Talkin' Turkey

Thanksgiving is next week, so of course we concentrated on those great turkeys this week. The picture above is from this year's interactive November bulletin board. The children did a great job.

We did two turkeys this week. The wonderful and ever fascinating(to little ones), handprint turkey. The children all got to watercolor two of these turkeys on Tuesday. We had some pretty wet turkeys when they were done. It's a good thing they had a couple of days to dry so they could go home this week.

Our other turkey had to do with things the children were thankful for. I had a cute new book to read to the children at the beginning of the class. I thought it would be helpful to show the children all the wonderful things in their world that they should be thankful for. The book is called, "Thanks for Thanksgiving," by Julie Markes, illustrated by Doris Barrette.

The thankful turkey was made with simple shape; circles, and triangles. After the children put all the pieces together they told me something they were thankful for. What a difference between the two classes. With the AM class you had to watch out for that "parrot" response, the response that are all the same. The PM class was a little more insightful, all unique ideas.

We now have a week to get everything together for Christmas! Did I really say that?

Happy Thanksgiving!

Brown, Brown, All Around

http://www.hanammarbles.com/html/onyx/multi_col_%20brown_big.htm

Our color this week was brown. I'm not sure if it's me, but this color doesn't come as easily as the others. They like to call this color black, even though they identify black correctly. I keep trying.

Our first page for the color book was a acorn. My plan was to find some acorns outside and "marble" paint with them to make our acorn picture brown. Well, too little too late. I looked all around for acorns. We have some oak trees at the end of the street that are always full of acorns, so I thought for sure there would be some lying around. I plowed through mounds of leaves, but did not find one acorn--the squirrels beat me to it.

So I put on my thinking cap--what to do, what to do? I thought about raiding the wooden beads as there are lots of different shapes, but wasn't happy with the idea. Then I found some tissue paper squares and thought that would look neat--no brown. So I thought I would cut up some tissue paper--no brown. Finally, I saw my 500 brown bags and decided I would cut them up into squares and use them. The children painted the acorn with glue and put on the squares.

The second page was "Spot" the dog. I had cut out small brown circles-ovals and the children glued on spots then colored.

Here are the brown color page patterns:

My favorite idea this week was for the sensory activity. I decided to have "worms in brown mud." I cooked up some spaghetti--which I left in the refrigerator at home. Mrs. T was great enough to have some Ramen noodles in her cabinet that she cooked up quickly for me. Then I added brown paint to the noodles to make it look like we had some worms in mud. Well, I think I may have sold the idea too well. I got words like, icky, gross, ooo, "do I have to touch it," etc. I was shocked. I explained over and over again it was just noodles in paint. I thought for sure they would love this. They liked fingerpaint, why not this? Oh well I tried. Everyone at least touched it, but no one really "got into" it. Maybe it will leave a lasting brown impression though.

Sailing We Will Go

Thursday was Mayflower day. I read the children a rebus story of the first Thanksgiving, and then we make a Mayflower. I always write the word "Mayflower" on the children's ships after they cut them out, and they tell me, "That's not how you write my name."

Here is a cutting activity I let most of them do on their own. They each get a square with the pattern on it, and then I let them cut on the lines. I must say I am so amazed at these children's cutting skills. I have to give a big thanks to Mom and Dad for allowing these little ones to h ave scissors.

We have been doing a lot of activities that stay at school lately, so they were very excited to take these home and show Mom and Dad. They did a wonderful job.

Then End is Near

Wow, that's a scary title. It just hits me sometimes how fast our school year is going. We have one more week of Thanksgiving activities for my class, which actually equals two classes. We come back from break and have 6 more classes to finish out the 2009 year. Yes, a total of 8 classes left before we start 2010. That just doesn't seem right.

We started Thanksgiving this week. I try to meld the good food unit with Thanksgiving, so we start by making a cornucopia. I won't go into too much detail as you may have seen this last year when we made it.

I give the children a page of fruit and vegetables to color. Mrs. T and I will cut these out. Then I give them a picture of a cornucopia, I have the children cut this out. This was the first big cutting project. We did a little cutting for our paper jack-o-lanterns, but they just made slits. Here they were actually cutting out an object.

I must say I was pretty impressed. I held the paper and helped guide, but they did the open/shut maneuver. I was amazed at how many of them were comfortable with this. They did a great job. Only a few needed more guidance.

The children then glued on the food and we were ready to decorate.

