Feb. 17, 2009

Parents,
This morning we ate breakfast and did fine motor work. We connected people figures to create structures, we worked with ducks in a pond (lots of counting!), we created faces with magnetic facial features, and made words with Velcro letters. During circle time we determined that it's rainy today. We all felt "rain" on our faces when I squirted a water bottle. We counted to 17 during calendar and added to our red, red, white, white pattern. We also danced to "Popcorn". It was raining today so we didn't go outside. I began reading "Gray Squirrel at Pacific Avenue". Before center time started we started working with some materials that I got at a Handwriting Without Tears workshop I went to recently. We each had a big line, a little line, a big curve and a small curve. These are the basic building blocks of ALL of the upper-case letters. When I asked each of them to raise a certain piece they all did a wonderful job of listening. After we got to know the pieces we did the song "Wood Piece Pokey". It was really fun! During centers today we were scientists!!! We all put rubber gloves on and we dissected an owl pellet. We found many, many bones, a mouse skull, and lots of fur. It was so cool. We looked at the pieces with hand lenses and created a poster with our observations. When we were done observing the pellet we all were able to observe the tarantula that is visiting our classroom. We drew pictures of him. He has 8 legs! We also worked in the home/restaurant center. We had lunch with Pre-K. After lunch we worked with play dough and we also added branches to our classroom tree. I cut holes where each student asked me to place the branch and they held it in place as I glued it to the trunk. Our tree is magnificent! Look for pictures of it tomorrow. This afternoon in my Pre-K group we'll be cutting out pond shapes and tree shapes and gluing them to paper. We'll then add ducks IN the pond and OUT of the pond. We'll add the numbers together to determine the total number of ducks.
Have a great night tonight!
Kali Parsons