Saturday, February 22, 2014

Healthy Habits

We finished up our Vv is for vegetable activities with some vegetable painting using cucumbers, mushrooms, lettuce, celery, carrots, broccoli, peppers and cauliflower. We also finished up our taste test graphs after taking some test bites of raw broccoli, cauliflower, and cucumber. 





We then switched healthy topics to dental health! We talked about how all of us were born with 20 baby teeth that will get loose and fall out (tooth fairy!), making room for our 32 permanent teeth. Dentists are special doctors for our teeth, and can help us keep them clean and take care of cavities. The best things we learned to do to keep our teeth healthy is to brush, floss, and eat healthy food.

Some of our tooth books:


 We read "Clarabella's Teeth"- about an alligator who spends all day brushing her giant alligator teeth, missing out on fun with friends. Then, we buckled down to help Clarabella out by taking care of some of her teeth. First we got them good and dirty with some yellow and brown paint, then we scrubbed them well using our toothbrushes and paste (shaving cream). After rinsing them in the sink, we saw how well we had done getting all the food out. We did pretty well, but lots of times there was a little paint left in between our teeth. So, we got a good reminder to do a careful job cleaning all of our teeth thoroughly!






We also made some models of our teeth- 10 on top and ten on bottom!


Here we are playing a tooth counting game! Roll the dice, and count the dots. Reach into the cup and pull out the same number of teeth (navy beans) to fill up your mouth board. Be careful not to get a tooth with a cavity (black eyed pea)!


We got some fine motor practice with teeth, too! Using small paintbrushes, we tried very hard to paint the teeth white and the lips red. Tricky!








Tuesday, February 18, 2014

Happy 100th Day!


Hip Hip Hooray for 100th Day!

Today we celebrated 100 days of learning this year. We've been getting ready for a few days, so this morning we had hats with 100 stickers and glasses ready to wear. 



After everyone had their stuff away and party gear on, we got down to some 100th Day fun. First, we got our blood pumping with 100 exercise moves, done in sets of 10. We did jumping jacks, stomping, jumping, criss cross stretching and hopping. There were also skips, snake style wiggling, standing on one foot, kicks, and as a cool down, hold your eyes open without blinking-> all excellent suggestions by our 100 days smarter class!

We counted on the calendar, and finished turning over the last number on our hundred chart. Fred the frog made his big leap to the end of the number line. Ms. Heather challenged us to get caught with 100 helping hands and caring hearts. This will take more than just one day, but we made a big start! Welcoming friends over to play, working hard to get a job done, complimenting a new haircut, being an extra clean up helper, sharing, using great manners- those all got "caught" today and landed on our chart!


After a relaxing story about 100th day, we got down to our first challenge- 100 Cup Building! We divided into 3 groups, each one at a different table. Every group got 100 dixie cups to stack as high as possible. First challenge, get everyone to work together!


Soon, we were off and building!



We built, crashed, experimented and rebuilt again. When time was up, we had some pretty incredible structures!

Hip Hip Hooray for TEAMWORK! These girls built the highest structure using all their cups.
After cleanup, we sat down to make a 100 polka dots with our paint dotters. We did this together as a class, counting one by one for each row of 10. Then we passed our color to a friend, and did it again.


Then it was time for our big job- the 100th Day Snack Mix. Thanks to all our generous parents, we had a wide variety of ingredients to use. Following our recipe card we made on Friday, we carefully counted out each piece, one by one. It was a big job!











Our carefully counted mix went into a bag to take home, then we all ate leftovers for snack at school. We headed to the playground, 100 days smarter!