Tuesday, Feb. 16
SNOW DAY
Wednesday, Feb. 17
I was thrilled to be with the kids today. I got a few glances from the kids confused as to why I was there. :) We began our day writing our alphabet in our journals. This was a great exercise for the kids in using their resources. I left them to the task on their own and just kept directing them to the letters on the wall around the room. I loved seeing those that at first felt overwhelmed and told me they couldn't do it and then after persevering the smiles on their faces when they were finished.
We began morning meeting with the “Alphabet Groove” song and danced to “tall, small, and fall” letters. After counting how many friends were at school, our days of school, and figuring out what day was today we reviewed our penguin knowledge. I read them Emperors Egg. This story focused on the days the egg is left with the Daddy Penguin. The kids all agreed that two months with an egg on your feet and no food is a really long time. We then practiced walking with our own “eggs” on our feet. Then we measured how far we could walk with that egg. It was HARD. After marking our distance the kids helped each other measure in inches how far everyone had walked before the egg fell off. Everyone got two or three chances to put the eggs back on their feet.
Check out our blue wall for our Fairy Penguins. The kids painted them and all I said was make sure you leave a white tummy. We added our already brainstormed penguin facts from the week before, cute eyes, a beak and feet. Since we painted a 4ft tall Emperor Penguin, the tallest of penguins, these Fairy penguins were to represent one of the smallest penguins on earth.
At lunch time we read If you were a Penguin. And enjoyed good conversation.
After a playing in the gym we came back to our room to build 4ft. towers in front of our 4ft penguin. I had them work in pairs. It was a fun simple project. I don't think these guys will ever forget that an emporer penguin is 4ft. tall. :)
Thursday, Feb. 18
Today was a day for patterns, alphabet and blubber. :) I had the kids work on Penguin pattern sheets when they arrived. With a little help in the beginning they were able to complete the task on their own which was great. We also completed a simple dot to dot sheet to create a penguin. I wanted the kids to see the lower case letters and recite the alphabet as they went.
During morning meeting we talked about something the Penguin and the Polar Bear have in common. BLUBBER! We know that the Penguin and the Polar Bear (after a short intro on Polar Bears, The Powerful Polar Bear) both swim in very cold, ice water. And what keeps them warm? Blubber. I gave them blubber gloves to wear while they played in our sensory table filled with Sonic Ice. :) They placed their blubber gloved hand and a bare hand in the ice water. We then experimented to see which hand could stay under the ice the longest. Everyone but Jack found the blubber glove hand to stay under longer. Jack was tough and held his bare hand under the longest.
We continued our work on patterns with penguins, snowflakes and snow balls. I began the patterns and had the children finish my pattern. Once they understood the process they worked at creating their own patterns. We are coming along very well with this skill.
At lunch we read more about polar bears. Lauren was sweet to let us borrow a very nice book on the Arctic. We oohed and ahhed over the photos of Polar Bears in their habitats, swimming, and cuddling their babies. But despite our focus being Polar Bears and Penguins the adorable baby white seal was our favorite. :)
With Ms. Jane today we trained for our Olympics. It was a lot of fun. We will be having this special event on Thursday.
In the afternoon I spent some time one on one on our Alphabet review. The water/ice table was available as well as puzzles, polar animals and an Alphabet letter find. They could choose sheets with an assortment of letters. The goal was to identify the letter at the top of the page to be “found”. They then placed a winter marker on all the upper case and lower case letters found. We will continue this exercise over the next couple of weeks as we finish up our winter unit.
We'll continue on with Polar Bears next week. Tuesday is CAMOUFLAGE day. Please dress in WHITE. Or as white as the wardrobe will allow. And please bring in old white socks.
Cari
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