The Mitten, Week 1

Inspired by the Book by Jan Brett:

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For our Mitten large group activity (which we will repeat for the Monday/Wednesday students the week after next), we will tell the story of the mitten with pictures from the book. The students will then be given a mask of one of the animals in the story. We found these on Jan Brett's website:  http://www.janbrett.com/mitten_masks_main.htm. We will hold out a blanket over our large mitten shape taped on the floor and sing to the tune of The Farmer and the Dell:

The mitten in the snow

The mitten in the snow

Help us please. . . so we don't freeze

The mitten in the snow

Carter squeezes in

Carter squeezes in

Help us please. . . so we don't freeze

The mitten in the snow

Once everyone in the whole class is under the sheet we will all sneeze "Ah, Ah, Ah, Chooo!!!!!" And everyone will rush out of the "mitten" and back to their seat.

November Newsletter and Sick Policy

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Change in Weekly Themes

The students have just loved our Large Groups over the last few weeks and since the majority of our students only come twice a week, we are going to do some repeats with variations so they can all experience them and have access to the curriculum content.

For example, we did the story re-acting of Goldilocks and the 3 Bears on Monday and the number fishing for more and less on Tuesday. Next time we will do story re-acting of The 3 Three Little Pigs on Tuesday and the number fishing for more and less on Monday. Some of our students will get almost the same activity twice but we have observed that many of our students do even better the second time an activity is done. The small groups will be different from previous ones however, some may be similar but start on a different day of the week. We try and base our small groups (as with the large groups) on our curriculum (KDIs that you see on the lesson plan sheets) and on student interests so you will see that reflected as well in our lesson plan themes and activities.

Humpty Dumpty & Large Group

During Large Group this last week we did "Humpty Dumpty"

Humpty Dumpty Sat on a Wall

Humpty Dumpty Had a Great Fall

All the King's Horses and All the Kings Men

Couldn't Put Humpty Together Again

We built a wall and chanted the rhyme and then let Humpty fall. We 'experimented' to see how tall the wall had to be and talked about prepositions, finding that Humpty would only fall and break when he was 'on' the wall. 

Some of the Aftermath of Humpty Dumpty. Plastic wrap was used to protect the wall.

We had been learning about emotions last month so each student got to decide what kind of face they wanted on Humpty. Surprised, Scared and of course, Happy were some class favorites. During small group, we dyed eggs, measuring out everything for the homemade dye and experimenting with the different colors. Because our assistants are so creative, the cups of color ended up being filled with dish soap and straws. Although it was Work Time, the whole class by the end had joined in and we had colored bubbles everywhere!

Nursery Rhymes

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Numbers and Bears

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Teddy Bear Paths: 

Using Counting Bears, tell story how the teddy bears traveled on a narrow road, on a big one, backwards, etc. acting out with varying strips of paper in order to get home.

Have students use materials to “make up their own story” using spatial descriptive words, jump over, walk around, long, etc. Simplify by labeling words and action for kids and counting (e.g. red bear, 1, 2, 3 bears)