M for Manners :)

Hi Blue Room Families,

I hope that everyone enjoyed their Veterans Day! It was a shorter week but we always stay very busy. Your children have really been taking to the letter of the week and often the week after they think of a word that starts with the letter from the week before and they tell me to add it to our list. We talked A LOT about "M"anners this week! We talked about how as babies we are not born with "M"anners and that we work on them everyday. I made a "M"istake on something this week and taped the wrong journal cover on a different persons journal and had the children point out what my "M"istake was. It was nice that making my "M"istake aligned perfectly with "M" week. I try to tell the children that it is okay to make "M"istakes because we can learn from them and we can always work hard to fix them.

This week I reviewed with the children words that describe the relationships between things... For example: above, below, inside, outside, next to, behind, underneath, little, big, right, left, in between, first, last, top, bottom, and many more. This spiked conversation about sleeping on bunk beds and how many words we could think of that meant BIG. I introduced the word "synonyms" and that it means "the same." Some of the words our friends came up with were: huge, gigantic, humongous, large. I thought this was amazing for our class to be able to think through their vocabulary and think of synonyms for BIG!


We worked with "M"agnets this week and Z pointed out that he made "M"ail! He was very excited about it.


In the beginning of the week the majority of our friends were making boxes but by time Friday the creativity was flowing.


There was a lot more abstract art being formed with the magnets.


J made an awesome space ship with wings.


E, J, A, and N collaging their letter "M" using "M"aterial, "M"onkeys, "M"oney, letter "M" stickers, "M"otorcycles, and, baseball "M"its.


S even wore a shirt that said, "M"ummy is cool!


S and K looking at a "M"ap trying to figure out where we live. They found the United States of America, and California. Awesome job girls!


Some of our art activities included painting at the easel.


Practicing coloring in the lines and counting the "M"ice in the hay stack.


A and S enjoyed making their name banners so much they wanted to make another one, so we decided to make one for our class. BLUE ROOM! This is such an awesome art activity to practice our fine motor skills.

I'd say this was a highlight from the week... "M"aking "M"ac and Cheese!!!


After we boiled the "M"acaroni and strained it we put it into a bowl and added our butter.


"M"ore butter...


Cheese...


And "M"ilk! We all took turns stirring.


Our "M"ac and Cheese turned out amazing! Some of the children proclaimed it was the best ever! It was YUMMY!



It was a great week!

Hugs,

Teacher Kristina

Happy November and Letter N

Hello November!

Our favorite instrument that Teacher James brings to our class for Drumming and Drawing is the thunder stick and this week he brought the BIG thunder stick. The coil that hangs from the bottom was so long that J had to stand on a chair. The instrument that P has is called an African Shaker. It was pretty heavy for the children but they enjoyed shaking it. The sound changed depending on how tight or lose the string was around the shaker.





With both the little thunder stick and the BIG thunder stick it felt like we were in the middle of a storm!





We LOVE to play music! 1,2,3.....1,2,3.....1,2,3.


We enjoy getting to play the instruments and then draw them.

This week we explored the letter "N" as we did many different activities, a highlight being our "N"ature walk.


All of your children carried their own clipboard with a list of pictures to look for and a box to mark when they spotted them.


Thank you to Teacher Romina, Teacher Janet, and Teacher Aimee who came along with us on our "N"ature walk.


We each had our own zip lock bag to collect the things that we liked from exploring outside and around our school.


Teacher Romina helped us pick an orange but we had a hard time fitting them into our bags.


K searched under the arch hedges to see what else she could find.


A and S colored all the things they found on the "N"ature walk.


We spotted, birds, clouds, flowers, grass, leaves, insects, sun, and trees, but we couldn't find a worm! We looked under many logs and even dug in the dirt, but no worms.


This past week we changed our calendar to the month of "N"ovember, and we brain stormed our "N" words. They collaged their letter "N" with animals and bugs from "N"ature, "N"ews paper, and the Letter "N" stickers. We also did a lot of counting "N"umbers and are working on "N"umber recognition.


Making "N"ecklaces with teacher Romina. We tried to find beads with the letters of our "N"ames but we didn't have any A's. This made it pretty difficult to make many of our "N"ames.


This week we focused a lot on our fine motor skills as we strung beads on our "N"ecklaces and also put beads on each letter of our "N"ame. We will continue to work on our "N"ames as the children in our class were interested where their "N"ames came from.


It took a lot of focus and concentration.


