Penguins

Right off our wild animal unit, we delved into a unit about one of my favorite animals...penguins!

Dramatic Play

It was more of a sensory play this time around, as I brought in the sensory table and filled it with penguins and "insta-snow." I left the snow a powder the first day, so the kids could watch me add water to watch the snow grow. They love this stuff and almost all 9 were crowded around this table the whole first day.



The second week, after we had learned about the difference between Antarctic and Arctic animals, I added another sensory table with water beads and polar animals from the North Pole. They loved this too and this tiny table was busy and crowded all week!


Art

Feather painting, white paint on black paper, with feathers as brushes. They also liked using them as quills to try to write.


"snow paint" shaving cream, white glue, and glitter


Epsom salt painting. I didn't get any pics, but they painted with a water/epsom salt mixture on dark paper, and once it dries, it leaves the sparkly salt crystals behind.

Small Manipulatives

Numbers and counters on the magnet board
 

Puzzles

Building link things (no idea what they're called!)
 

Large Group

We learned the song, Penguins on Parade, which I own on a cassette tape, so it's a little dated! They love it though, because we get to wear penguin masks and march/waddle like penguins around the room as we sing.

We learned the word, Antarctica and found it on our map and globe.

Day 1, after reading about penguins, we learned about the difference between animals at the North Pole (Arctic) and South Pole (Antarctic) and sorted our animal toys by where they live.


Day 2, we read a book about Emperor Penguins, and learned that the father penguins carry the eggs after the moms lay them and pass them to them. So, we practiced balancing "penguin eggs" on our feet, by using beanbags. The children had to walk a few feet to their partner without dropping their eggs, then pass it to the partner, who then got a turn to walk balancing the egg. I don't think any of our poor eggs would have survived on the ice, but as one of the kids pointed out, I think penguin feet are made to balance eggs, and ours aren't!

Day 3, we learned about how penguins stay warm in the cold. We read that they have oil on their feathers that makes the water run off of them. We did a simple experiment, combining oil and water, and learned that they don't mix. So, feathers covered in oil, would repel water instead of soaking it in. Then, we tried to fit 9 feathers into a 1 cm squared box on a piece of playdough. They were very crowded, and we learned that penguins have 9 feathers in every square centimeter on their bodies, so having so many feathers also helps keep them warm.

Wild Animals

At the request of some students who wanted to learn about bats, we did focus on bats the first day, then the rest of the weeks were focusing on a variety of wild animals, so we could hopefully touch on most everyone's favorites!

Dramatic Play
Week 1: bat cave. It wasn't super fancy, but a tent made a good cave. I have some bat posters I got at a teaching conference years ago, and finally got to use! I also hung bats from the tent ceiling (that didn't last-they were torn down and played with right away!) and put some other creepy crawly animals in the cave, like scorpions, snakes, and spiders. They enjoyed playing in here the 2 days it was up, but by the end of the 2nd day, I was ready for it to be done. They just did less playing and imagining they were bats, and more rough housing and knocking the tent over. It's a good 2 day center.



Week 2: Zoo. They loved this! I kinda set up cages with blocks, but they had to improvise and expand them a lot. I'm not sure why, but I hadn't expected them to want to pretend to the animals as much as they did. The zookeepers were super busy, rebuilding cages, chasing down their escaped animals and getting them back into their cages, and also feeding their hungry animals. They had a great time. They often lacked visitors to the zoo, since so many were animals, so I had to buy a lot of tickets and visit often. The stuffed animals were fun, but they liked the animal costumes and being the animals the most.






Blocks
Mini-zoo with small animals, then the second week, the zoo expanded into the blocks area.

I also had several animal puzzles and games on the shelf that got played with a lot. They especially loved playing animal headbands! It was hilarious to watch. They'd be giving someone clues, and another kid would just walk up and yell to them what animal they were. We're still catching on to asking questions and giving clues I guess!


Art

Bubble wrap roller painting. This was a fun new painting experience they really liked!


Play dough and animal cutters


Q-tip painting



Watercolors

Small Manipulatives

File folder games



ABC animal foam puzzles


Animal puzzles


Flat marbles and animal ABC pages from here


Animal lacing cards


Magnet board: pattern blocks with animal cards


Writing
Animal stickers

Outside
We finally have snow! I filled the colored water bottles each day, and they love going out and coloring and painting the snow. They especially like mixing colors with each other to make new colors. I just use old empty bottles like syrup, shampoo, ketchup, honey, etc. I found the ketchup bottles were a little harder for them to use, but they were able to do it if they squeezed hard enough.

Large Group
We learned 2 new songs, Going to the Zoo by Raffi, and The Elephant Song by Dr. Jean. And we learned the word "wild."
Day 1, we read Stellaluna. We learned about bats by watching a youtube video about them. I was most impressed that they eat so many bugs! I'm sure the kids only heard the part about vampire bats that feed off animals, and didn't pay attention to much else!
Day 2, we made a giant venn diagram on the floor, and sorted our toy animals by wild, domestic, or both.

Day 3, we read about and learned the life cycle of a frog.
Day 4, we read about animal habitats, then watched this Sesame Street clip about habitats. It doesn't get much better than Lin Manuel Miranda rapping. Then we took the toy animals, and sorted them into habitats by placing them by a picture of their home.

Small Group
We don't have Miss Kim coming anymore, with her new work schedule, so they are learning to work independently in one group, while another group works with me. It's going quite well!
One group drew and wrote in their journals about their favorite animal, while my group was practicing cutting a zoo animal wheel thing. The finished product wasn't a big deal, but practicing cutting was!
The next week, my group practiced numerals and counting with animal magnets. The other group worked on an ABC animal puzzle together.

