numbers and will help us with planning our math activities for the rest of the year. We have been spending time using our drawing skills this week. For the kitten craft the students were independent in drawing their happy and sad mouths, whiskers, and tear drops. They are also practicing their names a lot lately and doing very well collectively with this task. We also had fun drawing our own gatos and gatitos (cats and kittens) on slates using the shapes Miss Cristina has been working on in art class.

. Storybooks: To Market, To Market; Cat & Mouse; The House That Jack Built; Five Little Ducks; Clap Your Hands; Miss Mary Mack; 1, 2, Buckle My Shoe and various nursery rhyme anthologies, old and new. . Free-Play Fun: Play-dough, tracks, cars, and trains, more jumping over the candlestick, plastic animals, lots of extra Doggy, Doggy game (words below).

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Doggy, Doggy, where is your bone? Someone stole it from your home. …Guess Who? Maybe You… …Maybe the monkeys in the zoo? Wake up doggy, find your bone. HAVE A GREAT SPRING BREAK! WE’LL SEE YOU ON APRIL 7th!! ………………………

Week twenty-seven 2009

Happy Birthday, Andrés! Theme: Our Solar System (and Spheres)…(and St. Paddy’s)

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Classical composer: We enjoyed repeat performances of Beethoven’s Fur Elise (The Planets Eight Song) and had fun listening to some Celtic music for St. Patrick’s Day. . Spanish: see week twenty-six . Theme: For St. Patrick’s Day we enjoyed telling brief Irish fables of leprechauns, pots of gold at the end of rainbows, four-leaf clovers, and the color green. According to legend, a leprechaun couldn’t get away from you if you kept your eyes locked right on them and didn’t look away. You can bet we took advantage of that little idea as teachers! (“Catch me with your eyes and don’t let me get away!”) We listened to some Celtic music and danced the “Irish Trot”. We read the fun story Leprechaun on the Loose. We showed them a picture of the Chicago River on St. Patrick’s Day and talked about how many Americans came here from Ireland. . Week two of planets led us to tell the origins of the planet names and also some of the most famous star constellations, the story of Orion the Hunter and the shape of the big dipper. The children made the constellations with stickers and enjoyed hearing and acting out the story of Orion being slain by the scorpion (by themselves, not with each other!).

We also had pics of the planets on sticks so that the kids could practice putting them in order while singing the planets eight song.

We used marble spheres to create beautiful paintings by rolling the painted spheres on filters in cake and pie pans.

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It was interesting to see the children use a new tool to paint and the finished products are wonderful! We discussed the shape “ellipse” by squeezing our lips with our fingers. This is the shape of an orbit. It was very cute to see the students do this, and several of them remembered it very well! We got out our tubes and balls (spheres of various sizes) and had fun thinking up new ways to play with them. Our author in residence, Miss Cameron, composed a fun story called, It’s Okay Pluto, I’m Not a Planet Either. We talked extensively this week about what makes a planet and why poor Pluto got the boot a few years ago. Planets must be spherical, must orbit the sun, can’t be a star, and can only share their orbits with their moons. The kids practiced being planets and orbiting around the sun with only their moon (holding a ball). Then they all held hands to be the Kuiper belt (see video) which is the orbit of Pluto, other dwarf planets like Makemake, and thousands of other objects, called “Plutinos”. The dwarf planets are too small to kick other objects out of their orbit or capture them as moons and thus are not planets. It’s amazing to hear the 4- and 5-year-olds understanding such complex ideas. Several of them even remember that planets spin as they orbit the sun. Many of these concepts were taught in order to answer their own questions. Very exciting! This is one area where the science is constantly changing as new discoveries are being made, so we do a lot of research to keep up, and we can vouch for its accuracy only at this moment! Table Activities: St. Patrick’s and space pages (dot-to-dots, mazes, coloring pages), star, moon, sun stencils, pom-poms and spoon launchers, opposite puzzle cards, number puzzle cards, wooden puzzles. . Art: Miss Cristina put together the crayon drawing books which came home this week. Ask your child about their favorites things they drew. This week, Miss Cristina has the children use colored pencils and talked about the difference drawing with pencils v. crayons. They used the pencils to draw the inside and outside of their house following specific directions. They also used the pencils to blend colors, draw light and dark, and fill-in space with a fluid motion. The house project will be added to their portfolios. Music and Activity Songs: “The Irish Trot”, “The Tortoise and the Hare” (Laurie Berkner song with a Celtic tune), and “Fly Me to the Moon”. Our favorite of the week had to be “Rocketship Run” another brilliant Laurie Berkner Band song. The video is a segment of this song. We loved the part when the kids do their own dance moves.

