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Tuesday, November 22, 2011

Thanksgiving Feast

     I'm missing some of my photos from our Thanksgiving feast last week!  I'm hoping I just didn't upload them.  It's hard to photograph when you are doing a million different things! :)  Here are the ones that I do have, and I apologize because some of them are blurry!
The placemats we made in centers.

These were on the tables, so we would know where to sit. :)

Performing our Thanksgiving songs.

Centerpieces for the tables- I made the pilgrim hats six years ago.  They are large terra cotta pots that I painted black and a white stripe around it.  I did have yellow foam buckles on them, but I didn't realize they had fallen off until the day of the feast!  

Here is our complete costume: headband (that were made in centers), shirts, and necklaces.











Happy Thanksgiving from our class to yours!  Hope you all have a blessed day with your families!

Friday, November 18, 2011

Native Americans and Popcorn

     Whew!  I've gotten a little behind in my blogging, but hopefully over the Thanksgiving break I can get caught up!  Today's post is actually activities from last week.  There are a few pictures that I have not uploaded, so those will be up at a later time.
We read The Popcorn Book by Tomie de Pola and learned that Native Americans made popcorn.  We learned about the different ways they cooked corn and how they began putting them in clay pots so they would not go everywhere!
One of the parents from class bought this when we went on our field trip to Kinsey Farms, so that we could make popcorn in class.  We discussed ways that we could pop the corn and what would work best for us.  We decided that we would pop it in the microwave since we did not have a fire. :)  We also decided that we needed to put it in a bag so popcorn would not go everywhere.
We all stood around the microwave to see what would happen.  We could smell the corn cooking, we could hear it popping in the bag, and we could see the bag getting bigger!

This was so cool!  There were some popped corn actuarially still on the cob!

It did not pop a lot of corn, but it was really yummy!  I did not put salt or butter on it, and the kids still wanted more!

I also bought some of these to do a Science experiment with.  I'll post pictures what our corn looks like this week!  By the way, the corn's name is Poppy!

     We also made a Native American to go in our Thanksgiving book that I will get up some time over the break.  We were going to make Indian Corn Books, but we ran out of time!  

Saturday, November 12, 2011

Nutrition Center and Updates on Bert and Jack

     I found pictures that I knew I had taken in our centers the other day!  I"m going to put those up today along with updates on our pumpkins Bert and Jack.
Pattern Center- We painted the sentence strips the day before.  Then they chose what shapes they wanted to cut out for their head band.  They had to glue them in either an AB, ABB, AABB, or ABC pattern.  We still need to glue the feathers on.


This is the picture I knew I had taken from our Science Center.  They had a bag of different types of food and then they put it on the correct food group.
The completed turkey puzzle

We read Eating the Alphabet and practiced our letter sounds.
We read Growing Vegetable Soup before we made our vegetable prints.
These actually look better in person!  We used corn, potatoes, and peppers in our art center to make vegetable prints.
Bert-  You have to look very closely, but over by the paper on the pumpkin there is a small green sprout growing!  I was just about to give up hope on Bert.  The class is very excited to see what is going to happen over the weekend!
Jack- Oh my goodness!  This is after one week!  I don't think I have ever had Jack fall apart this fast!  I'm wondering if he was already beginning to rot....

     I'm hoping tomorrow I'll be able to put up all the cool things we did with corn and the beginning of our Thanksgiving theme!

Thursday, November 10, 2011

Nutrition Centers

     We had a lot of fun this week learning about healthy and unhealthy foods.  These are some of the centers that we did this week to go along with our theme.  I'm not putting up some of the pictures until next week because I want it to be a surprise for the parents at the feast next week!
I know this has nothing to do with nutrition, but they love this game!  I put it out again because it is just too much!

Mr. Potato Head-  He's a vegetable, right? haha

Turkey puzzle- I have a picture of the completed turkey, but I guess I haven't uploaded it yet.

This is a color fruit sort.  They had to match the color of the fruit to the matching color bag. 
Lincoln Logs

Math-Pattern Blocks

Alphabet Soup Cans-  They had to match the pictures with the letter on the soup can.

Art- Vegetable Prints (Peppers, potatoes, and corn)

Native American Headband- I know this is not nutrition, but we had to get these done for our feast!  They had shapes they had to cut out and then glue in a pattern on to the sentence strips.  We painted them the day before.  I'll show the completed headbands next week.
This time they were able to put the foods on to the appropriate food group.  I thought I had taken pictures of this center, but maybe that is another one that did not get uploaded!
     We also had a center where they made their placemat for the feast, but that one will get posted next week.  Busy, busy, busy this week!

Wednesday, November 9, 2011

Nutrition

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     Whew!  This week is going by way to fast!  We are preparing for our Thanksgiving Feast next week.  Thankfully, nutrition ties in nicely with Thanksgiving!  Here are a few things we've started on this week.
This is actually last weeks number, but because we had a short week last week, we did not get to it.
Letter of the Week
I love this book!  We read Gregory the Terrible Eater and discussed healthy foods and junk food.  Gregory is a goat that loves to eat "junk" food, but learns that we need to eat a little of everything to be healthy.  It is also good to try new types of food to eat!
We learned about the food guide pyramid.  Yes, I know that it has changed AGAIN!  We will get to that in a second!  The larger parts are foods that we should eat more, and the smaller parts are foods that we should eat less of.
Then, I introduced the new food guide.  They really got into guessing what food group the item belonged in!
I found a wealth of information at this web site choose my plate.  There were lesson plans, activities, and more!
I thought I took a better picture of this, so I will try to get one tomorrow.  This is  a snack shape book.  They had to cut out different snacks that were different shapes and then glue to the appropriate spot.  Then they had to tell me what shape each object is.  It was a great shape review activity!
Our Nutrition centers are super cool!  I'll try to get those up tomorrow! We are also doing some exciting things with corn tomorrow!  

Monday, November 7, 2011

Moses books

     The month of October we worked on a book about the life of Moses.  It took a little longer than normal because we had a lot of extra activities: Community Helper visits, early release days, pictures,etc.  The books really help the class make a connection and Moses becomes more of a person than just a story.  For the month of November we are working on a book of things that we are thankful for.
I bought the stickers from Oriental Trading.  They loved making their sticker scenes!

I posted this earlier.  This is Moses in the bulrushes.  They watercolored the picture and then traced and cut out their handprints for the bulrushes.

Moses and the Burning Bush-  We painted paper plates and then glued tissue paper on the trees to represent the fire.

Moses and the Red Sea-  I think I found this idea at Making Friends.  This is really cute.!  It actually stands up and the water is rolled back.

Moses and the Ten Commandments-  This is a create your own scene from Oriental Trading.  We used the left over stickers for the cover page.