Merry Christmas!

We celebrated Christmas just 1 day this year, instead of a whole 2 weeks! Trying to keep things fresh and new :) Here's a quick run down of what we did:

Dramatic Play Area
Trains! 2 different kinds I have. This was busy all day, building and driving.


Blocks:
Christmas bean bag toss. The bean bags also became Christmas presents, being delivered as toys throughout the day.


Art:
Christmas stamps


Small Manipulatives:
Gingerbread men decorating

Christmas ornament counting

Santa magnets


Writing:
Christmas cards. This was the busiest center all day long. Cards were being made and delivered to each other constantly. It was fun to watch them make sure they made one for all their friends, and no one was left out! Everyone got a card from someone. A few lucky family members may have had cards come home too.


Snack:
We had a Polar Express Theme to the day, and wore our pajamas to school. So, we read the book before we ate snack, then we drank hot chocolate and had cookies, like the kids on the train.

Small Group:
One group decorated sugar cone Christmas trees. Frosting them was quite the challenge, but a doable one that took a little time. Adding the candy was the fun part!
The other group was making jingle bell necklaces by adding beads in a pattern. They did a wonderful job creating and repeating their patterns! They definitely have that skill down and ready for Kinder.

Large Group:
We had already read together, so we sang a few Christmas songs, then it was already time to go home! We had a fun and busy day!

Fairy Tales

This is always a favorite theme that I love doing. There are just so many good fairy tales and stories to choose from, and so many activities and ideas for each one. Sometimes I think I could focus and do a different fairy tale each week for a few months! But, they'd probably get sick of it by then. These last 2 weeks, we learned a few different fairy tales and focused on reading comprehension as we read books, retold stories, acted them out, retold with puppets, and put story events in order (sequencing).

Dramatic Play

Castle! I was so excited to find this new cardboard castle on a yard sale site a few weeks ago! It was the perfect front, then I used my old box castle walls for the sides. I filled it up with costumes, fit for a King, (and queen, princess, knight, wizard, dragon and fairy).




The second day, after we had read Jack and the Beanstalk, I added the beanstalk. I didn't have it the first day, because I wanted to read the story first so they'd know what it was. It added a great element to their play, and turned the castle into the giant's castle too.




This was a popular center, all 4 days! Most of the kids got dressed up as soon as they walked in the door to school! We had princesses and knights playing and going center to center each day.

Blocks

The first day, was the castle, filled with the medieval finger puppet characters.


The last 3 days, it had the beanstalk, and a few costumes for the Jack and the Beanstalk story.

Art

Fairy Tale sponge painting shapes


Jack and the Beanstalk-inspired collage items and glue


Glitter Glue


















Play dough with princess Cinderella and Sofia Playdoh toys. Plus, ABC stamps and molds, since not everyone loves Princesses. I forgot a picture.

Small Manipulatives

ABC magnets on the magnet board, with ABC order charts. This was pretty popular and was usually busy with kids matching the letters in ABC order.


Princess number matching cards in the pocket charts


Building things (no idea what these are called)


Jack and the Beanstalk wood characters and castle for story re-telling



3 Little Pigs story re-telling


Tortoise and the Hare puppets (forgot a pic)

Opposites puzzle

Writing Center

I forgot pics, but we had out different colored pens and scented crayons this week

Outside

SNOW!!! Brrrr...and cold! A reminder that we got outside in the cold, so always pack warm things for them to wear! We had a lot of cold fingers this week. We didn't stay out long, cuz it was cold and the air quality wasn't great, but since it wasn't in the red, we went out for 10 minutes to run and get the wiggles out! So please always send cold weather gear!

Large Group


We learned a fun new song, to the tune of Pop Goes the Weasel. Running in circles is perfect for getting out wiggles!
All around the castle,
the knights chase the dragon,
The dragon thought it was so fun,
Roar goes the dragon!

Day 1, we read Jack and the Beanstalk. Then we listened to a song with the story and learned the chorus and sang along. They split into 2 groups and had to put the 5 story cards in order of how the story happened. Then they retold the story with the wood figures. Then we drew small castles (we talked about using rectangles and triangles and practiced those shapes on the board first) and added clouds to them. Hopefully, if our beans can grow during this cold winter, they'll grow up our beanstalks to the castle!


Day 2, we read Tortoise and the Hare and acted it out with puppets. We did it twice so they all got a turn to be in it. We talked about opposites (fast and slow) from the story, then worked on an opposites puzzle together. We also did opposites in our knights and dragon song (fast/slow, quiet/loud, high/low, etc).

Day 3, we read The 3 Little Pigs. Then I put them in groups of 3 to each "build" a house for the pigs, from Goldfish cracker boxes. They did SO WELL! I mean in getting along. There was no arguing and crying. We often try to do things in groups, and they're so busy hogging stuff, they don't get much done. We had none of that today. They just all poured glue everywhere and made beautiful houses! Then we got back together with our pig toys, and dog puppet (as close to a wolf as I had) and retold the story a few times so they all got turns to have parts.


Day 4, we watched The 3 Billy Goats Gruff, instead of reading it. They loved having a video! Even if it was less than 10 minutes long. Again, like days previous, we acted it out together. Then they colored their story wheels. As they finished, I had them use their story wheels to tell each other the story, and hopefully they came home and told it to you, too!