Spring-y Friday

Today was such a beautiful day! We've talked about how all the rain is important in spring to help the flowers grow, but we certainly enjoyed the first sunny day all week!

Today we read Sky Tree by Thomas Locker and discussed the changes that take place in a tree over the four seasons. This book has beautiful paintings that show the tree through all the seasons and in between. We read the short stories for each tree and then discussed the pictures, noting how things have changed and discussing which season must be represented and why. After we finished this we did this week's graph: Which season do you like best: Fall, Winter, Spring, or Summer. The majority of our class likes summer because they like to go to the beach! A few people chose spring because they like to plant flowers and also enjoy seeing the flowers when they grow, and one chose winter because she likes to play in the snow!

Then we did our Let's Find Out for the week. We learned about the life cycle of a Dandelion. We learned that Dandelions start out as yellow flowers before they turn into the puff balls that we love to blow! We discussed other ways that the seeds could be blown such as the wind and animals walking by. Then we learned that the seeds go into the ground and the whole cycle starts again. I was really impressed because as I describe it the children said "It is a cycle!". They remembered that from science class :)

We also worked on a poem called Invite the Wind. We read the poem together and then discussed it. First we looked for rhyming words in each section and then we discussed the symbolism of the poem. In the poem it talks about asking the wind to come and play and asking the wind to say your name and we talked about how the wind can do these things. The children all had great ideas about the wind playing by moving things and blowing and the wind being able to say your name when it whistles by. Then the children got into groups and did "poem puzzles". I had cut the poem into pieces and the children worked together in groups to match the poem puzzles to the print out of the poem. Then we colored the poem picture. These poems will be in your children's poetry books that I will send home at the end of the year :)

The day flew by with all of our fun spring activities! I'm looking forward to next week when we start talking about eggs. We'll start on Monday by reading Hedgie's Surprise by Jan Brett and on Tuesday the children are each to bring a surprise in their eggs. The children will use vocabulary words to describe the things and we will all guess. Then we will look at different eggs and what animals lay them in the book An Egg is Quiet and also in our Let's Find Out. We'll also explore eggs in a poem, Batches of Hatches. Then after spring break we will actually be getting a shipment of Painted Lady Butterfly larvae to observe!

This Week's Centers

Alphabet: The children are using the word family eggs from last week, but this week they have to write the words that they make in their journals. After they write them down, they have to read them to me.

Math: The children are writing down the numbers that they make using their making number eggs from last week. After they complete four eggs, they read the numbers that they made to me.

Puzzles: In the spirit of spring, the students are working on a puzzle that matches up baby animals with their parents. This is leading into our life cycles unit that we will be starting after Easter.

Listening: This week the children are listening to There Was An Old Lady Who Swallowed A Chick and filling out a listening center sheet about it. They have to write the title, draw a picture, and write about their favorite part. This book is hilarious and the children have enjoyed reading all of the Old Lady books!

Everything We Learned ABC

This week we have been working on an alphabet book.

On Monday we read Library Mouse which is a story about a mouse who lives in the library and decides that he could write a book. The children all want to meet him so he makes a box that says "Meet the Author". When the children look in the box they see themselves in a mirror and then they all write their own books. I used this story to open up a discussion about who can be an author or an illustrator. We decided that anyone could be an author or an illustrator!

Then we started talking about what kind of book we were going to make. The children got to look at several different kinds of alphabet books, including many different ones by Jerry Pallotta (My FAVORITE alphabet book guy!). We read The Furry Animal Alphabet Book and Kindergarten ABC together and decided what to write our book about. The children came up with the title Everything We Learned because it is going to be a hodge podge of different things that we like and have learned about at school or at home or anywhere really!

Each child will make two pages for our book. We assigned the letters on Tuesday and completed one page each today. We'll finish up tomorrow and put our pages in order. Then we will get to read our very own book written and illustrated by us on Friday! Be sure to stop by and check it out :) So far it is REALLY awesome!