The light table is a great place for the children to work on their letters and numbers as I always make a letter that has the numbers written in the correct order to follow just as we would write the letter. This poses more of a challenge rather than just filling in all of the circles with colored pebbles.


Hand eye coordination is very important for us to work on, and what better way thannusing a hammer and "N"ails.


We pounded our "N"ails into pieces of foam using real "N"ails and golf tees. J is concentrating hard.


Still working on safety! ;)


P and Z see who has more?


C figuring out what spot to hammer his "N"ext "N"ail.


On Friday we made "N"achos.


For some, it was the first time eating "N"achos. We picked our chip, sprinkled cheese, added beans and melted them in the microwave. Then we added avocado and salsa.


P and I enjoying their yummy "N"achos!


The boys made a star wars space ship this week. It was very creative and fit four friends!


Then they tried to make a different ship.


Physics is constantly a part of our classroom. P and J launched cars off of the ramp to try and knock over the box. They experimented with how much force they needed to push with to try and hit the box as they moved the box closer to and farther from the ramp. This was definitely one of the activities where we had to be more careful, but that also offered a unique and fun learning opportunity.

I hope everyone enjoyed their Veterans Day!

Hugs,

Teacher Kristina

Letter H, Harvest Festival, and Happy Halloween

This past week was a busy one filled with lots of "H"alloween spirit. All of the children in the Blue Room had been talking about costumes and dressing up since the beginning of October.


We had 3 Fire Fighters, Batman, Wolverine, Bumblebee, Pocahontas, Draculaura, Tinker Bell, a Witch, Little Mermaid and a Lady Bug (not pictured Iron man). And somehow Teacher Romina and I were both Minnie Mouse without evening planning it. :)


S decorating her pumpkin and C decorating his gourd.


E painting with his favorite color green and E painting with his favorite color black.


Z decorating his jack o' lantern for the little pumpkin patch.


We talked about jack o' lantern faces on a pumpkin and how we could make different faces using different shapes.


We also used scissors to cut out our jack o' lanterns and put them on our wall, making a big spooky pumpkin patch.


We talked a lot about skeletons and the bones inside of our bodies. We learned that the biggest bone in our bodies is our femur that it is part of our legs, but when I asked the children what they thought the biggest bone in their body was, they thought it was the skull.


Using Qtips, we built a skeletal system and used a picture of a skeleton as a reference.


A said that her skeleton was so "H"appy and that's why she made it smile.


C said that he made a "big boy skeleton who is on his tippy toes and that he was going to put an antenna on his "H"ead."


The day of our "H"arvest Festival my friend Teacher Sandi came to help make masks with our class. C made a Ninja Turtle.


The children loved making the masks; who would have guessed that paper plates make awesome masks!


Hmmm... What colors to use?


Striking a pose with our colorful masks!


Thank you to I's mom for helping us play pin the nose on the jack o' lantern.


E realized how tough it is to be blindfolded.


Also a very big thank you to I's mom for reading a book to our class!


K and E dig in the bone yard to see what they can find: snakes, skulls, bones, and spiders.


Searching through the bone yard!


Also a very special thank you to E and S's mom for helping us at our sensory table digging in the bone yard and in the pumpkin brains searching for spiders!


I is digging through the pumpkin pasta brains to see, or better yet, FEEL, what he can find.


E found lots of spiders. She even got a little spooked when she found the big mama black widow spider.


It wasn't very long before the pumpkin pasta brains got dumped out and we were able to really see just how many spiders were inside.


Working on our letter H, making a "H"and print.


We also glued "H"earts, and used "H"orse, "H"ugs, and "H"appy birthday stamps.


Super "H"eros unite! Can you recognize us?


Time to go Trick or Treating...Thank you Teacher Jennifer!


Trick or Treat...Thank you Teacher Rashida!


We were very excited to see what treats we got!


We loved our gummies, spider rings, pencils, note pads, and so much more.


Even Tinker Bell's Lost Brother showed up to play with us.


Our spooky pizza party. We ate by candle light and the twinkle lights up in our classroom.


Yummy pizza! Some of our friends even wanted a second slice!


Spreading out our spider webs.

This past week was so much fun and I really appreciate all the parents that came to help and who supported us Trick or Treating through the school. All of our class loved being in their costumes and playing pretend outdoors in their costumes. It was an amazing week and a very fun month! Bye bye October and "H"ello November.

"H"ugs,

Teacher Kristina