Thanksgiving Fun!

My little cuties amaze me everyday with how much they can learn in such a short amount of time.  The week and a half leading to Thanksgiving break really blew me away.  They left for break talking about Squanto, Pilgrims, and comparing feasts that we eat to Pilgrims'.  Such smarties!

I tried to grab a lot of pictures of our learning, but didn't quite snap them all.  Here are some recaps of the fun!

We have been practicing patterns and used these little guys to help us build patterns.  Click below to grab him!

We then added that same turkey to a colander for students to have a standing turkey to make patterns.  We are still working on patterns and will be all year.  This was another way to practice in centers and add some fine motor practice as well.

We also made play-do turkeys using dough, feathers, and my little outlet covers again.  I hot glued to eyes, beak, and waddle to it.  Another way to practice those patterns!

Another math activity was our Roll a Turkey game.  They loved this and I loved my parent volunteer who cut, laminated, and folded the dice.

In Literacy Stations, one station had a feed the turkey game.  I hot glued magnets to little stuffed turkeys and students "fed" the turkeys by making them peck at magnetic letters.  Then they wrote the letters the turkeys ate on a marker board.

Another Literacy Station was listening to stories in our teepee.

We also learned how Squanto taught the Pilgrims to grow vegetables by making the soil fertile with a dead fish.  I modeled this in whole group.

Then my students simulated it with mashed up Oreos (soil) and a Goldfish cracker.

While they were at recess, I placed "corn" in their cups to simulated the corn growing.

We also added fish toys, soil, and crops to the sensory table, as well as some fun Pilgrim hats.

We also made these little Pilgrims to go on our Mayflower.

I also pulled out my Mayflower hat freebie from my store.

For a family project, families helped decorate feathers of things their child is thankful for.

Oh, and if you haven't heard, TPT is having a Cyber Monday sale!

Mayflower Hats

I am so excited that Thanksgiving is next week!  I am one tired teacher.

To help us get ready for Thanksgiving, we made these little Mayflower hats.

These are a FREEBIE in my store!  Click the pic below to grab them.

Farm Week!

Last week was filled with fabulous farm fun!  To start the week, we made a bubble map of farm animals, then focused on different animals each day.  We also graphed our favorite farm animals.  We are little pre-k friends and still working on cutting.  I was very proud of their progress!

Our first animal to learn about were sheep and discussed what sheep are used for.  Pebble Go helped us learn a lot!

  

My cuties LOVED seeing a sheep being sheared and learning what sheep's fur is used for.  Then we learned to shear sheep by "shearing" with craft sticks.  Students cut the "shaving cream" off of sheep (balloons).

On Tuesday we learned about pigs and why they rolled in mud. We started by predicting why they rolled in mud.

Then we rolled our hands in mud - AKA chocolate pudding.

(Of course we ate it after our experiment - yum!!!)

We also stamped our hands on paper pig and shouted "stay cool" to remind us of our experiment and that mud keeps pigs cool.

We also did a cow glyph...

...and stamped our letters onto corn.

At our centers, we grew crops like farmers do!

For math, we have been practicing recognizing number 9.  I made these little number 9 farm pouches and placed a handful of tiny farm animals inside.  The pouch has a 9 on one side and a barn on the other side.

Students first used the barn side to add the number of farm animals I called out, up to quantities of 9.

Then we practiced tracing the number 9  by starting our animal on the barn at the top of the number 9.

We also practiced counting mud spots on pigs.  Students pulled a pig from the mud puddle, then counted the mud spots and recorded the number of mud spots.

 

We also counted the number of chicks in an egg.  Students grabbed an egg from the nest, opened it up and counted the chicks inside and recorded the number.

(The chicks inside were on pieces of paper that matched the color of the egg.)

We ended our week with a trip to the farm!

Fabulous 50th Day of School!

What a wonderfully, busy week in the land of PreK!  We celebrated 50 days of learning with 50's themed activities.

To start the day, we learned about life in the fifties verses life today.  We read this little freebie book

(Click above to get it.)

We also sorted pictures of today's life verses the fifties.  They loved the Barbie and the truck!

For our letter learning, we went bowling.  Student groups were given sets of bowling pins with letters attached to them.  Students recorded any letters that fell over on the recording sheet below.

(Click above to grab this bowling sheet.)

We also made root beer floats by following the directions on our chart.

After making them, we used our five senses to learn about root beer floats.  I LOVE that we could hear the fizz in the float.  Do you see the ear I drew in the bottom right corner with the sound one of my cuties described!

After describing the floats, we create dour own to take home as a memory from the day.

(Don't you just love puffy paint?!?)

It was also oodles of fun to have a sock hop and wear our fifties themed clothing!  (Maybe one day I will actually get a picture of my poodle skirt.)

It has been truly fabulous to spend 50 days with these cuties!