A Busy Week!

Our next class book is I am Happy When...
We asked the children to tell us times during the day when they feel happy.  One child talked about playing with his brother.  Daniel shook his head in agreement and told us about playing a game with his brother, Noah.  Since we like to encourage the children to think past that first easy answer, we asked Daniel if there was another time he felt happy.  He was momentarily stumped, but then a huge smile appeared and he gave us another example.  You can see how proud Daniel  is of his completed page.    Imagine this excitement happening everyday in our class.  Your kids are thinking and growing!!

Being able to name and locate the top, middle and bottom of a page is a pre-reading skill.  We knew the children could point out the top section, etc. so we wanted to challenge them.  Each child got slips of paper with the words top, middle and bottom and using some early decoding skills they glued the words in the correct space.

Then  they had to choose 3 different materials and put them in each separate area.

Jake and Govind are squeezing those pipettes into the yellow water and then carefully transferring the water to the holes in the white styrofoam.Since we have been studying bees, the children said that the styrofoam looked like honeycombs.

Amelia and Briana are developing strength in their fingers during this activity as they prentend to be  honeybees. They carry the nectar and squeeze it into the holes in their honeycombs.

Our September color is RED. We told the children to make a picture using only red paint. Noor is making a castle.

Patrick's red house is so cheerful as he carefully adds all the details.  The paintings brighten our room!



Suri and Jake are creating the ocean for our Jonah and the Whale art work. 

We asked the children to tell us if water could be any color other than blue.  Alex told us seaweed would make it partly green, and Charlotte talked about seeing the many colors of the ocean from her hotel window.  Emma made us all laugh when she reminded everyone, "If you don't clean your pool it all turns green!"  We brainstormed together to figure out how we could  use materials in ways so that each ocean would be different.  You can read the full documention on the board outside our room.   

Saul is using tape for his ocean and very thoughtfully cutting each piece to the desired length.

Patrick loves puzzles.   This  one looks fairly simple, but the colored stripes in "Jonah's" fish are similarly shaped so completing  it requires some trial and error.   Good perseverance!

Our first sight word is SEE.  Each child, when they are the leader, will tell us what they see in the room.  Together we will write a sentence, trying to sound out whatever the child has chosen.  Can your child read any of the words?

Zoey said, "I see necklaces."  Lots of letters to sound out!

We are off to cooking and since we had a bit of extra time, Cheryl took us into the garden so we could pick our own eggplants. Alex finds the perfect one for our recipe!

Don't drop that basket!

You can see some of the herbs we gathered too.  Cheryl is getting the ingredients for the eggplant chips.

Chopping, measuring and stirring...who'd have thought so many kids asked for seconds!

We try to do as much work as possible vertically.  Just like painting on the easel, working in this manner is wonderful for strengthening the upper body. In addition to building strength, Zoey and Noor are working on eye-hand coordination.

Emma and Suri are tracing a curvy path from the bee at the top to the one on the opposite side, at the bottom.  Many of the children made the connection between the curvy line on their papers to the the curvy line we are making with the caterpillar numbers.

We're sure you heard about the Curious George actors and their version of Jonah and the Whale.  Check out the pictures on the bulletin board! 



Thank you all for a wonderful birthday celebration!