Down on the Farm

    Our week was super short, but we were able to get a few fun things in!  Here's a few of the activities that we did.  I still have a few more things to share, but they are not finished.

We celebrated Columbus Day on Monday.  I usually do so much with Columbus, but because of our short week, pictures, and our Farm theme we just did a few things.

We learned about sink or float in Science and made Coke Float (please don't hate on me!)  We also made sink or float pictures but either they did not turn out, or I forgot to snap pictures of them.  We also read a story about Columbus and learned a song from Dr. Jean about him.

We learned about cows and had a milk tasting of white, chocolate, or strawberry milk.

We graphed our favorite type of milk.  I found the cute little cups at the dollar store!

We made these cute cow glyphs from Deanna Jump.  You can find it here.

We read the story The Little Red Hen and made bread.  This recipe is super easy and tasted really yummy!
Brean in a Bag
Mix in a heavy duty ziplock baggie:
1 cup flour
1 packet dry yeast
3 tablespoons dry milk
1 teaspoon salt

Add and mix (getting the air out of baggie):
1 cup hot water
2 tablespoons oil

Add and mix:
2-3 cups flour or until the bread no longer sticks to the bag

Knead bread in the bag.
Rest the dough in the bag for 10 minutes.
Raise in a greased pan.
Cover with a towel for 20 minutes.
Bake at 375 for 25-30 minutes in a small loaf pan.

The final product!  It really was good!  I did not get any pics of the class making the bread, but they had a great time!

We learned about pigs and painted with chocolate pudding to make our pigs in the mud.

We also did a descriptive writing activity of what mud looked like and felt like.

We are working on our Mrs. Wishy Washy books, but will not finish  until next week.  I love how these turned out.  You can find this activity here at Making Learning Fun.

     Have a great week!

Apples and the Farm

     The days and weeks are just flying by!  I can't seem to get it all in, whether at home or school.  I'm still decorating my house for Fall, and I can never seem to finish up our themes!  We finished up apples this past week and finally began our Farm theme.  This is one of my favorite themes, and I just realized there is nothing about the farm on here!  Hopefully, that will not be the case this year! ;)  My Mrs. Wishy Washy theme is finished, but I have a few things that I'm tweaking, so hopefully will be up by Wednesday.  Like I said earlier, I can't seem to get it all in!  Anyway, here are some of the things that happened in our room last week.

Zero came to visit for our 20th day of school and read us a counting book about apples.

My assistant made this fabulous Seasons of an Apple Tree flip book.  It is just the cutest thing!  Our Scholastic Weekly Reader went along with our project, and she also read The Seasons of Arnold's Apple Tree.

I took this picture before the details were added, but they colored white snow flakes on the branches.  We were a little pressed for time, but you could have them paint snowflakes with white paint and Q-tips.

The Spring picture was just crepe paper glued on to make leaves and the apple blossoms.

Summer- They glued green construction paper squares on.

Fall- The same but just added some cut out apples.

Working on the project!

They really enjoyed doing this!

I love this project!  I also use this as part of our evaluation to evaluate whether they know the letters that are in their name.  They painted two paper plates of their favorite color apple, cut and glued the stem and leaf on, and then cut out the seeds of the letters that are in their name.  On the seed sheet was just a variety of letters, but they only had to cut out the ones that were in the name.  The seeds went in the pocket, and they wrote their name on the front.

Mrs. Wishy Washy came to visit to introduce our Farm theme.

She showed them how the pig rolled in the mud, the duck paddled in the mud, and the cow jumped in the mud.

I had them try to guess what we were going to do since all my animal friends were muddy.  Of course, they all said put them in the tub.  We did and before you know it, they were back in the mud!

We discussed the author and illustrator of the book and who the characters were in the book.  Next week we will be doing more this and will work on retelling the story.

I had a wonderful parent make me a Mrs. Wishy Washy and tub!  The kids just love it!  We then put together a sentence that said they were in the tub.

I like to give a little trinket for the letter of the week, if they complete and turn in their homework.  The letter was A, so I bought these little Atlanta Braves notebooks.  I encouraged them to write their popcorn words in their notebook.  I'm thinking about doing these also for themes that we have, and then they can record the words that we are learning.

     We don't have a Fall break, but we do have two early release days this week and picture day!  I may have to carry farm over into our Pumpkins & Spiders theme, but it is all Farm related, right?! :0  Have a great week!

Family Trees and Apple Trees

     We started off the week finishing up our Family theme.  I just can't leave a theme or project unfinished!  Then we moved on to our Apple theme, which we will have to finish up the beginning of next week.  It is just a vicious cycle, but everything seems to come out ok! lol  We also did a lot of cooking and eating this week!  This class just loves to eat!  I do incorporate several skills: math, following directions, and literacy.

We have been doing lots of graphing!  I think it's important for them to be exposed to many different types of graphs.  We had a few that did not have brothers or sisters, so I let them decide where they needed to be placed on the graph.  Hello, critical thinking! :)

I minimized pictures of them to put on their own Venn graph.

They really enjoyed this!  I think they really just liked the mini pictures! :)

We made houses made out of different food shapes.

I forgot to snap a picture of the completed house and following direction activity that we did after.

More cooking!  We made applesauce!  I love my apple corer/slicer!  It makes this cooking activity a breeze!

I also like that they are able to make the applesauce pretty much by themselves.

We brought in our favorite type of apples and then graphed to see which type of apples are class liked the most.

The completed graph

Apple Centers-  Tasting center.  We tasted apple juice, fresh apples, apple pie, apple muffins,and applesauce.  Everyone loved our homemade applesauce!

Most of them ate all of their tasting samples!

Art Center- We made apple prints.

Weighing Center-  They guessed how many blocks their apple weighed and then compared the apple to different objects.

Circumference-  They guessed how big around their apple was with string.

I love this picture!

     Today was so much fun!  This is always one of my favorite activities that we do all year!  We will be doing more apples next week and then moving on to the Farm.  I'm hoping to have my first thematic unit ready to go next week as a freebie!  Let's hope I don't have any technological issues! :) Have a great weekend and GO BRAVES!!!!