Name Cheers!

Yay!  We know all the letters in our names...and that is really something to CHEER about!  We have been working very hard for 5 weeks to learn all the letters in our name.  We had to be able to say the letters in our name in order and mixed up.  I got this GREAT idea of doing name cheers from a teacher friend of mine, Mrs. Estes.  Each student held the megaphone and said, "Give me a J O N A T H A N, what's that spell?   Jonathan, one more time, Jonathan!  We also passed around a shaker and cheered for our classmate!  This was so much fun!

Monster Fun and Chrysanthemum

This week our theme was Monsters which went perfectly along with our focus letter which was "Mm".  We read lots of fun stories including, There's a Monster Under my Bed and Glad Monster, Sad Monster. We made monster Glyphs (below) and monster headbands to wear to our Monster Mash.  This is a fun unit in which we incorporated feelings and worries.  We ended the week with a bang by having a Monster Mash.  Pics to come later from it.  Oh, and Friday, we watched a short video of Chrysanthemum by Kevin Henkes...and she visited our classroom!  See pic below.

The Letters Are Lost!

Well, Friday was the last day of our introduction to the alphabet.  Now, we have been introduced to all the letters and all the sounds...that means Monday we will begin focusing on one letter per week.  We read a cute story named, The Letters Are Lost by Lisa Campbell Ernst.  So, when we went to get our letters out of  our alphabet treasure box, they were gone!  Oh no!  Well, we went on a treasure hunt first, by singing We're Goin' on a Treasure Hunt by Jack Hartmann.  The kids loved this song.  It's too cute!  Then, we hunted the letters in our classroom.  Each child found one letter.  Then, we put them back in order on a pocket chart.  (J is still missing...hmmmmm....not on purpose....we really can't find it.)  (Maybe Lakeshore will send us another one.)  We discussed how we need all the letters so that we can make words and read!  We sang the ABC song as we pointed to the letters.  This was such a fun activity.  Oh, and because we were such good treasure hunters we all got jeweled treasures.  


After finding all the letters, we each got a big letter to decorate with something that begins with that letter.  You'll see in the pictures.  There are lots of pictures, but I just couldn't resist.

Chicka Chicka Boom Boom!

This week our theme was Chicka Chicka Boom Boom!  What a fun week, but busy it was especially after being our for Labor Day.  The kids loved this story so much and wanted to hear it again and again.  We did some fun activities during centers like stamping the alphabet in coconut trees.  In math, we counted coconuts and matched them to the correct number tree.  We also made Chicka Chicka Boom Boom AB patterns.  Below are pictures of our cute toilet paper Chicka Chicka trees.  We put letter stickers on the leaves of our trees.  I thought they turned out so cute.  Parents, inside those trees is a paper of the alphabet.  Keep this handy and use it as a resource.  Your child can pull it our and use it to practice their letters and sounds, and singing the alphabet while pointing to the correct letters.  

Color Mixing

For one fun activity this week we learned about mixing primary colors to create secondary colors.  We began by reading the book White Rabbit's Color Book.  It was about a curious white rabbit who wonders what will happen when she jumps into different color paint buckets.  She learns that red and yellow make orange, red and blue make purple, and blue and yellow make green.  At the end, she jumps into red, yellow, and blue and turns brown.  She decides she likes herself as brown.  Next, we mixed our own paint colors to create those secondary colors.