Transportation

We learned the word "transportation". We talked about that the word transport means to carry and transportation is the different ways we carry ourselves to different places.

We learned the many different kinds of transportation (car, plane, bus, boat, train, bike, truck, walking, skateboards, helicopters, etc.). We then made a graph on the board of the most popular kind. Each of the children voted on their favorite form of transporation, helicopter won. We made a bar graph of our results.

We completed a dot-to-dot of a helicopter and then painted a picture of the different types of transportation.

Of course, we also sang "The Wheels on the Bus" and pretended to be a helicopter to some classical music (they were sure dizzy when they landed).

Farm Animals

We talked about the many different kinds of animals on a farm.

We learned the names of baby animals (baby horse = foal, baby pig = piglet, baby goat = kid, baby cow = calf, baby sheep = lamb, etc.)

We talked about the ways that animals help us ( for example wool for clothes and blankets, milk, cheese, butter, etc.)

We sang "Old Macdonald had a Farm" and each of the children pretended to be a different animal and made the animal's sound in the song.

We read several books about animals. My favorite was "Rock-a-bye Farm".

We reviewed the letter "a" and continued to work on our sight words and simple addition.

Gardening

We discussed how a seed grows and the parts of a plant.

We planted marigolds (they've already started to sprout), and read several books about seeds.

We made a mini-book about how to plant a seed.

We continued to practice our sight words and addition.

Kites

We had a lot of fun learning about kites and wind.

We learned how to draw a kite, with diamonds and triangles. We wrote the word kite. We did math with magnetic triangles and then placed them in the shape of a kite.

We learned about wind and that it is moving air.

The best part of the day was when we made simple kites using grocery store bags and flew them outside. It was a windy day and the kites flew high, we even had one go over the fence. This was one of the best crafts we have done all year!

The Ocean

We learned about animals in the ocean. We watched 15 minutes of "Ocean" the Disney movie, the children loved it (especially the blanket octopus).

They each chose an animal and we played some aquatic music with dolphin and whale sounds in the background and they pretended to be in the ocean. We then made a puffer fish craft

We did math using paper cut-outs of octopus legs. We counted, added, subtracted and then made an octopus.

We read a non-fiction book about animals in the ocean and then a few fun fiction books, "Freddi Fish and the Missing Letters", "Froggy's First Kiss", and "Froggy gets Dressed".

We also learned a new silly song about sharks. They love it, you'll have to get them to sing it for you.

We also continued to work on our sight words, sounding out words, writing words, and learning to tell time (to the hour and half hour).

Frogs

We are watching frogs develop in our classroom. They've hatched from their eggs and are now tadpoles. Each of the children have a Frog Journal and once a week they exam the tadpoles with magnifying glasses and draw a picture of the tadpoles in their journals. The frogs that we are observing in our class are Leopard Frogs.

Today we learned about the life cycle of frogs and looked at several pictures of Leopard Frogs.

For snack we ate frogs and bugs (gummy frogs and raisins).

We learned how to spell the word "frog" and each of the children made an "Itsy, Bitsy Frog Book" that they can read.

Ladybugs

Science - On Wednesday and Thursday we learned about ladybugs. We discussed the lifecycle of a ladybug and learned that they are heroes in the garden, they eat the aphids that are eating the plants. They can eat up to 70 aphids in a day.

Ladybugs are insects (a beetle). Each insect must have six legs, a head, thorax, and abdomen. A ladybug has a special shell that covers the abdomen and wings.

Math - We counted dots on ladybugs and added each side of the ladybug's shell to see how many spots there were all together.

Reading - We continued working on our sight words and sounding out simple words.

Art - We made a ladybug out of cardstock.