A Jungle Adventure

I decked out the classroom in a Jungle theme, which actually began even before school started when I mailed each child their own Chicka Chicka Boom Boom postcard.  I made a matching bulletin board to go with it, with a letter for each child's first initial.  Centers were really fun to create with animal costumes in the Dramatic play area:

And some animal puppets too!  The kids put on some fantastic little shows for us through the puppet window.

I had Crocodile Dentist on the puzzle table but he quickly got broken, so he became a water table toy which I think was even more fun!  Miss Anna made our water swampy by adding green food coloring, and I added small plastic animals for the crocodile to chomp down on.  The kids loved seeing how many animals could fit in his mouth and it became a great opportunity for counting when I'd ask how many were inside his mouth.

The sand was full of jungle animals and little trees that the kids loved to dig deep into the sand and section off areas.

At circle time we read some fantastic animal books like:

• Lion's Lunch?
  
• Hilda Must Be Dancing
• Rumble in the Jungle
• On Noah's Ark
  
• Ten Naughty Little Monkeys (possibly the favorite!)

We made fun "Snake Tracks" during craft time by cutting strips of yarn, dipping it in paint and then dragging it across the paper.  This gave us a chance to talk about snakes in the jungle but also relate it to the snake in our bible story when we talked about Adam and Eve sinning in the garden of Eden.

I hope you enjoyed taking a trip through the jungle with me!

Noah's Ark

This week we are learning about Noah's Ark in our bible story time, so it has been infiltrating our classroom.  The water in the water table is blue with all kinds of animals hiding in there.

We have a pretty fantastic Fisher Price Noah's Ark set with a TON of Fisher Price animals, so the toy table was a lot of fun to re-enact the story and pretend.  I even had a couple kids arrange all the animals in pairs, Two by Two.

Our Noah's Ark craft combined scissor skill practice with actually making it rain onto our arks.  I had a simple drawing of an ark photocopied onto brown card stock.  The kids first colored the ark with crayons, cut it out and then glued it onto the paper.  Some then drew pictures with crayons on the white paper, but most wanted to skip right to the rain!

I filled a spray bottle with water and blue food coloring.  You have to make sure the food coloring is pretty concentrated so that it looks very blue on paper.  The kids placed their drawing into a bucket, stood back and then squirted the water bottle to make it "rain" onto their Noah's ark.  The water repels from the crayon and makes a really cool water resist effect with tiny blue droplets all over the page.  Unless of course the kids got trigger happy, and actually "flooded" their page ;)

We also talked about the rainbow being a promise from God to never flood the earth again.  We can stand on God's promises and keep them in our hearts.

Creation

"In the beginning, God created the Heavens and the Earth.  Genesis 1:1"

We are so lucky to have Pastor Nathan come up and tell us the bible story once a week.  We sure do love his huge flannel story board!  Each week Pastor Nathan and I tell a new bible story and of course we started the year off with Creation.  

We made really cool splatter paintings by using a small plastic contraption called a "bellow", squishing it so it could suck up some yellow paint and then squeezing it some more so it squirted the paint all over our black card stock.  This was to symbolize how God created the heavens and the earth.  

Our paintings looked so beautiful displayed on the wall all together!

All month long the kids have been practicing their memory verse as well:

"In the beginning, God created the Heavens and the Earth.  Genesis 1:1"

You should ask your child to demonstrate for you how well they know this verse!

A fun song we learned about creation was Hip Hip Hip Hippopotmaus.  The kids crack me up when they do their great big hippo dances!  Here's the lyrics and a video to show you the tune:

"In the beginning God made the seas
And the forest filled with trees
He built the mountains up so high
And at the top he placed the sky.

God's fingerprints are everywhere
Just to show how much he cares
And in the middle he had so much fun
He built the hippo who weighed a TON!

Hip hip hip Hippopotamus
Hip hip hooray God made all of us!

Hip hip hip Hippopotamus

Hip hip hooray God made all of us!"

Post Office

Our community helper theme ended with the Post Office. Each child got their own colorful postcard to decorate the front of. They dictated to me what message they would like to say and who they wanted to send the postcard to. We had some really interesting things to say to our friends and family members! Each child got their own stamp to put in the corner of the postcard (one cent stamps of course :) ) While they may not have been able to actually send this postcard in the mail it was great practice.


They also each got a colorful envelope to address, add a stamp and put a letter inside.


The "letter" was a page full of stamps made with a stamp and ink pad.

The easel was a busy center with many a mail carrier hats being painted blue.


