Caterpillars, Butterflies and Karaoke

Click to View Larger

Hungry Caterpillar Large Group:

        We read The Very Hungry Caterpillar by Eric Carle. We then review it again as student's talk about the sequences using pictures. Each student gets food and we count how many of each. As it's time to 'eat', students get to climb through the caterpillar. At the end, students 'wrap' themselves up in their cocoons with their arms and then break out as butterflies.

Song Board Karaoke:

       We have a variety of 30+ songs we have sung throughout the year and some new ones. Often we sing them as 'easy to join-in' songs when students are finishing up from snack and making their way over to large group before we start the lesson. Some favorites of the student's include 'Scat the Cat', 'Old MacDonald', 'If you're Happy and You Know it", "Do as I'm Doing" and "Leo the Lion". These songs teach concepts such as colors, emotions, verbs, counting and other vocabulary. Many of them we let students choose actions as well. For example,  for 'If Your Happy and You Know It" we can say "How else can we feel?" or "What's another emotion?" and "How can we show it?" Student's have come up with ideas like, "If you're angry and you know it, pound your fists".

Steps to Sharing and Playing with a Friend

1)    Look at the Person’s Face

2)   Say the Person’s Name

3)   Wait until the Look at You

4)   Ask, “Can I Play with you” or “Can I have that?”

(If they say “No”, it’s okay, find something else to do.)

Side Walk Chalk and the Very Hungry Caterpillar

Click to View Larger

Milk Star Shooters

This week we have been doing a fun experiment with milk, food coloring and dish detergent. When the grease-cutting soap hits the milk, it causes it to shoot out, even more visible to the eye when food coloring is added. We did it as our activity C small group this week, letting each student pick their colors and put in drops of detergent. Here is a video of one of the student's doing it:

Train Tracks and Rub-A-Dub-Dub

Photo Collage

Click to View Larger

Rub-A-Dub-Dub

Rub-a-dub-dub

Three Men in a Tub

And who do you think they be?

The Butcher, The Baker, The Candlestick Maker,

All Traveling Out to Sea.

Choo Choo the Big Train

Choo-Choo the big train is coming down the tracks,

Stop, look and listen, 

Stop, look and listen,

Choo-Choo the big train is coming down the tracks,

Stop, look and listen, 

Stop, look and listen.

We will also be having a special party during snack on Wednesday and Thursday to celebrate spring time.

Stop & Go and Neighborhood Helpers

Our large groups this week are two we have done previously but with the students that come different days. To see what they are, click on the links below:

Stop and Go Large Group

*Neighborhood Helpers Large Group

*I've been referring to it on our lesson plans and blog as 'community helpers' but with the students we have been saying 'neighborhood helpers' because it makes more sense to them about what they are.

Our Large Group and Small Group lesson plans:

Click to View Larger

Transitions: This is a new element we have added to our greeting time of the day. Greeting Time looks like this: We sing our welcome song, have a student count the kids, go over our white board with activities and reminders for the day and read our nursery rhyme. After that, everyone gets to go to their tables for small group. I have sticks with different items on them with directions like, "If you first name starts with this sound", "If your name starts with this letter", "If you are wearing this color", "Move like this kind of animal" etc. We draw one out and that is how everyone get's to leave for their table.

April Fools: April Fools day will be next week on Tuesday. In honor of it, (and the only trick we'll play as to not confuse our students too much), we will be turning our milk blue. We have individual cartons that they usually pour into cups or drink out of with a straw. I'll probably get them all out in the morning, pour them into a pitcher, mix in the food coloring and re-fill them. Hopefully it's strange (and exciting enough) that they will share with you what happened!

"How Many Strawberries?" small group activity

Trains, Stop & Go and Minecraft

Click to View Larger

Trains: For our train large group activity, we are going to use the same format that Melissa did for her 'Monster Truck' activity. This will help emphasis and review the concepts the students were learning about the prepositions "Under", "Behind", "Through", "Over" and "On". The students will all have a train car to wear with a number on it. We will line up numerically helping the students figure out which car comes next.

We then will go under the table, behind the mountain, through the tunnel, over the bridge and on the tracks as we make it back to circle time. We then will switch up the numbers and let someone else be the engine and caboose as we get to do it again.

"On the Tracks"

"Behind the Mountain"

Stop and Go: We've had a lot of discussion in our class lately between peers doing something we don't want them to do, their friends saying stop and them not stoping so we're going to have a large group activity on it to practice. Starting with the teacher, we're going to take turns deciding which way to move our bodies (eg. clapping hands, stomping feet, flying like Iron Man). When the "stop" sign is showing, we stop quickly and when the "go" sign is showing we can move again. Then we will talk about how if our friends ask us to stop we need to stop. If we need a friend to stop, we can stay "stop" and if they don't listen, we can go to an adult instead of hitting or pushing them back.

Minecraft: For the Large Group activity, see Miss Melissa's Blog:  http://missmelissasspeech.blogspot.com/2014/03/minecraft.html

Our "Minecraft Collage" Small Group Activity. We found the sheets to cut up here: 

http://www.frugalfamilytimes.com/2013/08/minecraft-birthday-party-printables.html

Fire Extinguishers, Small Group Activity Update from this Week

It took some troubleshooting but our small group fire extinguisher activity proved to be a success:

It ended up just being baking soda in the bowls and vinegar in the spray bottles (we tried some dish detergent too but it just made everything bubbly). All in all, the students had a lot of fun and our room smelled very strongly of vinegar. At the end we added food coloring to make it even more fun.

We got the flames from this site: http://homeschoolcreations.com/FiremenPrintables.html