Gardens and Umbrellas

CIRCLE/LANGUAGE     We acted out the following words: grumpy, groaning, growling, grunting, grouchy, gobbling, and guzzling. Another fun activity was a game using beginning sounds. I hid a letter inside an egg and they had to find the picture with that beginning letter. They did awesome. Individually, the students dictated to me what makes them grin. Their answers were entertaining!  After reading, The Story of Feelings (Berkner), we role played many emotions. Also, we role played appropriate ways to communicate our feelings. As a group, we did several sequencing activities.

MATH      After reading the book, Making Graphs by Nechaev, we made our own graph by picking our favorite g food....graham crackers, green salad, granola, or grapes. Grapes were the favorite! We practice one to one correspondence when we wrote numbers on our gumballs.

SCIENCE   We are growing green grass in honor of G week! The children "wrote" their beginning letter of their name in the dirt and we sprinkled grass seed on the letter. The children are thrilled with the results and monitor their grass daily.  Our potato grew a potato! One child discovered a potato growing out of our potato.....hysteria ensued and our "scientists" were full of questions.

SOCIAL STUDIES      Using the map of the United States, each child picked 3 states they wanted to visit while on our classroom "bus". The page will be in their portfolios.

ART      We adorned a gumball machine by adding numbers and color. Children designed a garden complete with grass. Umbrellas were made with coffee filters and pasted on paper with "glitter" rain. Golf ball painting was used to paint U's.

BOOKS/SONGS      "The Great Green G",   Busy in the Garden (Shannon), Trouble Gum (Cordell), Gerties Gorilla's Glorious Gift (De Rubertis), Good Nite Gorilla (Rathman), Jewel the Unicorn (Dussling), My Red Umbrella (Bright), Babar's USA ( Brunhoff), Something from Nothing (Gilman)

CELEBRATIONS      We celebrated Israel's 63rd birthday with the entire school. There was a magician who performed and a parade of Israel flags designed by each classroom.  Thank you to the P.T.O. for the magician. The children thoroughly enjoyed every minute of it!   Thanks you to the P.T.O. for the final visit from the Schoolhouse Symphony. Their "shows" are always so age appropriate and the students look forward to it.

REMINDERS      There is no school on Monday, May 30...Memorial Day. Portfolio party is June 1 at drop off. Our end of the year picnic is on Tuesday, June 7. It is at Miami Riverview Park in Loveland. Details will be in backpack soon!

QUOTE OF THE WEEK     I was talking to one of the girls about moving on to kindergarten and being in school all day next year. She replied, "I don't want to grow up. I want to play!"  As we were eating a snack, one student proudly stated, "Elves are real...they make my favorite cookies!"

Extracts, Eggs, and Elephants

CIRCLE/LANGUAGE ARTS      The letter E was introduced using Handwriting Without Tears. We continue to practice with word families and the students are progressing beautifully. We had a special reading time with the "bigs" in the library. They relish the attention from the big kids.  We had a return visit from the 5th graders. This activity was an extension of the "bullying" puppet show. Their activity is in their bags. Individually, the students transcribed E words and put them into envelopes.

MATH      We practiced writing numbers 1-20 on a number train. To coincide with E week, we spied the numbers eight and eleven on a worksheet. This is a great exercise in visual discrimination.

SCIENCE      We discovered a robin's nest with 3 eggs on the play set outside. Needless to say, the kids are beyond excited. So, I brought the exploration inside and we are learning all about robins and how they care for their eggs.(How convenient that we are studying E this week) Friday morning, the children discovered that 1 egg was missing. We spent a great deal of time looking for "evidence" and speculating what happened...one child said a starling stole the  eggs, a boy added that a crook came, and one said that a fox jumped the fence.  We used extracts to explore our sense of smell. The children smelled peppermint, vanilla, raspberry, and lemon extracts and were asked to guess the smell. We concluded the activity by reading The Sense of Smell by Schuh.

SOCIAL STUDIES   We talked about the "age" of Israel (63). Using the map, we located Israel and identified the Mediterranean Sea, Negev desert and the Dead Sea.

SHABBAT      Yom Haatzma'ut was the focus of our Shabbat. Israel's birthday, flag, and weather were discussed.

ART     The children were very excited about their Mother's Day gifts. The children worked hard on creating the special gift and card.  The  children created crowns to wear at our Yom Haatzma'ut celebration next week. We created a "mosaic" Elmer elephant to coincide with the book. We painted the letters of the alphabet for the Preschool Art Show.

BOOKS/SONGS      "Everybody Likes E", Robins (Posada), Robins and their Chicks (Tagliaferro), "First Comes the Egg", The Enormous Elephant Show (Charlesworth), Elmer and the Rainbow (McKee),
Nosy Rosie (Keller), Mother's Day Surprise (Krensky), Are You My Mother? (Eastman), Sammy Spider's First Trip to Israel (Rouss)

CELEBRATIONS     The children are asked to wear blue and white for our Yom Haatzma'ut celebration next Tuesday! Thanks to all the dads who participated in Daddy Drop-Off.  The event was enjoyed by all.  A huge thank you goes out to the P.T.O.   We welcomed Mirah this week. The class went out of their way to be inclusive and attentive to her.

REMINDERS      Next week is sharing....the children may share whatever they would like including toys! Look for the tags attached to their bags.  Wednesday, June 1 we will have our Portfolio Party at drop off.  We will distribute the end-of-the-year portfolios and have a breakfast snack. It is very short and sweet!

QUOTE OF THE WEEK       While 3 girls were swinging on the tire swing, I asked them what they were talking about. They replied, "the ten commandments!"  It's good to know they are listening!