First Week of May 2012

Hi Everyone... getting caught up today!!!  I know its not best practices to post more than one post per day... but I have to finally get caught up.  It's been weighing heavily on my shoulders to get this done and I'm losing pictures, forgeting what we did (old age), and just want to be caught up.  So here it goes... finally in the month we are in...

This week we did not do a letter book, but instead, we did my daycare children's all time favorite... we learned about a new state.  Yeah... a state!  It's funny because my older children love to dramatic play and I hear them talking about what state they are in.  5 year olds that know states... how great is that!

This week we were introduced to the state of Idaho.  As always we did a state book to go along with it... so here it goes...

 We started our state study by placing the state on our state map (one of these days I will take a picture of it) and then we colored the state name (Idaho) and the state in.

 On the left we colored in where the state of Idaho is, talked aobut the state capital and did a dot-to-dot of the state outline.  On the right we colored the state flag and talked about the symbols on the flag, glued down the letters to build the state name and...

 we pulled out our accordian fold to trace/print the state name.

 We talked about the state flower... syringa and we colored and then made our own paper piecing of a syringa.

 We talked about the state bird... mountain bluebird in which we colored a mountain bluebird and then we painted plates and made a bluebird.  I forgot the picture or lost it... ugh!

 The state butterfly is the monarch.  We carefully colored a monarch.  They did a nice job on this.

We talked about the state mammal... appaloosa (a horse with spots).

 We colored the spots with our crayons (crayon resist) and then waterpainted the horse.

 We talked about Shoshine Falls and looked at many pictures of the falls.

 And then we made a waterfall with a bowl, glass and aluminum foil.  We used the baking soda and vinegar reation to make the falls come bubbling over.  The children loved this... I on the other hand need to figure a better way for next time.  The pics are doing it even less justice than the way it turned out.

 We found out that in Boise they do evening hot air balloon rides.  Was this the highlight... I might add.  We colored the hot air balloon.

We watched a neat video of how a hot air balloon flies on U-tube and then we made a flew a hot air balloon.  Of course we had to do it a number of times because the children just loved watching this balloon float to the ceiling.

 Our hot air balloon was made from tissue paper and we learned that with cold air it wouldn't fly (I used the cool button on my hair dryer.).  When we put hot air into the balloon it took off to the ceiling (I used hot air... the hottest setting... to fill the balloon up).  We learned that hot air is lighter than cold air and the reason a hot air balloon flies.

 And you can't do Idaho without potatoes!!!  We talked about how potatoes grow and sequenced it on the left and we had a little fun putting together a Mr. or Mrs. Potato head on the right.

It was a good unit.  Hope you enjoyed it... but that is not all we did this week...

We had to talk about May Day on May 1-st.

We made May Day baskets using a basket printable that we colored and scrunched tissue paper as the flowers.

 We fingerpainted some flowers to go along with our May Day theme.

 painting...

 finished project.

We also traced flowers and colored them in.

 We talked about first, second, and third.

We learned the order when I told a story about needing their help to go get some yummy food for snack in which I needed to find the oranges first, the apples second, and the bananas third.  We did this several times in different ways and then...

They did it themselves.

 We were introduced to our community helper puppet friend... Joy the mechanic.  We talked about what a mechanic does and then we...

Played a game... guess which tool is missing.  We talked about the tools and then I had them close their eyes, covered the tools and secretly took one.  When I uncovered the tools and they opened their eyse they had to guess what tool was missing.

We then had to hunt for Joy's missing tools by using the key and coloring the tool when we found it.

We did the nursery rhyme... "Rain, Rain Go Away"

We learned the rhyme and then colored umbrellas and used ink pads to make rain.

We talked about the city vs. the country.

We talked about things you see in the city.  We made a very long list.  And then we made skyscrapers.

We will do more on this topic next week.

And that was our week.  Hope you enjoyed it!

Best,

Rose