The dramatic play center had lots of letters to mail, stamps to sort, post cards to look at, and envelopes to drop into a cardboard post office box.

We sure had a busy time with community helpers but it was so much fun to explore and experience new occupations each day.

Restaurant

On our restaurant day, we had the play kitchen set up for the children to cook in as well as a little table dressed with menu's and placemats. There were little pads of paper so the children could take each other's orders.



Each child made his or her own Paper Pizza. They began with a large beige circle that they painted red for the pizza sauce. Next they topped it with their choice of green peppers, pepperoni circles and red tomatoes that I had already die cut. The cheese was 2 inch strips of yellow ribbon, but you could easily substitute yarn.

All the pizza's were so adorable! The Mon/Wed/Fri class practiced their cutting skills by cutting out their own toppings with scissors.

Teacher Michelle taught both classes a great song by Charlotte Diamond called I Am a Pizza. The kids loved it! The Mon/Wed/Fri class sing this one regularly at the last circle time.

"I Am a Pizza" by Charlotte Diamond


A student from my Tues/Thurs class came to school that day bearing gifts as well. Her parents manage Boston Pizza in town, so the children were gifted with mini chocolate pizzas and Kids Eat Free coupons. The class ended with her handing out the treats to her classmates. I so appreciate how great our parents have been getting involved.

Hospital

Hello everyone! I hope you are all enjoying your child's time at home with you for the Reading Week break. I thought it was the perfect time to get caught up on my blog updating.

Now I know I'm heading back to the Community Helpers theme, but I got some great pictures of our activities and wanted to share them.

We had one of the parents, Lisa, who is a community nurse come in and talk to the kids about nurses during our Hospital day. She did a fabulous presentation to them demonstrating how nurses give needles, why we need them, and why we shouldn't be scared. She also had an adorable little helper too!

They first listened to Cinderella's heartbeat.

And then Cinderella got a needle in her arm. We learned that sometimes nurses give us needles even when we aren't sick, because they help us not get sick later. This was during the H1N1 vaccinations so the children were able to link their own experiences to Lisa's demonstrations. Cinderella was so brave she didn't even cry!

The hospital dramatic play center was very popular with all the children after they got to see some of the tools that nurses use.

...of course they had to try them out for themselves.


Some even answered phones and took down appointments.

The water table was full of medicine cups, empty pill bottles and syringes to further their play.

The craft table was full of familiar medical supplies. Who knew we could make such beautiful art with it? This is a Q-Tip Painting made by dipping cotton swabs in paint and making different designs on the paper.

The children also made Doctor Bag Collages by gluing cotton swabs, tongue depressors, cotton balls and band-aids onto this doctor bag template. It was nice for the children to learn what these items are and how they can help us.

This community occupation was a HUGE hit as you can tell.

Fire Safety

Even though we had one day specifically dedicated to firemen, we talked about fire safety all week long. We borrowed a firetruck from another preschool and had it set up for two weeks. The kids played, and played, and played in it...they just couldn't get enough.

We also listened to a Sesame Street song called "Stop, Drop and Roll" sung by Oscar the Grouch. We learned that if our clothes ever caught on fire we had to stop, drop and roll to put it out. The kids had fun listening to the song and rolling all over the floor :)

Both classes also enjoyed fire safety crafts. We made Smoke Detectors by cutting out the image of a smoke detector and glueing it onto a paper plate. The kids colored it and also glued on a little poem about a smoke detector. We learned how very loud they are by listening to a real smoke detector.

We also learned that charcoal is wood that has been burned and that we can draw with it. We experimented by making Charcoal Drawings. Teacher Michelle and I used white cardstock and taped a border around the edge with painters tape. The children drew with the charcoal and smudged it however they liked. It was a very fun and messy art tool to use.

When the drawings were completed they were sprayed with a few light layers of hairspray to secure the charcoal in place and stop them from smudging anymore. Then we peeled off the tape to reveal nice crisp white borders. They are so dramatic and beautiful!

We had lots of cool books in the book corner about fire safety and firemen as well hoses and firemen gloves in the water table with foam flames floating. We had a really great time learning about fire safety.

Remembrance Day

For Remembrance Day, the kids made beautiful white crosses with poppies on them.

The M/W/F class practiced their scissor skills and cut out both the cross and the red poppy and then glued the poppy in the center.

The T/Th Class took small red hearts and glued 4 of them in the middle of a cross to make a poppy.

Thank you to all the soldiers who fought and died for our freedom.