This past week was all about bats! We learned that there are many different types of bats in the wild, and that only 3 types out of hundreds drink blood. We learned that bats use eco-location to “see” what is around them. We also discovered that bats like to live in trees and caves, are nocturnal, and sleep upside down! We played a BATS under HATS memory game, went on a coloured bat scavenger hunt, made handprint bats, and sponge painted bats using a stencil. Our favourite bat book was There Was An Old Lady Who Swallowed a Bat by Lucille Colandro.
 
Our letters this week were U and C. Magic C Bunny (from the Handwriting Without Tears Program) made a special appearance because his favourite letter is C.
 
Daily, since the beginning of the school year, we have been using the calendar to help us count to the day’s date. Some of the kids are now able to, or are close to being able to, count all the teen numbers without missing any! And even if they are not sure, I still hear their voices trying to count along! This is so great because we have been talking about how some things can be tricky but the more we practice the better we will get, and having a positive attitude about trying helps everyone learn better too. 
 
Some other things we did were pumpkin line tracing, made orange play dough, and built with Lego.
 
And of course we cannot forget that we celebrated a very special 5th birthday too!

​We Are Thankful
 
As a group, we talked about what it means to be thankful. We used Todd Parr’s The Thankful Book as a starting point for our discussions. The kids were quite understanding of what being thankful meant and were quick to share what they were thankful for and why. To show the things they were thankful for, they made a Thankful Paper Turkey where they drew a picture of what they were thankful for on each feather. Some things they were thankful for were shirts, music, kisses, family, and rain, to only name a few. In addition to this turkey, they also made an overlapping handprint turkey and made red turkeys (inspired by The Little Red Hen even though she is not a turkey).
 
We played a Gratitude game to help us continue thinking about the many things we are thankful for. You had to pick a coloured popsicle stick out of a bag, match it to the colour image on the board that listed the name of a person, a place, a food, or anything that you are grateful for, and give an example of the one the popsicle sticks matches to.
 
To work our fine motor muscles this week we practiced line tracing while trying to hold the marker in a tri pod grasp, the kids used their Velcro names, and they threaded beads and a child made feather/paper bead to make their very own necklaces. 
 
The kids went on a scavenger hunt for Thanksgiving images, played a Thanksgiving memory matching game, matched coloured feathers, and practiced counting how many leaves they saw and then bingo dabbed the corresponding number of times.
 
Some of the books we read this week were: 
-Bear says Thanks by Karma Wilson
-The Little Red Hen told by Paul Galdone
-The Thankful Book by Todd Parr
-There Was An Old Lady Who Swallowed A Turkey by Lucille Colandro
-Monster Munchies by Laura Numeroff
 
Our letters this week were T and I. We practiced the sounds these letters make and listening for words that began with these letters within our morning letter songs. I have been starting to notice an increase of interest in letters; the kids wanted to show me many different letters they could make with their bodies individually and with a partner. So wonderful to see!