Good day to you all, as the Irish would say! What a fun week we had learning about Ireland, changing our room into spring, and searching for our class leprechaun who kept moving every time we left the room!!! He was so quick and sneaky!
We began our week by talking about Ireland and St. Patrick's Day. The class looked at beautiful pictures of Ireland. We compared the Irish flag to our U.S. flag, showed a map of Ireland and talked about what an island is. We also looked at the globe and pointed out where we live and where Ireland is located. We decided we would have to fly to get there. Since Ireland has many castles, we made castles out of shaving cream and foam blocks, castles with construction paper and kinetic sand with castle molds. We also made castles with the big blocks, then brought in the dollhouse people and the princesses. Many of our activities centered around our St. Patrick's Day and spring theme. Activities included: patterning, counting and sorting coins, changing our tree on our bulletin board from winter to spring by making butterflies and kites, sequencing pictures, cutting, counting, painting, recognizing letters sounds, rhyming, practicing positional concepts with worms, recognizing numbers on our number hunt, recalling information from our stories, counting how many unifx cubes it took to get the leprechaun to his pot of gold, and journaling to name a few! Our sensory table contained pebbles, little black pots and gold coins. The students used tongs to put the gold coins into the black pots!
Our dramatic play area turned into a flower shop with order forms, flowers and garden gloves. During gym time we did St. Patrick's Day yoga and played red light/green light. The children pretended to be leprechauns, sneaking up behind me!
Our letter of the week was the letter W! We built it and thought of items that begin with the letter W. We also practiced recognizing our last names. We used them to vote on what we would do if we had a pot of gold. Would we spend it, save it, give it to someone else, or play with it!! We counted and compared the numbers! We also sign in to our favorite season was. After reading a spring book and sequencing the steps in planting a flower, we used a flyswatter to swat at different numbers, letters and shapes named!
After decorating a beautiful house for our leprechaun, we decided how to keep him in. Here are some of the ideas the hippos came up with:
*unicorn
*blocks
*animals
*tape
*horse
*dinosaur T-Rex,
*a big rock
We placed all of these items in front of his house Wednesday only to discover he escaped the next day! He is so sneaky and we don't know where he went! He did however, leave us clues to find a pot of gold. Each child took a gold coin home!
Books We Read:
How to Catch a Leprechaun
Clifford Spring Book
The Wind Blew
Spring
Sophie Wants A Turn
Questions to Ask Your Child:
1. What did we use to keep our leprechaun in his house? Did he stay?
2. Where did the leprechaun move in our class?
3. What did the leprechaun give us? (gold coins)
4. What did the wind blow in our book, The Wind Blew? (scarf, letters, balloon, wig, flag, shirt, hat, umbrella, hat, letters, newspaper)
5. Our leprechaun took us on a hunt. Where did we find the pot of gold? (by the gym)
6. Are there snakes in Ireland? (no)
7. What has eyes but cannot see? (a potato)
Things to do at home
Based on our book, The Wind Blew, take a straw and find some items in your house to see if they will move or not move when blowing them through a straw. Ask why some objects move while others do not.
Next Week: After we return from spring break we will learn about the desert
Reminders:3/15-3/22 Spring Break
4/2 Profession Development -No School
4/13 Family Garden Day 9-11
4/15 and 4/17-parent teacher conferences
4/18 Spring Fling
4/20 Passport day 10-12 at LECC
Below are the pictures of all the excitement we had this week! Thank you for your wonderful children!! We have so much fun with each and every one of them!!
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We cut butterflies, kites and rectangles which were used
to decorate our bulletin board and our arch. |
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| We painted our leprechaun's house. |
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| The Hippos sorted, patterned and weighed these items! |
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| It was fun to make a leprechaun with Ms. Brie. |
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| Garden Fun! |
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The students practiced their cutting skills and then
had fun decorating them with a variety of materials! |
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| We cut leaves for our leprechaun house. |
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| Our flower shop was up and running! |
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| We took turns with Feed The Bunny game. |
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| There is our sneaky leprechaun! |
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| We made castles out of construction paper squares. |
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| Castle blocks! |
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| Foam magnet castles. |
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| Journal entry-What sneaky thing would you do if you were a leprechaun. |
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| Journal entry #2- What is in your pot? |
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| Most of the students would play with their gold and save it! |
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| Playdoh, flowers and flower pots! |
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| What flowers would you like to order? |
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| Show and Tell |
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| Show and Tell |
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| Show and Tell |
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| Using our finger to make these frogs jump! |
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| These were the props that went with the book, The Wind Blew. |
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| Sequencing pictures to tell a story. |
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| Everyone did a great job at decorating their kites and butterflies. |
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| We showed the Irish flag and our flag. |
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| Outside fun on the big playground. |
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| Making rainbow colors! |
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| Feed the Bunny |
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| How many cubes does it take for the leprechaun to reach the gold? |
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| We made castles with shaving cream and foam blocks. |
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| We also made castles with magna tiles. |
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Look, our leprechaun is hiding on the sit and spins on the top
of the cabinets!! |
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| We swatted shapes, letters and numbers. |
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| We blocked the door so our leprechaun would not get out. |
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| It was fun to made flowers in playdoh and containers. |
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| The hippos played a treasure chest game. |
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We counted and placed that many gold coins in the pot
for our leprechaun. |
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| Cutting grass! |
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The leprechaun took us on a hunt to find him.
He left clues! |
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| We found him!! |
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| The hippos practiced positional concepts with worms and cups! |
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| We added hair and a shirt to our self portrait in art class. |
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St. Patrick's Day yoga.
We are a pot of gold! |
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| It was fun to play red light green light. |
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We had 2 jars with a frog in each. We put litter
into one the jar and discussed how it is not ok to litter
and that we always need to throw out our trash in the garbage can. |
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We sequenced the items in our story about the wind blowing
different things. |
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| The hippos loved going on a number hunt 0-15. |
