Week Ten: The Little Engine That Could

This week was all about trains.  We read The Little Engine That Could by Watty Piper:

On Tuesday, we made these cute shape trains:



On Friday, we played with toy trains:

Here is a train going over a hill; as it climbed the hill, we chanted "I think I can, I think I can, I think I can" and then "I thought I could, I thought I could, I thought I could!" as he went down the hill.

Next, we made these trains that I found on thestorytimelady.wordpress.com.  Here is a template for the train cars to print in cardstock.  Just cut a toilet paper tube in half, cut slits, and stick the train in. They loved having their very own train engines.

 One kid got creative and made a train track out of strips of paper:

I always make sure to encourage them when they use their imagination. 

We made trains out of pattern blocks: (template)

 And we had fun dot painting trains.  Sorry, no pictures, but here is the template.

Kids always love trains and the whole idea of anything train-y so that made this an easy and fun week!

Water Play

On a nice day, I love to get out our water play bin, fill it with water, and take it outside.  The kids are always sad when it's time to put it away; they could play for hours.

Just fill a bin with rocks, cups of varying sizes, funnels, rubber duckies, and whatever you want.  Bring it outside and you won't need to worry about spills.  They played together so nicely and eventually worked together to get all the water our by filling up cups and running them over to the fire pit.  This is a good exercise to teach about what floats, for example, rocks don't float, but when you put one in a cup it will float!

Play-Doh

Check out this amazing play-doh recipe! This made the best play-doh I've ever played with, including the kind from the store.  It's soft, smooth, and so, so fun. Wow, can't believe it's homemade.

http://www.howdoesshe.com/perfect-stocking-stuffer/

















Instead of putting it in baby food containers like the post suggested, I bought a pack of little Glad containers, which work perfectly:

Here's some of my (less artistic) pictures:

I handed some kids a handful of this play-doh and a handful of store bought play-doh and asked them which they liked better.  Immediately, they all said this kind.  Even I couldn't put it down, it was so soft and perfect.

As a side note, googly eyes make a super fun addition to any play-doh sculpture.  They instantly bring any creature to life, and the kids loooove them.  I can't even tell you.

Week Nine: Goodnight Moon + HALLOWEEN

Goodnight Moon by Margaret Wise Brown:

We practiced clothes-pinning some mittens to a mini clothesline I made:

Also we made these cute moons:

On Friday, we made these Goodnight Moon windows, like the cover of the book:


 The moons I cut from coffee filters.



Friday was also Halloween, so we did some extra things.  First, we learned the poem, "Five Little Pumpkins."  This was my favorite poem I learned when I was in preschool by far.  Here's my poem folder version. 

After learning it, we made these:

Potato stamping: some worked better than others, but cute overall:

Here's the link where I got the idea: http://thepinterestedparent.com/2014/10/06/potato-stamping/

Week Eight: Katy No-Pocket

We read Katy No-Pocket by Emmy Payne:

After reading (with some extra learning involved; like "how many animals fit in that apron? That's a lot!"), I handed out little aprons, much to their delight.  After getting them all tied, I played this song and they had a great time bouncing around the room like a kangaroo.

Next, we made these kangaroos:

Template can be downloaded here.

On Friday we read the story again and hopped around some more.

Then, I took them into the lunch room where I had previously marked with blue tape a thirty feet mark (how far a kangaroo can jump), as well as one foot intervals for about five feet.  I showed them how far the kangaroo can jump, and then we all took turn jumping as far as we could. Here's the blank worksheet.

Next, we made mini books called "My Book of Mommy and Baby Animals" that I made.  You can download the file here.

Week Seven: Angus Lost

On Tuesday we read Angus Lost by Marjorie Flack:

 and I gathered the pieces for a story basket, similar to this one:

delightfullearning.blogspot.com

I also made a template for the characters in the book and made felt pieces for our felt board in our classroom.  The template can be downloaded here.

On Friday we used these Angus Lost Printables for the maze on page 26. They also retold the story again with the story basket.

SHAPES

To introduce the shapes we played Cranium Hullabaloo:

The kids loved this so much, we must've played fifteen rounds.

Also we sorted foam shapes:

And I used this as an opportunity to teach an eager kid about sorting by size:

On circle day we did our SSWR worksheets, sang the circle song and marched around the blue tape circle on the floor, identified circles around the room and out the window, and played with a parachute and balls. 

For rectangle, square, and triangle we went simple and just did the songs, marching, and worksheets.

For triangle, we also learned how little triangles put together can make a big triangle and made these:

For a review of shapes at the end of our shapes unit, I made all four shapes on the floor with blue painters' tape:

And we did the final SSRW shapes song.