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