. Math, Handwriting and Reading: For reading, the children in one group worked on identifying lower and uppercase letters, matching them, and saying the sounds. We used a puzzle game that they enjoy to increase the interest and keep their attention level high during this activity. The other group worked on the –at and –an word families and this time we put them together with sight words to make simple sentences. We talked about the “period” or dot at the end. This is when we take a breath and end our sentence. They took turns reading the sentences themselves and were very proud. For math and handwriting we practiced writing numbers on slates and played a game where they had to identify the numbers11-19 correctly by sight. They were given clues to guess what picture they would find under the number. This activity was very enjoyable and will likely be expanded upon during this upcoming week. . Storybooks: It’s Okay Pluto, I’m Not a Planet Either by Miss Cameron, Captain Invincible and the Space Shapes, Space Guys, Some Day Daddy, and many non-fiction space books. . Free-Play Fun: We had some reading time in the loft this week, trains and tracks, of course, and some new free-time toys, bouncy hoppity balls and stilts, made an appearance this week and are big hits. ……………………………………………

Week twenty-six 2009

Theme: Solar System (and Spheres)

Classical composer: We enjoyed listening to Beethoven again this week. His Fur Elise is the tune of our 8 planets song, words below: Mercury is closest to the sun Mercury is planet one Then it’s off to Venus, planet two Venus two, is where we flew Our home planet earth is number three Sing with me, the Earth is three After Earth comes Mars; it’s planet four Right next door is planet four. Big Jupiter is number five Just a short ride to Saturn six. …Saturn is Six… Uranus is seven it looks blue, Neptune eight looks that way too. Our solar system’s in the Milky Way The planets eight are really great! Spanish: el sol (the sun), la tierra (the earth), las estrellas (the stars), la luna (the moon) . Theme: The solar system is a great theme because the ideas are endless! We played a fun game where we represented the planets with different sized objects (small lids for the smaller planets, medium and large hoops for the larger planets, etc.) The children pretended to be a rocket ship. We counted down and the rocket zoomed to a planet. The children called out which planet the rocket landed on. It was super fun and the kids really are getting to know the planet names and order. We also played an orbit game. The sun was represented by a yellow ball and a rope tied at the ends formed an ellipse around the sun. The children took turns being a planet orbiting around the sun while the class chanted, “Orbit! Orbit! Orbit!” to reinforce this unfamiliar term. They had so much fun they requested to do this again at free time. A big hit this week was our astronaut craft. Each child put together the craft following specific directions. It was interesting to see their different ideas for flags. We loved how they turned out! (Miss Cameron thinks Miss Tracy was brilliant in the invention of this too, too adorable craft. Way to go, Trace!) . Table Activities: solar system floor puzzles, planets and rockets coloring pages, matching the planets with their clothespin-names (the kids did a great job sleuthing out the names by their first letters), marbles (spheres) and mats, plastic ice-cubes and tongs, play-dough . Art: Miss Cristina expanded on drawing skills and this time used crayon as the medium. The children followed specific directions to draw pictures, such as their favorite fruit, a self-portrait, their favorite place, etc. Cristina is going to use the pictures to create a small book for each child. Their drawing skills are really developing. It is exciting to see! Music: Barney’s “The Rocket Song”, “The Eight Planets Song”, “What Do You Do with the Mad That You Feel” by Mr. Rogers. This song is a favorite of the teachers and is a nice way to practice positive outlets when we are feeling angry. The first video is the beginning of the song talking about when we are angry. (Notice the acting skills of Noah!) The second video is the later part of the song when the kids can get really happy and silly. It’s a fun one!

