How nice it is to be back from Thanksgiving break! The children returned back to school joyful, rested and ready to work
Monday’s group got right to work, focusing on letter I. The children learned the 2 sounds letter I makes and practiced writing the letter in both upper and lower case. Of course, as we introduced the letter sound, we put our hands in front of our mouths and on our throats, repeating the letter sounds. Although one little smartie was sure she could feel air come out of her mouth as we chanted the long and short sound, the class agreed that the letter was indeed a noisy letter!
The children used “inch” cubes to measure various classroom objects…..glue bottles, books and even their feet. They stacked the appropriate number of cubes, counted and then wrote the corresponding number symbol. They even used rulers to create lines, cut them and “build” their own upper and lower case letters which they turned into Iguanas!
Tuesday’s group began exploring the wonderful literature of Jan Brett, beginning with the classic adaptation of THE HAT. Morning rotations began with the children sewing a large paper version of the mitten and then measuring the length of the mitten with cubes, paper clips and crayons. They had to write the number of objects they counted and then indicate which object they used the most of and which object they used the fewest of. They did mitten matching, coloring and even tracing of terms from the story.
Group time itself was a blast, singing songs about mittens and introducing them to an old favorite, THE THREE LITTLE KITTENS. They also played a color, rhyming game during which Ms. Newman sang a “riddle” of sorts that gave a color/rhyme about a mitten she was describing. The children had to listen and raise their hands to indicate that they knew the correct answer and also accept if they were not called upon. While reading the story, the children were guided to notice the illustrations which predicted what animal would appear next in the sequence of the tale. They were asked to raise their hand if they knew what type of animal was next to appear. They were also asked to answer questions and make predications as the tale progressed. Once the we finished reading the story for the first time, the children were assigned characters and then acted the story out, climbing into a giant mitten as their character did in the story.
Finally, the activities wrapped up with the children coloring and cutting out the characters in the story to put into the mittens they had created at the beginning of the day. They were all so quite and hard working during this task………a sure sign for the teachers that the children so enjoyed the day’s activities and wanted to carry on the role playing on their own!
