Fall 2016

Hi Blue Room Family and Friends,

The children are so excited about fall, starting PreK, our letter of the week, art, sharing and so much more! As the weather begins to change, our ocean work has mostly wrapped up and given way to excitement about all things autumn.


Our friends went on a nature walk around the school, collecting leaves to use to collage for letter L. We also used leaves to do leaf rubbings. The children got very creative and rubbed multiple colors just like they saw on the leaves.


L is for lady bugs, laying on a leaf. How many dots can you count?


The children used acorns that Evy and I picked from our yard at home to bring in and share with our class. All the children had a different technique of how they wanted to paint with the acorns.


L studying all the different parts of the pinecone.


D thought the bottom looked very neat and said that "this is where it connected to the tree."


P had a different technique


Painting pinecones was fun, but was challenging to paint each individual seed pod. The children's favorite part was sprinkling the glitter at the end!


A. working with clay and natural materials to make a bird. After watching the Happy Birds show, the children's interest in birds has been flying all over!


S showing off her bird named Rainbow. Rainbow's "favorite color is purple and her favorite activity is playing games. She's really funny and I like to hang out with my bird."


G and G making their nests for their clay birds.



Using yarn, moss, sticks, and leaves to make our nests.


Working in our journals, drawing things that start with the letter L.


M and A building blocks.


Our preschool group working on shapes, and realizing it takes a lot of patience and a steady hand to complete the pictures with the matching shapes.


Our PreK group doing their morning work sheet. It is amazing to watch their growth and see their fine motor skills getting better everyday. A highlight is when they get to make the letter of the week books, to color and use scissors to cut them out. They are so proud to read their books aloud!

Have a great weekend!

Hugs,

Kristina


- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

Diving into the Deep Ocean Blue

Hi Blue Room Family and Friends,

Over the past few months, the children have really been enjoying and engaged in learning about the ocean. The children have been able to pull knowledge from their own visits to the beach, going boating, visiting the aquarium, the fish tank in our classroom, books, and lets not forget Finding Dory.


We talked about about keeping our oceans clean and what happens when people litter. To demonstrate, we put magnets in our ocean and fished out all of the garbage with our magnetic fishing poles. This made space for the fish to swim and be happy!


This activity was a hit and the children were very proud when all the garbage was picked up.


L and G cleaning our ocean.


We read the book My Visit to the Aquarium and their imaginations were running wild, talking all about the kelp forest and scuba feedings. P and D working together in our deep sea sensory bin.


The children explored the cold open sea tank where fish have space to grow. It was filled with huge sharks, big whales, sea shells, dolphins, fishes, rocks and many other sea creatures.


C and S working on matching the fish to the correct color.


M working on matching the fish and also helping a friend.


P, A, and S working on counting dots on the fish and then finding the matching number.


After the children cleaned up the ocean, we put paper clips on the fish so that they could catch healthy fish with their magnetic fishing poles. A got really excited that she could catch more than one fish at a time!


Teacher Aimee read The Seahorse Song to us, and then we found the audio to the song online. It very quickly became a class favorite! Feel free to take home you child's project (it's in their take-home file) and read their personalized story which really brings their ocean to life. We used many different materials all worked into one masterpiece over a period of several days. The children were very proud of their hard work!


L working on step one - using oil pastels


S working on step two - water colors


G working on step 3 - rubbing and dabbing the water color


Friends working on step 4- ripping the tissue paper


D, S, and M concentrating on their seaweed


L and S working on step 5 - gluing their tissue as seaweed


L working on step 6 - coloring and cutting out seahorses


M working hard to stay in the lines


S working on the final step (and probably the favorite) - Glitter glue on the seahorses, and then after they dried, gluing them into their ocean scene.


Working math into our interest in ocean sea life. P and G measuring with unifix cubes. How long will each animal be?


L and L realized that the longest was the squid and the shortest was the crab.


Using our wooden shape blocks to build different sea animals


M and L felt inspired to make a big fish out of play dough, making all the scales and adding then to the fish.


Here's D working on his name with glue and sprinkling colored sand. This activity was neat on many levels, because their name with sand made the sea floor for our rainbow fish project that followed.


The other children loved watch one another to see what colors they would pick. You never know what you'll find on the ocean floor!


Hugs,

Teacher Kristina


- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad