Shaving Cream Names

 

In 4k, one of the many things we learn is how to write our name.  We have been practicing writing our names with only the first letter being an uppercase letter.  All the rest of the letters in our name are lowercase.  This can be very tricky, so the more ways we can practice, the better! 

Last week, we brought out the shaving cream and got "messy!"  We spread the shaving cream around the table and got writing!  The class enjoyed using their fingers to write their name and then using their hands to erase it and do it again!

December Nights, December Lights

We are learning our song for our holiday program quickly approaching!! This years song title is December Nights, December Lights and discusses four special holidays that are celebrated all across the land in the month of December.

Hanukka~Lights the Menorah

Christmas~Lights the Christmas Tree and Advent Wreath

Kwanza~Lights the Kinara

La Fiesta de la Posada~Lights Luminarias (Lanterns)

Thank you for continuing to practice the words to our song at home so that we have confidence as we sing it at school.

The words are...

December nights, December lights.

Celebrations all across the land.
December nights, December lights.

Celebrate with others hand in hand.

Celebrate eight nights of Hanukkah

Celebrate the feast of lights.

Christmas colors that inspire us.

Shine by day and through the night.

(Repeat Chorus)

Light the flames of the kinara.

Kwanza holidays begin.

Twinkling light of la Posada.

Is there room left at the inn?

(Repeat Chorus)

The links below have been viewed in the classroom and are informative of the holidays mentioned in our song. We have looked at a few of the symbols of these holidays as well so that we have a greater understanding of the holiday.

Arthur Hanukkah Video Clip

Sesame Street Kwanzaa Video Clip

Disney's La Posadas

 

 

May all of our holidays be celebrated with open hearts and with others hand in hand!!

Tom Turkey

My name is Tom Turkey
And I’m afraid as I can be.
I’m wearing my disguise
So you won’t catch me!

 

In case you haven't had a chance to stop by, check out our awesome disguised turkeys!  They have made it safely past Thanksgiving, thanks to all your hard work!

 

In 4k, we have also been working on writing with labeling!  Each week, our bulletin board reflects the letter we are studying that week.  The children help label the parts of the picture on the bulletin board.  They are then encouraged to label their own picture, with the help of the bulletin board and parent volunteer! 

Keep up the great writing!

 

 The colorful feathers for our turkey were created by the children using feathers to paint with instead of paint brushes! 

 

Your child's writing is displayed on our writers showcase and then put in their portfolio, which you will receive at the end of the year.

T for toothbrush and teeth

Brushing your teeth is important!  For T week, we learned about trains, tigers and how to keep our teeth healthy!  One of our small group projects was to use a toothbrush and toothpaste (white paint) to brush away the cavities on our tooth.  After we counted the number of cavities on our tooth, we tried to brush them away!  Even though you can't really brush away cavities (wouldn't that be nice), it was a fun activity to remind us how important brushing your teeth is!  Through books and a visit from the dentist, we learned how important it is to brush and floss our teeth so "our teeth don't rot and fall out." 

Remember to brush and floss your teeth at least twice a day and visit the dentist every 6 months!

 

Working together

In 4k we are learning how to communicate our ideas and work together with our friends!  This past week, the children have been challenged to work together to create a winter scene on our smartboard!  The tricky part is only one person can touch the smartboard at a time, otherwise the parts won't move.  This encouraged the children to communicate their ideas, take turns, and work together with a classmate!  I am so impressed with how cooperatively each pair is working and the ideas that are being shared!  Keep it up 4k!

Food Pyramid Fun

Sorry this post is so late!  During nutrition week, 4k learned all about the food pyramid!  We looked at both the new food pyramid and the old one and discovered what foods we need to eat to stay healthy.  In order to stay healthy, we should eat foods from all the food groups.  Each child created their own food pyramid and then on Friday we had a surprise food pyramid snack!  Discovering where the foods we were eating belong on the food pyramid was a blast!  All the children did a great job placing the food in the correct spot on their food pyramid place mat!  While eating dinner tonight, ask your child what food groups the food you are eating belong in!

 

 

 Thank you to all the families who helped out by supplying part of our special food pyramid snack!

The Results are in...

For V week, we learned about voting!  We talked about how our families were going to vote for a president on election day, and held our own class election!  Instead of voting for a president, we voted for a name for our class bear!  Each child was able to offer an idea that they thought would be a good name for our bear!  After everyone had a turn to share, each child each voted for their favorite name.  We learned what a tally mark was and used them to help us keep track of our votes.  Once everyone had a turn to vote, we took the top two names held a real election!

The top two names were: Sparkly Bear and Monster High

 

 

We learned that when you vote, you do it privately so no one knows your vote.  We discussed how it was OK to vote for something different than our friends and we didn't have to share who we voted for unless we wanted to.  Each child took a turn to go to our polling center and fill out a Ballot to vote for one of the top two names. 

 

Once all the votes were cast, we counted them and learned that the winner of our class election and the new name of our bear was:

Monster High

Calves and a Bunny

We had a few very special visitors come to visit us this week!  Mrs. Peters graciously offered to bring her brand new baby calves to school for us to see!  The calves were only two days old when we saw them!  We were all very excited to see the calves and a few brave friends even got to pet them!  Mrs. Peters also shared her bunny with us!  I am so proud of everyone for waiting patiently for a turn to pet the bunny!  We learned that if we all try to run up to the animals at once, we could scare them and we didn't want that to happen. 

P is for Pumpkin

We had fun decorating a pumpkin using markers and practicing our fine motor skills!  The nice thing is when each child was done, the marker washed off with a wet paper towel and the next child was able to start with a clean pumpkin!  We have had some very creative pumpkin designs!

During group time, we talked about descriptive words.  Each child had a chance to touch the pumpkin and tell the class a word to describe it.  We used our "turtle talk" to stretch out each word so we could hear the sounds and I could write them down!  We tried to read the words by remembering what our friends had said and looking at first letter in the word! 

 

Did you notice our pumpkin is full of black stuff?  We are doing a science experiment!  We cut the top off of the pumpkin and left all the seeds and guts inside.  We worked together to fill the pumpkin with dirt and added some water.  Each child made predictions of what we thought might happen.  We aren't sure if little pumpkins are going to grow, or maybe the pumpkin will explode like a volcano?  Maybe the pumpkin will grow new pumpkins and they will explode out of the big one, or maybe it will grow flowers!  We drew our predictions in our pumpkin books and are very excited to see what will happen!!

More shape week fun!

During shape week, everyone was encouraged to stop at our shape table.  Using painters tape, I outlined many different shapes on the table, and even put a few shapes together to make new ones.  During center time, each child was encouraged to see if they could match the shapes and figure out how to make the mystery shapes.  This math activity helped us discover a lot of different math concepts.  We discovered that some shapes are bigger then the outlines on the table and some shapes were smaller.  We also explored the different attributes that make each shape special.  Can you fit a rectangle in the circle outline?  Why not? 

We played shape and color bingo!  In addition to practicing our colors and shapes, we practiced taking turns, as each friend had a chance to call out the next shape and color to find.  We used our listening ears so we would know what shape and color we needed to look for!  We did a great job working together to make this game a success!

 

 

Shape Week

We are having lots of fun this week learning all about shapes!  On Monday we read the story Go Away Big Green Monster by: Ed Emberly.  As we read the story, we talked about the different shapes used to make the monster.  After the story, we created our own Big Green Monsters!  We folded our paper , put green paint on the inside and smooshed it around!  Next we used our fine motor skills to tear up pieces of colored paper into the shapes we saw in the story and added them to our monsters!  Our monsters are in display in the hallways!  Stop by to see them! :)

On Tuesday, we did our estimation jar!  We guessed how many squares we thought were in the jar!  I'm very proud of all of our friends!  Everyone had great guesses!  There were 8 squares in our jar today!

We have also been discovering how shapes are everywhere around us!  We read the stories The Shape of Things by: Dayle Ann Dodds and Color Zoo by: Lois Ehlert and discussed how everything is made up of different shapes!  We looked at shapes in our classroom and the hallway.  We even created our own pictures using shapes and our imaginations!  The boys and girls created everything from houses and cars to robots and fish in the sea by using different shapes! 

Mat Man

Meet Mat Man!  In 4k, we love when Mat Man comes to visit us!  As part of the Handwriting Without Tears Curriculum, we use Mat Man once a month to help us learn our body part and help us draw our own self portraits!  During Group time, we work together to put Mat Mat together as we sing the Mat Man song! 

 

 

 

After we assemble Mat Man, we use the song to help us draw our self portraits!  When the song is done, we add details to make our pictures look like us.  We add our hair color, eye color and try to make the clothes on our picture look like the cloths we are wearing! 

When we were done, we played guess whose picture!  We tried to guess who made each self portrait based on the details they added!

 

 



Cats and Caterpillars

This week we are learning about the letter Cc!  Ask your child what sound C makes!  We started the week of by creating our literacy links page for our own book and reading a book about the letter Cc!  We put starfall.com on our smartboard and took turns finding the letter C, listening to the sound and watching the animation!  www.starfall.com is a great website for your child to use to reinforce letter recognition and letter sounds! 

For math this week, we worked on creating pattern caterpillars!  We have been practicing patterns all week and today we got a chance to make our own AB pattern!  Once we finished our pattern,  we used crayons to add details to turn our pattern into a caterpillar! 

 



More Letter A Fun

Friday was sharing day!  Thank you for helping your child find something that started with A to bring in!  Each child loved sharing their item and walking around when we were finished sharing to look at their friends "A" items!  We had a wide variety of "A" words!

 

During center time, we used our fine motor skills to create stained glass apples!  Each child chose what colors they wanted on their apple.  They were encouraged to tear the tissue paper into smaller pieces and stick them on their contact paper apple!  It was wonderful to see each child's creativity and personality in their apples and how they chose to make them! 

 



Apple Math

 

We began our letter study with the letter Aa!  Apples were everywhere in our room to help us remember one of A's sounds! 

Here are some of the apple math activities we did this week!

 



 

 One of our favorite activities this week was "Where's the worm?"  Everyone in our class was excited to try and guess which apple the worm was hiding behind!  We used our number recognition skills to tell our friends which numbered apple we thought the worm was hiding behind.  Once a number was told, that apple was removed and we looked to see if the worm was hiding there! 

 

 

During center time, groups of children were asked to help put the seeds back in the apples!  Each apple had a certain number of seeds that it needed.  Each child was challenged to identify the number on an apple and then count out that many seeds!

 

 

Another favorite activity was our weighing apples center!  First grade was kind enough to share this fabulous scale with us, so we could explore the concept of weight!  For many of us, this was the first time we used a scale!  We discussed what a scale was and what it was used for.  New vocabulary was introduced as we explored the scale!  Some children discovered that two apples were HEAVIER then one.  Another group chose to use the bucket of dominoes with the scale and discovered that the three apples were LIGHTER then the bucket of dominoes, but if they moved some of the dominoes over to the apple bucket, they could get the scale to be balanced! 

Welcome to Fabulous 4K

 

Hello 4K families and welcome to our classroom blog!  This blog has been designed to give you a sneak peak into our classroom!  My hope is that this will create a conversation in your family about the things we do in 4K and bring a smile to your face as all of our many accomplishments are posted.
Cheers to a cheerful and vividly illustrated school year!

Mrs. Plaza

Color Week

 

Color week was a blast!  We enjoyed finding the different colors on our clothing!  Thank you for helping your child dress in our color of the day!

One of the many activities we did during color week was to create a graph of our favorite colors!  Each child had to think of their favorite color, and if they had more then one they were challenged to pick the one they enjoyed the most!  Once each child had picked their color we displayed all of our colors on a graph.  The class then helped our leader count how many children liked each color.  We discovered purple had the MOST votes and orange, yellow, and blue had the LEAST amount of votes!

 

 

 

We also practiced our colors by creating a very colorful flower vase!  Each child colored and cut out their vase and glued it on another piece of paper.  Each child drew stems and used a paint dabber to add different color flowers to their stems!  When they were finished they shared what colors they chose to make their flowers!  Stop by and see our beautiful vases on display in the hallway! 

Meet Me Pictures

One of the first things we accomplished in 4k was to create our Meet Me Pictures!  Fine motor development is an important part of 4k and we used our fine motor skills to color the picture of ourselves.  Each child was responsible to coloring their own pictures and making sure their eye color and hair color was correct.  We learned a little bit about each other as each child shared something they can do all by themselves!  Stop by and see your son/daughter's "Meet Me" picture displayed in our hallway!!