. Math, Handwriting and Reading: For reading we practiced CVC (consonant-short vowel-consonant) words and built them with letter cards. One of the groups focused more on the individual letter sounds and put them together following a model. The other group built the words themselves given a verbal direction (“spell CAT”) and was very successful with the –at and –an families. It’s exciting to see the progress in reading. Handwriting and Math were combined as we used slates to write numbers with chalk following correct modeling and stroke order. One group worked on naming and writing eleven, twelve and the teens…this is a tricky skill! This group also created sets of the number of items. The other group worked on the numbers 100 and higher by first writing the tens and ones columns, then creating the hundreds column. For example, the teacher would say, “Write the number 57”. (The teacher practiced with them the strokes of some of the trickier numbers such as 3, 5 and 8. The rest, they did well) Then the teacher would say, “What would you need to do to make that into three-hundred fifty-seven?” The students would add the “3” in front to create the number 357. We also practiced naming numbers by the teacher writing a number, say 463, then covering the 4 while they read the 63, then letting them read the whole number all together. There will be a lot of reinforcement coming on this particularly advanced skill. We have only introduced it because of these student’s interest and desire to know, and we continually reinforce the supporting skills of sets and quantities throughout the preschool day. . Storybooks: Space Boy, Sheep Blast Off!, Tortoise and Hare Race to the Moon, Astronaut Handbook, and several non-fiction space, rocket and astronaut books including our beautiful giant picture book with amazing photos! . Free-Play Fun: We now have the reading loft designated as a “books” space or “fort” space alternately so that the children know what is expected of them on a given day. A sign shows which type of activity the loft can be used for. During "fort" time the kids used the movement ribbons to pretend to fish off the loft. Very creative thinking! We also had two days of outdoor play this week—yeah sun! .

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We will continue with our space theme next week and focus more on the individual planets, as well as star constellations. ……………………………………………

Week twenty-five 2009

Theme: Bugs, Bugs, Bugs! Week 2 Classical composer: We enjoyed listening to repeat performances of Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov. (See last week’s post for details and link.) Spanish: la abeja (bee), la miel (honey), la hormiga (ant), la mosca (fly), la araña (spider) Theme: We made some excellent rock bugs from nature items found outside. The children glued on the legs and the antennae and the glue gun fairy put the rocks together overnight. We enjoyed more bug activity songs and especially marching to “The kids go marching…” a spur of the moment fun activity. We continued with the concepts from last week’s art class and make drawings of insects and spiders. The children used ovals to make body parts, lines for antennae and legs, and some added eyes. They turned out great! Finally, the kids went on a super bug hunt, using the giant magnifying glasses. We kid small ants and spiders on the green carpet where they blended in perfectly. The kids used their best bug-hunting skills to find and count the bugs. . Table Activities: insect rubbing plates and rainbow crayons, letter games with word cards, foam letters and pegs . . . . . . . . . . . Music: Activity songs included: “Ants in My Pants”, “Buzz, Buzz”, “The Ants Go Marching”, and our class version “The Kids Go Marching”, “The Bugs in the Garden” B. The children also enjoyed a few Joe Scruggs songs, including: “There’s a Wiggle in my Toe” and “Late Last Night” where we acted as if we were wearing different kinds of shoes. As you see from the video, they were very fun! . Math, Handwriting and Reading: For reading/handwriting we used the Roll-A-Dough cards and play-dough to create letters. During the drawing of insects, the students used the ant border to circle sets of ants, like in the song, “The Ants Go Marching…” The children followed directions, i.e. “Circle two sets of four ants.” The results were amazing and a great reinforcement of math skills! . Storybooks: The Bugliest Bug, Snug as a Bug, I Love Bugs!, The Insect Alphabet (with audio CD), Big-Bad Bully-Bug, The Flea’s Sneeze, Inside a House That is Haunted (It does have a spider in it!), Slugs in Love . Free-Play Fun: Hoops and bean bags (this started as a sorting, tossing game and was followed by some very creative free-play, including making jumping paths), train tracks, the children also asked to take turns holding Inside a House That is Haunted while listening to the audio tape over and over. This is a favorite!