Have a great weekend! :)
Just a quick reminder that picture day is this coming Tuesday, September 29th, 2015! Dress your best 4K! :)
Have a great weekend! :)
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This week we are discussing our 5 senses! We are learning about our: sight, hearing, taste, smell and touch. So far we have learned about sight using the book called Mouse Paint. As the mice came through the book they came to three different colors: yellow, red and blue. Doing so they slowly start mixing the colors to create new colors. Reading this book we used our sight to see the different colors. Seeing that we saw three colors we created mouse track pictures using Q-tips to paint with. As they were creating their mouse tracks some of the kids noticed that when the tracks would cross they would be creating the colors we saw in the book. (Ex. when the blue mouse crossed the yellow mouse's path it turned green) Great observation by using our sight!! On Tuesday, we were using our sense of touch! We looked at things that we can feel reading out book Our Five Senses. We then created our hand to represent our different textures that we can touch. The students did a great job listening to directions putting these hands together. We went piece by piece so they are showing their abilities to follow directions! :) We have the following on the hand: hard (gold plastic coin), soft (puff ball), sticky (tape) and smooth (a piece of a plastic dixie cup). On Wednesday, we were learning about our senses of taste and smell. We created "jello names" today and the kids were beyond excited to get started. All you need if you want to create these at home you will need: paper, Elmer's glue and jello powder. You write what you want to write in the glue on the paper, then take a spoon and have the child spoon the jello over the glue. As they watch the powder change from dull to a vibrant color within seconds. Then now that they are dry they are our scratch and sniffs that the kids will be able to show you when they come home. On Thursday, we had a busy but productive day. We did our final sense of hearing and played with some easter eggs and tried to guess what was in the easter eggs. Once we had a few guesses we counted to three and then opened it to faces that were surprised at what it was. The most common guess was jelly beans! :) Then we worked on our Five Senses Hearing sheet where we had to decide what things we could hear, and then color those things - crossing out the ones we cannot hear. Today we also learned that to make our coloring better and to make our pictures more colorful we need to use AT LEAST 5 colors when coloring. The kids before I could say anything were already starting to count out the crayons to make sure they had those FIVE different colors. I am so proud of all of my 4K students this year they are already growing so much!! Then I decided to have a little fun learning about the formation of our letter Cc. I made gak today to work on our formation of the letter Cc and work with our hands a bit -- (liquid starch and Elmer's glue). We worked on rolling it out with our hands and creating the letter Cc and then they got 1 minute of fun time with it in groups of four. Not everyone got to do today but know that they will on Monday if not today. As well all week we have been working on our letter Cc! We have worked on forming our letter C, coloring things that begin with C, learning the sound of C and being able to identify the lower and uppercase letter Cc. The students are working very hard getting their work done and working on the formation of all of their letters. This week we created a letter C Cat - C is for Cat. As you see the last three pictures of are "new" things in our classroom. Firs off I have printed off pictures of the kitchen area for the students to know how to properly put things away nicely. There are two baskets labeled food and labeled dishes. The kids know what to put in what basket which is great and know having the pictures of where to put things has really helped them be more organized when cleaning up. Our favorite phrase in 4K lately is "TEAM WORK" - great conflict resolution! :) As well the dots on the floor leading from our door through our classroom are number dots - 1 to 16. When lining up the students must pick and number and stand on it; this creates a straighter line but also keeps them in their own space.
My 4K friends have probably told some of you about our carrot that we have in our school! If not I will explain here! :) There is a plastic carrot that all students and staff have their eye out for in our school. If can be hidden anywhere in a room or office but needs to be somewhat visible -- so cannot be in a drawer, closet, etc. So I alerted my class so we have been on the lookout for the past couple weeks. Here's the thing, at the end of a two week period if you are left not finding the carrot in your room and someone has hidden it there you have to wear the carrot crown that Mrs. Dahlke created for the whole day!
Obviously according to the picture below we found it!! We were sitting at carpet getting ready to start our day and our friend Laney raised her hand. In the calmest voice she said, "Ummm, Ms. Luce, I think I found the carrot." And there it was pushed into our puzzles a little bit of the carrot leaves ("spikes") were sticking out just enough that when she was sitting in her spot she saw it! AWESOME!! :) So we went and hid it in another classroom while they were all at mass! I can't tell you which one, Shhhhhhh! :) Lately in 4K we have been having some problems within the realm of friendship! :( I decided it was time to bring in our bucket fillers and our bucket dippers. Bucket fillers are: sharing, smiling, listening, being kind, taking turns, including others, helping, being polite, complimenting someone, etc. Bucket dippers are: making fun of someone, doing or saying mean things, ignoring someone, bullying, hurting someone with our hands, etc.
