Penguins/Hibernation

With the weather starting to get cold, November over and December here why not start learning
about hibernation and penguins!

Before I talk about our hibernation unit, here are some pictures of our center time that we do through out the day.

We are starting to learn to write words!

 



 

Practicing our letters.

 

Playing trucks in our large square.

 

Color sorting and stacking the containers. 

 

On Monday I was gone due to my son being sick but the sub did a great job I heard.  They learned about penguins.  They walked like a penguin, did a triangle penguin craft and read books about penguins! 


On Wednesday we finished up with our penguin unit.  We reviewed that penguins eat fish.  We used Goldfish Crackers to count with.  They had to count the correct amount of fish to put into the penguin with the matching number.   We then started to learn what hibernation is.  Hearing some of the preschoolers actually say that word was quite amusing :), but by Friday they were all saying it correctly!! YAY!  We learned a new letter, number and shape this week.  We are learning the letter Kk, the number 5 and the shape triange.

We started off with a book to introduce hibernation.  We read "Hibernation Station," a great colorful book to show they types of animals that hibernate.  We talked mostly about bears during our hibernation unit.  We played a game called Grizzly Bear, oh Grizzly Bear.  It's a game where you have a child lay down (being Mr. Bear) and pretending to be hibernating.  The rest of the preschoolers walked around while we sang our little song that goes with it.  I had one preschooler shake the bear.  When we told the bear to wake up, he/she had to guess who woke them up. 

We read a book called "The Mitten" by Jan Brett.  We learned about the different types of animals that went into the mitten and sorted out which animals hibernate and what animals don't.  We then made our own mitten, colored it and colored the animals to fit into our mitten.

On our Fabulous Fun Friday we had a pajama day! Since it was the last day of our hibernation unit and hibernation means to sleep, why not have a pajama day!  The preschoolers were very confused when they walked in that morning for there was some type of fort built out of blankets. 

It was our bear cave!!! Once they put the cave, bears and hibernation together they got very excited!  We did our activities throughout the day, but did most of them in our cave!  We closed our curtains and shut off our lights for most of the morning.  We used our flashlights for our light!!!  Here is a picture with them in their 'cave' with their flashlights.

 

While learning about hibernation, we went on a bear hunt....in the DARK!! Again we used our flashlights to light our way to find our bear!  On our bear hunt, I had a preschooler come up to me and say that the bear we are looking for forgot to hibernate, that's why he's up.  (Love it!!!)

We made a bear snack that consisted of: pretzels, marshmallows, teddy bear graham cookies and of course a little sweet treat :).

 

Here are some pictures of our funtastic day!

 

 

 

 

Indians

Once again I am behind on posting things up on the website!

I hope everyone had a marvelous Thanksgiving holiday.  I cannot believe that Christmas is 15 days away!!  Where has the year and time gone?  Anyways, the last week of November when we came back from our super long break we learned about Indians as well as the letter Gg, 4, orange/brown and a square. 

We learned some traditional games that the Native American children played.  One was land and water.  I put a large square made from tape on the floor which was our water.  The land was everywhere outside of the square.  When I would call out 'go to the water' they would jump into the square.  When our canoe was starting to sink we could swin to land.  While they were on land I had Native American music playing in the background.  We discussed why the water was so important to the Native Americans.  Along with our games we learned the song, '10 Little Indians.'  Since there were 10 preschoolers, acting out the song made it much more fun!

We then made little handprint Indians.  I painted their palms a peach color and then each finger had a different color (for the feathers).  When they dried, a face was drawn on each one.  I'm sorry I don't have a picture.  We also made feather bands and vests from brown paper grocery bags.  Those turned out cute! When we put everything on, I had one preschooler say, "we all are now aliens!"  He couldn't quite say the word Indian (had to work on that one :) ).