Thank You Veterans!!

Thank you, thank you Veterans!  This is a very special topic that I love to teach, since it hits home for me.  We had a crazy short week with Veterans Day, the Presidential election and state volleyball.  

We also started to work on our Thanksgiving unit as well.

Here we are starting to paint our turkey bodies. 

We learned the letter Ii again this week, but this week we learned long Ii.  We learned that there is a magic e that can change that Ii sound to make the long sound.  For example, we started with the word bit and then we added that magic e and whala ..... we have the word bite! 

Here they are tracing circles to cut out for our ice cream scoops. 

Here is our chart with working with short Ii and long Ii words, using the magic e.  

Putting our circles to build our ice cream cones with long Ii words. 

One of our sight words was the word; green.  We first read the story: Little Blue and Little Yellow.  After we read the story, they learned that those two colors make green!  It was magic they said. :)  We learned our green song and then in our journals we made the color green using blue and yellow. 

November 8 was the big presidential election!  My kinders were really into this and kept talking about who they were going to vote for and all that.  I could not believe how excited they were to see if who they voted for would win. 

We spent Tuesday afternoon doing our Presidential Unit.  We first talked about once you turn 18 you have the chance to vote, but you have to register first.  Well, before we could vote in Kindergarten we had to register to vote.  Here they are 'registering' to vote!

We first held a classroom snack election.  They had to choose between three snacks that they like.  They went to our 'voting booth' and voted.  We talked about how people go to 'booths' to vote.  They get their privacy and we also talked about how we don't talk while voting or tell others who/what we are voting for. 

Of course after they voted they got an I Voted necklace as well as a sticker. 

The Kinders happy after they voted! 

We even talked our student helper to vote as well. 

The results are in!  The favorite classroom snack was.....COOKIES!!

We incorporated some math into our election unit.  We tallied the votes and then put them into a bar graph. 

Our November door decor.  On the feathers of each turkey, they wrote one thing they are thankful for. 

Here we are being alphabet spies going around the room looking for letters that make a certain sound. Once they found the letter, they had to write it down on their paper. The best part was they got to use hand lens to find the letters, just like what spies use! :) 

After we painted our turkey bodies and they were dry, we put them together to make our leaf turkey.  Here we are working on our leaf turkey. 

The final result of our leaf turkeys!  They turned out super cute! 

To end our Veteran's unit, I brought some of my husbands army items, including uniform, boots, hats, medals and dog tags to name a few.  They LOVED seeing all of those items. 

We made our own soldiers and then wrote a thank you letter for our soldiers. 

Rainbows and Leprechauns

What a fun long week!  We haven't had preschool on Friday in a long time!  I planned on having a 3 day preschool week this week but we got some snow Sunday which made us have a late start and no preschool :(  I had so much planned for Monday, we just squeezed the activities in on Wednesday and Friday!  It worked out well!  

The last two weeks we have been learning about Rainbows and Leprechauns, as well as the letter Ww, number 8, focusing on the color gray and also our RAINBOW (rainbow) colors!!!

We learned to write our letter Ww and also did a craft, which has nothing todo with our theme, but it was fun making them!

 

 

 When we were making these wagons, I asked them question, a rather silly question.  Remember this school is in a VERY rural area.  I asked them what pulls our wagon.  I was hoping for them to say a handle....... NOPE I got the answer from ALL of my preschoolers.... A TRACTOR!!  I couldn't help but giggle!  Silly question!! :)

 

 

 

 

When we learned about rainbows we reviewed where rain comes from...clouds.  We did a very simple but very fun activity.  We created our own rain from a cloud.  They each got a cup of water and a cotton ball.  They knew exactly what they were suppose to do.  They had to dip the cotton ball in the water and then SQUEEZE out the water and WAAHLAA!!.... instant rain.

 

 

 

Our experiment could not just be squeezing water from a cotton ball.  Atleast that is what they told me, "this is all we are doing with the water?'  They didn't know what I had up my sleeve. :)  We were going to make colorful rain!!

I added shaving cream on top of their water, and they all got to choose the colors they wanted to squeeze into their cup.  They all choose, blue or green or even both colors.  I was pretty sad when no one wanted to choose red or yellow, but oh well, they still turned out neat!

 

 

While learning about rainbows, I also introduced them to those sneaky little leprechauns.  We talked about how they like to play tricks, hard to catch, what they look like and of course had to mention something about their pot of gold!! :)

 

We made name rainbows with our very own pot of gold.  On each color they wrote a letter to their name.  They also had to follow the rainbow pattern when they glued on their colors.  They turned out really neat!

 

I also had to add in the very easy project of watercoloring a rainbow.

 



 

I introduced the clover to them.  They all called it a leaf, which is pretty much what it is.  I showed them what makes it so special than just any leaf, it has many leaves to it!  We compared a 4 leaf clover and a 3 leaf clover!  We also went searching around the room for their name clovers.  They each had a clover with their name on it.  They were given someone else's clover to go hide and then come back to the carpet.  Once everyone hid the clover, they then had to go find the clover with theier name on it!  I have some very good hiders in my class! 

 

During our stories all I heard a lot of "Miss Jansen I see a 4 leaf clover" or "There's a 3 leaf clover right there!"

:)

 

Since we learned so much about clovers, we made our own! The name clovers are the ones that we used for our hiding game.  They painted the clovers green and then we added some green glitter to bedazzle it. 

 

 

The last day of our fun Leprechaun, we did an experiment where we mixed two colors. I showed them all the ingredients and then the two colors I had. We made pudding as a class. I told them we were going to make green pudding, but only had the colors of yellow and blue. They made sure they let me know that I did not have green. I told them we are going to see what happens when we mix these two colors. Here the pictures!  Everyone got to dump the milk and help stir!

 

 

When we left to go to recess, our room was normal.  When we came back, we came back to this......

 

 

 

Those pesky leprechauns!!!  Happy St. Patrick's Day Everyone!!!