Groundhog's Day and Black History

Since Monday was Groundhog's Day, we started off the week talking about Groundhog's and shadows!  The children made cute groundhog puppets and artwork.  Several classes also learned a song to act out what the groundhog does when he comes out of his hole.  We also talked about shadows and how they are made.  The children also learned about the weather and what happens when a cloud covers the sun.  I'm sure you all are as sad as we are that the Groundhog saw his shadow because that means we have 6 more weeks of winter!!!   OH NO!

 

The children took a vote as to if the groundhog would see his shadow or not!

We then switched gears to start talking about Black History.  The children learned about several different African Americans that made a great contribution to our country.  It was so cute to hear the children say "Harriet TUGman"!  They also talked about George Washington Carver and how he discovered many different ways to use peanuts!

Planting peanuts to grow their own!

We even found out that Garrett Morgan invented the traffic light!  After talking about Safety last week, we sure are thankful for him!  We made our own delicious traffic lights to enjoy for our cooking project!

 The 2 year olds used a tunnel to pretend they were hiding like the Underground Railroad! 

We have finally gone through ALL of our capital letters and are now focusing on lowercase letters.  We are starting at the beginning of the alphabet with "a is for apple"!

For our number of the week, we made "Seven Sunny Sunflowers"!  It's always fun to show pride in our school by making sunflowers but especially when we can put 7 petals on it for a math activity! 

Safety First

We are focusing on Safety this week!  We are talking about being safe in traffic, what to do in an emergency, things that are safe and unsafe, etc.  They also had some fun with "Mr. Yuk" who would help them decide if different items were okay for them to eat or not.

 

 

For some movement activities, several classrooms played Red Light, Green Light!  Our Pre-K class did a number jump to practice learning their phone numbers in case they ever needed to call their parents or relay it to another adult in case of an emergency.

Our color of the week was green!  The 3's got a little messy mixing together blue and yellow to make a big green blob!

We are finishing our capital letters this week as we have finally made it to the end of the alphabet!  We of course made "Z is for Zebra" and also made "Zebra Treats" for our cooking project!

Leaders

In honor of Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, we are talking about Leaders this week and how important they are to our community!  We spent a lot of time learning about Martin Luther King, Jr. and his great contributions.  The children created their own Dream Clouds with their dream on them.  The 1 year olds made a birthday cake for Martin Luther King, Jr. with 5 candles which is our number of the week!

 

We also talked about everyone being equal and having peace amongst us.  The 3 year olds made Doves of Peace using their hand prints while the 2 year olds glued on small pieces of white paper to make their doves!

 Several of our rooms made Peace Wreaths with all of their hands to show that they could play together and love one another!

 Our Pre-K class did a neat activity in which the children painted their hand a certain color and then shook hands with a friend who had a different color paint on their hand.  They then did hand prints on a big piece of paper and wrote notes to Dr. Martin Luther King to thank him!

 

 

 

A week is never complete without activities with our letter of the week!  We made "Y is for Yak" as an art project and one classroom even made Yaks from their hand prints!

 

Animals in Winter

We are having fun learning about winter animals and what they do to survive the cold temperatures!  The children always love to talk about animals and they did some really neat art projects to go along!  From penguins to bears to snow birds, we tried to cover them all!

 

 

 

 

The 2 year olds really enjoyed talking about how bears spend time in their cave!  They even pretended to be bears one day as they hid under the tables!

As the children learned about how some animals have blubber to keep them warm, we created a science experiment so that the children could see what it is like.  We used ziplocs and Crisco to create a "glove of blubber".  We then had the children put one had in the glove and then stick both hands in the ice cold water to see which hand stayed warmer.  It's safe to say, they liked the blubber better!  

Our letter of the week was "X".  There aren't too many words that our little guys can use that start with "X" but we did have fun making and playing Xylophones!

On a side note, our teachers have created very cute bulletin boards for winter!  One with snowmen who hope they don't melt and the other with "Southern Snowmen" who have already melted!