Happy H

This week we have been learning about H.

We have had a blast signing about Hannah's Hiccups! The kids liked this song almost as much as One Luscious, Two Luscious, Three Luscious lollipops! We have done all kinds of things with this song. On Monday, we used Wiki-sticks to highlight all of the letter H words that we could find. Throughout the week we sang the song each day and whenever we would hear an H word, we would hold up our sign language letter H. We also point to and read the song while we sing it.

We have also been practicing our numbers using a chart that helps us count to the 100th day of school. This week we did all kinds of things like make a lady bug with 20 spots, make a tower of 21 blocks and see if it would stand, and finally today we had to do 11 hops on each foot to make 22. We are having so much fun learning to count and counting up to the much anticipated 100th day!

Our centers this week focused on activities that we have practiced in class already. At ABC center the students had to sort out picture cards that went in either the letter L or G pocket on our pocket chart. At Puzzles, they had to cut out and glue pictures of things that begin with letter H. Finally, at art center, students made a puppet of a Hippo. We did lots of Hippo stuff this week including reading great books like Hippo's Loose Tooth and Hiccupotomus. I hope these puppets will help them remember these great stories as well as lots of H things!

At Math center, the children used pattern blocks to cover designs. This is something we have been working on in our math time that helps students to solve spatial visualization problems. We will continue working on this through the year. Not only is it great practice, but the kids love it! It is like doing fun puzzles!

This week in math we also began learning about sorting. We sorted several different things in our classroom and the kids did a fabulous job with it! They had great ideas for how we should sort things! This is something else we will continue to practice using different math manipulatives throughout the year.

This week's graph of the week was titled "What do you like to do". Children were able to choose which outside activity they liked best between swimming, riding their bike, jumping rope, and playing ball. Swimming was the class favorite by a landslide with 9 votes! The only other one that got any was riding bikes, which three children liked. We discussed what we can tell from the graph and which was the least. This was tricky today because many students wanted to say that riding bikes was the least, when actually jumping rope and playing ball got zero. This was a great opportunity for us to talk about what zero means!

Finally, we were able to do our five senses activity! This week the kids felt inside the feely box to discover a horse! Then we listened to an H story and put up the last of our letter H things in our environmental print book. For our tasting and smelling today I gave the kids a spoon with a few drops of honey in it. They all said that it smelled VERY sweet. Then we tasted it. Several of the kids said they hate it and didn't want to, but they were good sports and tried anyway. Most of the class liked it, while just a few didn't. We were definitely all in agreement that it is VERY sweet!

Next week Johnny Appleseed and letter T! Should be fun :)