Here are the patterns if you would like them:

Purple Murple

This title is a shout out to my helper, Mrs. T., at school. She just loves to say purple murple. I hear it quite a lot during purple week. Plus, she was a good sport when I gave her a purple paint shower this week so she deserves some recognition. Thanks Mrs. T!

Purple this week. We had lots of fun with it. For the first page of our book we painted a purple pterodactyl. My plan was to get to the fabric store and buy some fabric with a good texture to it. Well, sickness hit at home and I was unable to trounce about. I got lucky and found some heavy fabric in our closet at school and used that.

I wanted to give the pterodactyl a "leathery"skin type look. I took the material and had the children use the rollers to roll some purple paint onto the fabric. I then had them press and rub their picture against the fabric to get the print of the fabric on their paper. It was pretty fun--first time I had ever done this. They thought it was great that they were putting a piece of paper with no color on it against some fabric and it was turning purple when they pressed it.

The second page was a picture of Ernie from Sesame Street holding some grapes. I had precut some grape shapes. The children glued the grapes on and then colored the picture.







Our other purple fun went along with our good foods discussion. I had drawn a "bowl" on a big piece of paper--so I'm not the best artist. Then I had put out purple stamp pads so that the children could use their fingerprints to make grapes in a bowl. Again--lots of fun. You will notice the afternoon class got REALLY into this activity. I tried to stress that they clean their hands when they were finished, but I'm sure we'll be finding purple handprints on toys for the next couple of weeks.







Here are our purple pictures:

Only a few more colors left. Next week we're on to brown.

"Food, Glorious Food!"

What better month to talk about good foods than the one following the big CANDY day, and the one filled with preparations of a huge yummy feast at the end of the month?

That's what we did this week. We started our good foods unit this week. I have a cute puppet named Chef Combo who always helps out with this unit. Now, I am in no way a ventriloquist, or master puppeteer, but the kids just LOVE when I bring out Chef Combo. There I am with my hand in this puppet, right next to him, moving my mouth and all, and they are in complete awe, only talking to Chef Combo--I just love it!

We talked about foods that were good for us and help us grow big and strong. We then made a food mural. I had cut some foods out and put them on the table with a large piece of paper. I also had some grocery market circulars available for the children to cut out their own pictures. I allowed them to choose what they wanted and glue them to the paper. They could do as little or as much as they liked. This was also a voluntary area, they didn't have to do any if they didn't want to.

Chef Combo visited again on Thursday and we played the Good Food, Not Good Food game. The children pulled food out a bag and put good foods by the happy face, and not good foods by the sad face.



Then came the best part--Muffin Pizzas! Who doesn't love pizza? I had brought in English muffins, sauce and cheese. Then I let them make their pizza. Some only wanted cheese, but most of them had both sauce and cheese. Then I cooked them up for snack time. Lots of saucy faces when we were done.









Now that I'm full to the brim, off to introduce Thanksgiving.

Back in Black

Oooo, what a dark week we had: Halloween and the color black--scary, scary.

This week, trying to incorporate some Halloween activities, get ready for our parent program, and discuss the color black, didn't leave me much time for extras. Here is what we did:

The first page of our color book was to paint a black kitten. What better way to do black than with a black Halloween kitten. I wanted the kitten to look like it had fur, so I got some rubber basting brushes and that is what we used to paint with. This was the first time I ever did this activity. It looked better when the paint was thinner, as you could see more lines representing fur, but we are painting with preschoolers here, the more the better!

The second page of the book was a bit harder. For this page we made a black bat. To make our bat black I give the children strips of black paper and they had to rip it into pieces and cover the bat. Ripping is very hard for them. They want to PULL the paper apart and when it doesn't work they become frustrated. I try to help each one individually to get the hang of it and then let them try on their own. Some of them did great, some were done after a couple of tries.

Finally, on Halloween, we made a black spider web at the end of the day and put our black spider in it. This was one of the best parts of the day.



Here are our cat and bat pictures:





Onward to PURPLE!

"Pumpkins" on Parade

On Thursday we had our Halloween parade with all my little "pumpkins." They did so well. No one cried during the festivities although we had some tears after. We always have a little performance for the family when they come and they did so well! I was very impressed with how well they sang and did their little fingerplays. For most of them this was their first performance in front of an audience--GREAT JOB!

After our parade we made our black bats which I will showcase in the color section. The afternoon class even had time to made the paper "jack-o-lanterns." It was a fun day had by all!