Corduroy

We kept up with more bear fun at my house as we read Corduroy.  We talked about how this time the bear we were learning about was teddy and not the real bears (panda, polar, black, brown) we had learned about last week. We got a lot of math in this week.  We started with tracing the numbers 1-5 on a paper and then matching them up with the same number of teddy grahams. 

We colored our own teddy, added the overalls and, of course, the buttons! 

Ava was quite artistic with her buttons! It was art after all, so I couldn't keep her to just two. 

A shot of the kiddos playing basketball during outside time. 

For more math we played a game I made up called Wake Up Bears! All the kids go to sleep (close their eyes) and I hid certain numbers of bears under different small buckets. When they woke up, we chanted, "Wake up bears, wake up bears" until we picked a bucket to look under. We took out the bears underneath, lined them up, counted them and then matched them with the appropriate number card. They loved this!  It was great practice. 

For science, we talked about texture and how the bear Corduroy got his name. We felt some corduroy fabric and did some rubbings of things with different textures. 

Above you can see rubbings of a leaf and a hair comb.

We were glad to have Meg and Trev back on our second day of school that week!  They had both been sick earlier. Here they are looking through library books about bears during book look.

For literacy, I challenged them again (as I did the week before). We sat all together at the table and looked at this picture for things that started with B, like bear.  They could not have done this on their own but together we managed it.  I wanted them to get the exposure. When we found something that started with B we circled it.  

One more math activity!  We made button pattern books. A pattern was started already for them on each line, then they needed to glue on buttons to finish the pattern. Many needed help putting these together at first but by the third pattern, they got it! 

This was my last week for the school year! It is always bittersweet. I have really enjoyed this crowd and watching them grow. I just wish they wouldn't grow quite so fast. :) They'll be in kindergarten before we know it.