Happy Holidays!!

Wishing you all wonderful, fun, happy, and safe holiday fun!!! We all look forward to seeing you in January. Here are a few pictures of some fun we had today and something beautiful we created.

Happy Birthday and Reindeer Hats

Today we celebrated a friend's birthday! Happy Birthday!!!! We also finished our reindeer headbands. This week we painted the band brown, traced and cut out our hands to make antlers, and glued a pink oval on a brown oval to create ears. Now we just need red noses!!

The Leaves are Changing Color

Today we cut out our fall leaf shapes. We took turns choosing where to put them on the classroom tree. Please come by and check it out!

Oodles of Triangles

We talked a lot about triangles today. They have three sides. They have three points. We painted them with our fingers and with paint brushes. Some even have salt sprinkled on them to make them rough.

It's not easy being green...OK, it is!

Today we started talking about our new color of the month...GREEN!!! We created a BIG piece of green paper by smearing paint all over it with our hands. It was awesome, messy fun! This month we'll also be talking a lot about the triangle shape.

Fall Trees

We added leaves to our trees today. We dipped our fingers into red, yellow, orange, and brown paint and created leaves on the trees we made earlier this week.

Trees and Creation Station

We've begun working on our fall trees. We created trees with long and short twigs. We talked about how they feel rough. Tomorrow we'll add fall-colored leaves! We also worked in creation station. We did a great job picking up small objects with our fingers and gluing them on paper.

Gobble, gobble!

Today we completed work on our turkeys. Earlier this week we painted our hands different colors and made a print on paper. Today, once they were dry, we added legs, feet, beaks, eyes, and waddles. Check them out...they're hanging in the hallway! Our counselor came today, too. She talked about safe things we can do with our hands. We made a really cool poster. Hands are definitely NOT for hitting. Have a great weekend! School next week is open only on Monday and Tuesday.

Critters!

Overnight critters moved into our tree home! There are bears, rats, raccoons, and skunks! We had a great time pretending!

Branches, too!

Today we added branches to our tree home. We worked in teams to twist, twist, twist brown paper to form branches. Our tree looks ready for critters to move in!

Our Tree Home

We finished painting our boxes on Friday. Next week week we'll add branches and soon the animals will be moving in!

Making a Tree Home

Today we began work on our Tree Home. We've got three boxes...small, medium, and large. we're going to attach them together to form a tree! But first, we've got to make them look like parts of a tree. Today we began painting them. We mixed brown paint, glue, and wood shavings to give the boxes a "bark" look. We'll continue working on them tomorrow. We also had a very active home center as well as some fun floor work.

Fall Leaves

Today we took turns cutting leaf shapes out of the paper we painted earlier this week. We will cut even more on Tuesday! Reminder...no school on Monday. We'll see you Tuesday!! Have a great weekend!

Fall Colors

Today we talked about fall coming. We painted a HUGE piece of white paper with red, orange, yellow, and brown paint. We used our hands! When the paint dries we'll cut leaf shapes out of it to make our classroom tree a fall tree.

Brown Bears

Today we continued working on our bears. We added features to them today by drawing a nose and gluing eyes and buttons on them. We learned about top and middle. We also talked about body parts...head, arms, legs, stomach/tummy. After we completed our bears we told a little story about them.

Bears Want More!

Today we started a new month of learning. This month we'll be working on the color brown, the diamond/rhombus shape, fall, animals that live in trees, and bears. To start our month off we read the book "Bear Wants More". Everyone spoke along with the book when the bear wanted more. We also practiced "more" in sign language. During centers everyone created their own sponge-painted bear. Tomorrow we'll add features to our bears.

Mummies

We created mummies today. Everyone chose which color and size googly eyes they wanted and glued them on their mummy shape. Each child asked for white tissue paper and then glued the strips on creating the mummy's wrappings. It's looking VERY SPOOKY around these parts!

Ghosts and Pumpkins...Oh, my!!!

We've had a busy couple of days. Yesterday we created ghosts by gluing cotton balls onto a ghost shape. We also added googly eyes. Don't be scared when you see them haunting our classroom door! Today we completed our work on our HUGE jack-o-lantern. We took turns cutting out the big pumpkin shape, drawing facial features and cutting them out, and gluing them on. He's amazing! When we finished all of our work we created amazing art on orange paper in our creation station. We glued all kinds of objects onto our paper. We've been doing so much fine motor work and learning all about the color orange.

All About Orange

Today we worked with orange. We painted orange squares, orange flowers, and orange carrots. We also mixed red and yellow paint with our hands to create orange. We love orange!

Pumpkins and Orange

Back to blogging after a really busy two weeks...glad to be back on here!

We had a great day today. We started with doing some amazing sorting and creating a beautiful flower for a special friend. During centers we created our own "Five Little Pumpkins Sitting on a Gate" by gluing craft sticks both horizontally and vertically on paper and then stamping pumpkins with a sponge stamp and orange paint on the top. We counted them and everyone's had five! We also painted many different sizes of pumpkins when we finished our work. We had a wonderful, busy day!

Squares!

Today we learned about squares. They have four sides and four corners. We traced them with our fingers. We painted them using water colors.

Orange Play Dough

Today we made our own orange play dough! We all took turns pouring the ingredients into a big bowl and then we took turns stirring. We added yellow and red food coloring to make it orange! We will play with it tomorrow during centers.

Orange!

With the beginning of October, we've begun learning all about orange. I read a book about orange during circle time. During centers we used our hands to paint a big piece of paper orange. We also worked with orange objects in shaving cream. We even fed our temporary classroom pet guinea pig, Rosie, orange carrots! It was a really orange day!

Trees!

We've been busy creating trees the last couple of days! We talked about how our small trees look like the big trees outside. They also look like our classroom tree. We learned about rough and smooth, thin and thick, and top and bottom. We used our fine motor muscles to hold and glue sticks, crumple and glue tissue paper, color with markers, and make "leaves" with paint on our fingertips. Check out our trees, they're hanging in the hallway!

Be sure to ask your kiddos about their new friends in our classroom!

Self Portraits

Over the last few school days we've been working on self portraits. I traced their bodies and everyone's been working hard on adding details. We've been talking about colors, position words (top/bottom/side), and following directions. We've also been talking about our senses (see with our eyes, touch with our fingers, etc.). They're looking great!

Summer Tree! (just in time for fall) :-)

Yesterday we took turns cutting leaf shapes out of the green paper we had created. We are getting so good at cutting! Today we took turns choosing where to put the leaves on our classroom tree. With a pointer, each child would show and say " top", "middle" or "bottom", and I'd attach it where they chose. Watch for our tree to change when fall leaves appear outside!!

It's Good to be Green

We began working on creating leaves for our classroom tree today. Our tree will change with the seasons throughout the school year. As the leaves outside are green, our tree needs green leaves, too! Everyone requested green paint and chose whether they wanted to use a paintbrush or their hands or both.