Crawl low!!

This morning, we talked about how you should crawl low to get out of the house if their was a fire so you don't breathe in the smoke.  We used a sheet as pretend smoke to help us practice!

 Then, we played "Safe, Safe...Fire" which is an adapted version of "Duck, Duck...Goose."  When someone tapped you and said, "Fire!", you had to crawl low and chase them around the circle!

This week's small groups...

I decided to snap some photos during small group today since that is a big part of our day and parents don't get a chance to see what we do during that time!  Check out this week's activities below!

When it is small group time, each child checks this board to get their "ticket".  Then, they go to the area with their corresponding color.  There are two teacher-led groups and three or four independent groups each day.   Independent centers are typically related to fine-motor skills, turn taking activities, computer time, and other skills that have been introduced previously.

At the yellow independent center, students are hammering golf tees into pumpkins.  This is such awesome fine motor practice!  Students have to hold the golf tee the same way they would hold a pencil and use eye/hand coordination to hammer it in.

At the green independent center, students are drawing pictures for our "Student of the Week" book.  For each "Student of the Week", we will be drawing pictures of our friend telling them things that we like about them or why we think they are special!

 At Mrs. Melba's small group (orange), students listen to a story about how pumpkins grow.  Then, they made play-dough pumpkins and described/compared them.

The purple independent center is working on the computers.  We have been working on starfall.com for the past few weeks!

The blue independent center is a turn-taking counting game this week!  The students roll a dice, count the dots, and then use tongs (for fine motor practice) to put apples (pom pom balls) in their cups.

 The pink group, Mrs. Heather's group, has been working on measuring their height with pumpkins.  Each student stands next to a stack of paper pumpkins that were taped to a shelf.  Then, we mark their height with a piece of tape and count how many pumpkins tall they were.  After comparing each other's heights, each child draws a picture showing their height in pumpkins.

Our Favorite Apple Is...

We tasted a red, green, and yellow apple today to decide which one we like best!

 Then, we made a graph of our favorite apple.

Scarecrow Love

This is the story we read Friday!

It is about a little scarecrow who wants to scare crows with his dad, but his parents tell him he is too little.  In the evenings, the father teaches his son his 6 scary faces that he uses to keep the crows away.  When he has learned all 6, the little scarecrow boy sneaks out to the field one night while his parents are sleeping.  A crow comes at him and he tries very hard to scare him using each of the faces his father taught him.  Check out our scary scarecrow faces!

Finally, the 6th face does the trick and the crow flies away! The father sees his son and is so proud that he lets his son help him in the fields from then on!

After the story, we made this "story map" with details from the book!

We were so excited when it was finally time to build our scarecrow!!  Seeing everything that our classmates have been bringing in all week made us super anxious!!

First, we had to stuff our clothing with newspaper! Balling up newspaper was the best part!

 Once he was all put together, we added his face!  The kids chose different materials from the art center to make his eyes, nose, and mouth!

What do you think?! 

  Guess what 4 year olds like to do with the left over mound of balled-up newspapers?  Jump in, of course!!  It is pretty obvious that we like to have a good time!