Thanksgiving

This year as we celebrated Thanksgiving, we talked about how our world is so much different then the world was when the Pilgrims joined the Native Americans here.  We have so much to be grateful for.  We have stores to buy our food, heaters to warm our homes, stoves to cook our food, and yes, we even have indoor toilets!  We learned about the different types of homes that the Native Americans and Pilgrims had.  We made tepee's and log cabins.

On the day of our Thanksgiving Feast, we made cornbread and homemade butter. Yummy!

Each of the children brought something to contribute to our Thanksgiving sandwich, just as the pilgrims and Native Americans each contributed to their first feast together.  

Folk Tales and Nursery Rhymes

In connection with our unit on Community Helpers, we talked a lot about stranger danger in our unit on Folk Tales.  The Gingerbread man taught us about never going anywhere with strangers.  Hansel and Gretel taught us about never taking things such as candy, from strangers.

We had fun decorating our own Humpty Dumpty's and then dropping them on different surfaces to see what would make them crack!

Our bedtime Nursery Rhyme day was a hit!  The kids had a great time wearing their PJ's to school and we enjoyed eating popcorn and watching The Muppets version of Mother Goose nursery rhymes.

It's Autumn Time

  We made some beautiful fall leaves for our classroom tree.  First we glued colorful tissue paper on some leaves, and the next day we sponge painted some more leaves.  I think our tree looked fantastic!  We also talked about how many animals prepare for winter during the fall.  Many animals gather food stores, others prepare their burrows, and still others eat and eat and eat until they are ready to hibernate.

Halloween

We had a fun Halloween party this year with some super Mom helpers!  We decorated the pumpkins that we picked at the pumpkin patch, we made skeleton hands, pinned the nose on the Jack-O-Lantern, and some of the classes made marshmallow mummies!  To end our party we trick-or-treated to each other.  Sugar High!!

Black Island Farms

For our second field trip, we went to Black Island Farms.  We love this field trip, and the weather was perfect! We went on a tractor ride to the fields. We saw how they grow carrots, cabbage and sunflowers.  Then we picked our own pumpkins from the pumpkin patch.

And, of course, we all loved the slides, cow train, and corn box.

Great times!!!

Group Time

One of the new things that we have started this year is having group time in the 4 year old classes. The kids LOVE group time.  In fact, they ask me almost everyday if it is group day!  And I love that I get to work with them in smaller groups on curriculum that is at their level.  Of course, their favorite thing to do in group time is to work on the Kindles. (surprise, surprise- right?!)  We love our educational apps such as Monkey Lunchbox, and Handwriting without Tears.

We also play several different alphabet and math games.

Word Families

Beginning Sounds

Addition

Practicing our letters in rice

Matching letters

Upper and Lowercase letters

Numerical Order Pac Man game