Last week in February...

Did I get my wish... the yard to dry up so we can play on it? NO! I don't like those weather teasers that make you feel like spring is almost here, and then... WHAM... more snow. We are having a pretty snowy day today!!!

This was an off week. We had President's Day on Monday in which I had very low attendance and Friday as a snow day and again low attendance. So we didn't get a whole lot accomplished this week... but we sure had fun playing.

I was hoping to have all my assessments and each child's report typed up by now... but it didn't happen. I'm hoping to have it all done by the end of next week so I can do conferences sometime the following week. My assessments consist of several pieces... I check the alphabet (letter and sound recognition), numbers (recognition, ordering, counting, and making sets), phonemic awareness (of course, depending on the age and ability of the child), Ages and Stages Questionnaire that I fill out for the parents to see, and the POCET which you can purchase from here.

We also did several President's Day activities this week. Here are just a few of the things we did.

We talked about George Washington and made him and his 3-cornered hat. We also sang the song "My Hat It Has Three Corners" which the children had fun with.

We also talked about Abraham Lincoln. We made Abe Lincoln and made a Abe's log cabin.

We talked about Honest George Washington and made cherry trees after hearing the story. I don't have the finished project because I forgot to take a picture of them.

We talked about Abraham Lincoln's tall stove pipe hat and how he stored things inside his hat. They were asked what they would store in their hat if they had one like Abe. They gave a dictated response and illustrated their response.

Lastly, we made Abraham Lincoln and George Washington mobiles.

A very presidential week, along with assessing the children. I'll be glad to get back to our normal schedule... hopefully by mid next week.

Hope you enjoyed our week.

Third week of February...

Well I got my wish from last week... the snow is almost gone and the temperature really warmed up this week (in the fifties). That only meant that we played a lot outdoors this week because we can't count on this to last. We had to stay on the driveway riding bikes, playing tag, and running as the yard is quite wet and muddy. Could I wish that it would all dry up so we could play on the grass sometime next week??? It worked last week... so you never know!

This week we continued with our letters and moved to the letter Qq. Here is a copy of our completed "Letter Qq Book".






Monday was Valentine's Day... we did several activities that related to the day and practiced skills.

We played dominoes




We did a cutting activity




We glued sets




We ordered numbers




And we found differences.


And then we made crowns for our party and passed out our Valentine's. The children always enjoy this and it teaches manners... the thank you's and your welcome's shine during this activity.



This week we were introduced to the number 9. We did many hands-on counting activites and some activity sheets. Below is a sampling of some of the activity sheets we completed for number nine and review.




We continued with our dinosaur theme. The highlight of the week was making the volcano and using baking soda and vinegar to make it explode. While doing this activity we talked a lot about what is a solid, liquid and gas. Here is a picture of the volcano as it was bubbling out.


We then made our own volcano with dinosaurs around it (to keep with the dinosaur theme). I forgot to take a picture of the finished volcano... but they turned out really nice.




We talked about the opposites of top and bottom and demonstrated this with real materials. We finished up with a volcano and some dinosaurs and put the little dinosaur on top of the volcano and the big dinosaur on the bottom.


We talked about two dinosaurs this week... tyrannosaurus rex and pterodactyl.

We sponge painted t-rex


And our flying pterodactyl created much enjoyment. The pterodactyl is stapled to a straw and as you raise and lower your arm the wings move and it looks like it is flying. They played with these for quite some time.



We reviewed our shapes and I had them create a "shape person". This is what they came up with. It actually turned into a group effort deciding on how to use the different shapes (why they are all similar) but it was fun hearing them discuss how to use the shapes. The triangle threw them the most.







Puzzle time, independent reading time, and of course no week is complete without plenty of play. Here are just a few pictures during our week.













Hope you enjoyed looking at our week.