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Pumpkins and Halloween

10/23/2018

October 26th, 2018

Halloween is coming! The kids are so excited! We built our week around pumpkins and ghosts.

We made orange play dough and used Halloween cookie cutters to make neat shapes. Our play dough was also used to count and represent spiders on our Halloween playa dough mats.
We cut and glued pieces or paper and tissue to make a ghost.
We made Jack-O-Lantern faces using shapes
Everyone practiced number counting and identification with our pumpkin counting cards; the kids had to count the pumpkins, find the corresponding number clip and clip it onto the card.
We made the colour orange in shaving cream, using red and yellow paint. And had a bunch of fun doing it!
The kids went on a Jack-O-Lantern scavenger hunt to go along with our 5 Little Pumpkins song. After they found a face they would run back, act out the face shown and erase the matching face off the whiteboard.

Our main songs this week were Baby Shark Halloween and 5 Little Pumpkins (recognizing emotions). So much fun!

Our letters this week were D and P. We sang letter and words songs, and built them with big lines, big curves and little curves.

And of course we baked double chocolate chip cookies for Ms Audra’s birthday and spent lots of time outside in the leaves!

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Harvest

10/19/2018

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October 19th, 2018

This week we talked about the Harvest; what that means and the process it takes for foods to get from the farm to our tables. Our food focus was corn. We made paintings with lego pieces to make a corn-like texture. We made a science experiment involving corn kernels, baking soda, water, vinegar and food colouring. The result was dancing corn. We also learned how to make popcorn and why/how the kernels pop.

The kids practiced reading and representing numbers, with the help of others if needed, by reading the number on the bottom of a muffin tray then counting the correct number of corn kernels and using their little fingers to pick them up and put them in the tray.

A couple of the stories we read this week were; The Little Red Hen, version by Paul Galdone, and Peter Rabbit by Beatrix Potter.

Our letters this week were S and J. The older kids thought of so many S words in one day that the board was almost filled right up! Everyone practiced building J using beans. We called them seeds and pretended that these Js were going to grow into J lettered food. The foods they chose were Jackfruit and Jojoba.

It was great to have one of the little ones bring a book to share with everyone, and show off how hard he has been practicing. We have been working on looking at stories from left to right, and reading the pictures to make a story.

We celebrated two birthdays this week and of course we baked cupcakes!

We had so much fun outdoor time this week. What beautiful weather. It seems as though Fall has come back for a little while. Because of this wonderful weather we were able to go on adventures like we do in the summer!

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Scarecrows

10/13/2018

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October 12th, 2018

It was all about scarecrows this week. What they are, what they are made of, where they are, and why they are there. We learned that because scarecrows resemble humans, they are great for scaring off animals so they do not eat the farmer’s crops. We brainstormed the types of food that grow on a farm that other animals and birds would like to eat. The list was big; corn, carrots, cabbage, cucumbers, zucchini, pumpkins, etc.

Corn was one of the vegetables that the kids said grows on a farm, so we practiced our counting, and addition for the older ones, by gluing on the correct numbers of pom poms to paper corns. Zucchini was another vegetable that was though of so we baked zucchini chocolate chip muffins for snack. Mmm.

We had lots of fun building a life-size kid scarecrow out of a variety of shapes, where we talked about the names of the shapes and counted the sides of each, as well as used our memory of Mat Man and his song to put all the scarecrows body parts in the correct places.

Our letters this week were Q and G. We practiced forming the letters using our letter construction kit and play dough, we practiced saying the sounds they make and listened for words they start with (some were able to come up with their own words too!).

Some of the books we read this week were
-There was an old lady who swallowed some leaves by Lucille Colandro
-There was an old lady who swallowed a turkey by Lucille Colandro
-The lady with the alligator purse by Nadine Bernard Westcott. I believe we read this one 3 times consecutively. You can sing it to the popular swimming lesson song “Tiny Tim”.
-Pete the Cat: I love my white shoes by James Dean and Eric Litwin. This story is definitely a favourite of the group!
-Ten Apples Up On Top” by Dr. Seuss

This week’s movement song was quite popular! “Scarecrow Song” by The Learning Station

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Thanksgiving

10/8/2018

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October 5th, 2018

Happy Thanksgiving!

We all have something to be thankful for, and these kids have so many things to be thankful for! We discussed how we are lucky to have what we have because not everyone has all that we do (ie: clothing, food, a home, family, etc). We talked about what exactly it means to be thankful and everyone thought of the things they were thankful for; toys was definitely the one said the most often. They also mentioned things like memories, vitamins and their pets.

Thanksgiving is a great excuse to make everything turkey! The kids made handprint/feather turkeys, play dough turkeys with feathers, and name turkeys with each letter of their name on a paper feather. We also practiced sorting turkey feathers by colour and colour patterns were introduced as well.

Our letters this week were C and O. We started our letter learning this year using the Big Line and Little Line terminology and now we are moving into letters that have a Big Curve. Magic C Bunny made an appearance this week, since his favourite letter is C or course!

Some of the stories we read this week included:
The Little Red Hen by Paul Galdone
The Thankful Book by Todd Parr
Bear Says Thanks by Karma Wilson

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Pumpkins and Halloween

Harvest

Scarecrows

Thanksgiving

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