We had a very busy week this week! We were learning about apples this week, the different parts etc. When we learned about the different parts of the apple we talked about how and apple core when you look at it is broken up into the top, middle and bottom (3 parts). An apple is a good way to think of the father, son and the holy spirit. Apples are good for our bodies, as well the father, son and the holy spirit are as well good for us and we need to embrace them.
We painted with apples this week as well. I cut apples in half and the students were able to come up and dip the apple in the paint, then print it on the tree that was created before hand. This was a favorite of the week - some of them had never painted with apples before so they thought it was pretty cool. Korbin brought in a pretty cool Rice Krispy snack that his mom turned into "apples"! Finally the students were treated to an apple taste test. I brought in yellow, red and green apples for each of the students to try. If they did not like it that was fine, but they were asked to at least try it which a lot of them did. The surprising part is that the ones that they thought they would not like they did. As well the kids were able to try apple cider, which most did not care for. Finally on Friday we had a fun and fit walk that the whole school participated in. We had a talk about health and heart pumping vs. non-heart pumping activities are. Our 4K friends walked a little over a mile during this walk! We are all about movement and being healthy at St. Mary's and in 4K!! This week our theme was Fall! We learned about different leaves but also our main goal was to learn about the letter Aa! We did many fun activities to practice our writing of the letter Aa; from tracing it, to circling it in a poem that we read, the students know what an A looks like. As well we listened to a song from Jolly Phonics for the letter A. Like all the letters in this program the letter A correlates with a motion and sound. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Djz82FBYiug) The students stick out their left arm, getting their right arm ready to be the "a...a...a... ants crawling on their arm". I have done this with my students/classes in the past and the students really respond well to it. When we are done learning the letters this will help with phonemic awareness, as well as being able to recall letter sounds to blend letters together to make words. We will be creating a different animal/creature/thing for the letter of the week we are learning until we get through them. Then I will be combining them into books to be sent home when completed! This week for Aa we created Alligators - A is for Alligator. As for our theme of fall we have painted with leaves and made abstract art paintings with them. We have created "stain-glass" paper leaves that we are hanging in our windows to brighten up our room. We have worked on our numbers by cutting out leaves and matching them with the number on the tree and coloring it with fall colors. We also created some fall portraits with fall leaf sentences. The students chose a fall color (brown, red, orange or yellow) and had to color their leaf and the crayon that matched the color word. Then had to cut the sentence strip out and place their leaf/color word crayon in the correct spot. (ex. This leaf (insert leaf) is yellow (insert color word crayon)) Then they were to create a fall time picture to go with the sentence. READING IS KEy....And most of all, we have been learning through doing which is huge in our classroom. By doing different things we learn about the world around us but as well we learn about things we need to know to grow. We have been spending a lot more time in our reading corner which I love to see because literacy is the bridge to imagination and a world of possibilities. I made the reading corner as comfortable a place I could without it becoming too comfortable so that the students would want to and love to read. At this age as well having those "reading buddies" of stuffed animals really helps them. This allows for them to work on their book handling skills but also being confident in reading books from a young age.
Our first week in 4K was great, with a lot of emotions and learning going on inside the classroom and out of it. We have been learning and growing together so much already and have learned about our school/community. When asked what their favorite part of the week was the overwhelming answer was RECESS!! They are loving their specials so far, as well as all that we are doing in our classroom. This next week we are starting our curriculum in 4K and we are all very excited to learn more about letters, numbers and ourselves. We played with the chains, the wooden blocks with the marbles, kitchen area, outside and as a class we made our own rules. We had center time, painted pictures for children in Africa, etc. The kids raised their hands and said what rules they thought we should have in our room. The first picture is what we came up with.
I am very excited to see what the rest of the year has in store, with seeing all of the growth only in the first week! Thank you to all the parents and members of the St. Mary's community, for all of your support! The first day of 4K is now in the books and we had a busy, eventful day full of learning, and laughter. This class is an amazing group of children that have so many bright futures ahead of them! They will all do such amazing things in their lives!
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Ms. Luce
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June 2017
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