Oh, the Places You'll Go

May 13 and 15

  You would think with 2 teachers there would be more pictures. Once again the kids 

love the morning free play.

Here are the Busy Bees enjoying the book, Oh, the Places You'll Go. 

They had questions and loved the pictures. On Tuesday the activity was moving in different ways; hopping, jumping, walking and running. Of course the kids loved doing this outside. Then for math we learned a little about estimating.

On Thursday we tried to fit in a little learning but it was mostly fun. Kelli organized a scavenger hunt.  the Busy Bees loved reading the clues and racing around with their compasses.

 They found the treasure under the slide! The treasure were cute pirate bags full of marbles 

and gold coins. The Busy Bees had a great time.

Green Eggs and Ham

April 29 - May 1

  I was not very good at taking pictures. The kids loved the book Green Eggs and Ham. We talk about all the rhyming words. All the kids were pretty good and picking out the words. For the activity on Tuesday we played a matching game with rhyming words.

  For math on Tuesday we counted and organized plastic eggs. The kids of course wanted to 

have an Easter egg hunt.

 For the craft we made popsicle stick Cat in the Hats.

  The kids love centers. We played with play do, did the dot painting, 

worked on the cubes, and put together puzzles.

Working so hard to make a gun out of the blocks. Boys and guns!!

 

On Thursday we made Cat in the Hat faces. Everyone had a different variation. The kids love working with glue and making a mess! 

Mrs. Wishy Washy

I love the story Mrs. Wishy Washy. It is a simple book for the earliest readers-- full of fun rhyme and silly characters. But it is out of print. So the first day we listened to a 1st grader read it to us via youtube. Then we acted it out ourselves. This was so fun to see! (I did record their little plays but have not had luck posting them.) Then we made costumes to take home along with the text of the story so the kids could act it out with their families.

We colored the farm animal necklaces

and made Mrs. Wishy Washy faces.

The second day I read the book Mrs. Wishy Washy's Farm to them (You can find that anywhere!). So we did a lot with farms that week. Here are two of the four centers we did:

Crayon rubbings of farm animals

Letter dot to dot of the farm animals in the story (cow, pig, duck)

 

For math, I paired up the kids and gave each pair a bag with farm animal foam stickers inside. The kiddos then estimated how many animals were in their bags. Here they are with their guesses.

Then we opened the bags and counted how close our estimations were.

Meg/Tyson and Stewart/Blake guessed spot on!

After this we sorted all the animals and distributed them evenly to each child. For the craft on this day, they took the farm animal stickers and used them to decorate card stock barns. (See image below)

Here are the other two centers we did: 

Washing Farm Animals (They loved this!) I took plastic farm animals and let them roll them around in the "mud" (washable brown finger paint) and then they could wash the dirty animals in a soapy tub.

Little Farm Animal Free Play

This was another fun math activity. In the book, the animals do not like taking baths. So we went around the group and asked each child if they liked taking baths. As each one answered, we colored in a square on the graph to show their answer. Thankfully yes got the most votes! Not too stinky of Busy Bees! :) This was a good activity for one-to-one correspondence. 

Finished farm animal/barn crafts

Swimmy

Swimmy is a great book about sea animals learning to work together. It is full of beautiful and interesting art with language to match. The book describes Swimmy (the main character, a small fish) observing the world under the sea in ways like this, "He saw a medusa made of rainbow jelly (jelly fish) and "a lobster, who walked about like a water-moving machine...".

After reading the story we practiced using descriptive language ourselves. We looked at our clothes and came up with how Leo Lioni may have described us if we were colorful sea creatures. This activity did was a mind stretcher for the kiddos but it was fun to see what they said.

Tyson is the "race car friend"

Stewart is the "superpower fish"

Logan is the "dinosaur fish"

Trevor is the "straight face Jack o'lantern" or Logan said he could also be "candy corn" if he was wearing a yellow hat!  

 Luke is "Rain Kid" because his shirt is blue and has a hood

Blake is "Swimming Ocean Blue"

and Ava is simply "Buttons" 

We missed Miss Meg this day!

One of the fun things this book allows is the exploration of sea animals. We talked about the different sea animals (and their characteristics) mentioned in the book. We learned that jelly fish are symmetrical. Here we painted symmetrical rainbow fish, by painting one half and then folding it together. These turned out great. They did a fantastic job with this task.  

Sorry for the side view of this picture. More with sea animals...We graphed and counted our favorite sea animals from the story. The Big Bad Tuna Fish was the winner!

A few snapshots from snack time...

We missed Blake this day!

In the story, Swimmy is a small black fish who works together with a school of small red fish to scare off the large tuna. He is the eye, while the others swim around him in a large fish shape. Our busy bees worked together to stamp with paint the large red fish comprised of the small fish. They did a great job waiting their turn and working with others to make our extra large art!

Finished product! 

After the fish dried, we counted them and then practiced tracing and writing numbers.