Saturday, September 29, 2012

September Birthdays!

Our first month of school is done, and we've worked and played hard! We had a few class celebrations this past month, and I just wanted to share some of the photos below with all of you. Special thanks to Mrs. Horton for her beautiful pictures of our special days!







Happy Clifford Day!

We've been talking a bit about pets this week, and Friday was dedicated to one of my favorites: Clifford the Big Red Dog!  First thing in the morning, we came in wearing red and sat down to make Clifford hats, and up to ending the day with a class photo with Clifford stuffed animals, we had a doggy good day!

We read several Clifford books, both at story time as a class and individual book time.



We made Clifford paper bag puppets:


 We counted out bowls of dog biscuits for Clifford's lunch:


We built Clifford some new doghouses:



We played "Clifford Says", where we all tried to do everything the Top Dog told us. No pictures of that, since everyone was too busy, sitting, shaking, rolling over, and playing dead! Then, it was time to recharge so we had our own dog biscuit cookie snack.



It was a BIG RED day!

Wednesday, September 26, 2012

The Letter Pp


We've been working on the letter Pp this week- how to recognize it, say the sound, write it and hear it in words! We have worked on puzzles, counted pennies, painted and talked about polite words such as "please". Our centers have kept us busy with Pp work too, especially as we start our unit on PETS.

We are working on patterning again this week. We used flannel pet shapes to make several patterns as a class, and also used pet stamps to create patterns as a small group of 4. We then made a pattern individually on a dog bone shape. After showing Ms. Heather a pattern on our bone, we had a chance to just stamp for the fun of stamping!


A brand new center introduced today was our Practice Workbook Center. These binders are full of practice pages in clear plastic sleeves that we can do with dry erase markers. Everyone needs plenty of fine motor practice, but not everyone needs exactly the same kind of practice. SO, these books let us put together a variety of skill level practice so that there is something for everyone. Also, when you get to erase with your sock hand and try again, or use different colors, it is just a lot more fun (and we don't even realize we are doing lots of work- shhh!)



We painted with red and yellow to make orange for some pumpkins that will go on our October calendars:

We colored some Pp papers purple and covered them with puzzle pieces:

And, we worked on puzzles and train tracks!

For science, we hunted through a stack of pet store flyers for pictures of PETS and PET SUPPLIES. After carefully cutting out several pictures, we glued them down on a class chart. Look at how much improvement there has been in our cutting skills this month!


It's only Wednesday, and the kids have really been working (and PLAYING) hard this week. 
I am so PROUD of all of them!










Tuesday, September 25, 2012

Paint Project

Purple Pendulum Painting

We started this week off with an introduction to the letter Pp- doing a project using a pendulum to paint purple patterns on paper! How the pattern came out depended on how many times we pushed the pendulum during our turn, what direction we pushed it, and if we pushed it in a line or a circle. It was great fun! 








Thanks to Teacher Tom for the great idea!