{Fall at the ECDC}

It's been very busy over the past few months, so I haven't posted in a while, but I wanted to give you all a peek at the fun we had in October and November in Pre-K! We started by reading some fantastic scarecrow books:

During math workshop we worked with our turn and talk partners to create a scarecrow out of shapes. We counted how many of each shape we used and compared them with other groups.

 We read this fun story...

 

 After reading the story we put our critical thinking skills to use and thought about problems and solutions. We are all about solving problems in Pre-K! :)

 Next, we broke into groups and worked together to make a cooperative scarecrow! Each group worked on one part of him, and then we assembled the parts and hung him up in our classroom.

We even made some crows and corn for our sweet scarecrow to keep him company!

Ms. Leslie had a fantastic idea to paint some fall leaves with tools from outdoors: pine needles! It was a gorgeous day and the peas loved doing art outside with Ms. Leslie.

 

 Over the next few weeks we discussed apples and pumpkins. First, we talked about apples. We peeled, cored and sliced apples we brought to school with a very cool contraption. Then we made our own applesauce! It was seriously delicious. You can check out the recipe here.

When we talked about pumpkins we had a pumpkin morning message where everyone decorated a jack o' lantern.

 

We also added jack o' lanterns to blocks which inspired some fun play.

 

We decided to make our own jack o' lantern. We learned how to use tally marks to take a vote and voted on how we wanted our jack o' lantern's face to look!

Next we read my all time favorite book:

We decided to make our pumpkin a "Pumpkin Jack" and when he started wilting and becoming wrinkly we added him to the compost pile. We have been keeping track of his decomposition. This is what he looks like now:

 

Gross! But also...cool.

Our little pumpkins painted pumpkins. :)

We also learned about our 5 senses and did some fun activities about our senses. We had a sweet, salty, sour and bitter taste test.

And we made mystery egg shakers and smelly boxes to explore.

During our writing time, we popped popcorn and wrote words that described the popcorn. Yum!

Before thanksgiving we did a lot of Turkey talk! We made turkeys in our journals:

Then we read one of my favorites. Here's a video of it....it's totally worth it!

We made turkeys at art with disguises to they wouldn't be eaten on Thanksgiving!!!

We also made a canoe with some Native Americans that we put in numerical order 1-10. We've been discussing 10 a lot lately. You can see more about it in my next post! Look at this concentration below!!

Well that wraps up a small fraction of the fun and learning we did over the last several months. Be looking for an upcoming post about math!

 Happy Hump Day!



{Fall} and {Creatures of the Night}

We kicked off fall with themes about Trees and Leaves and Creatures of the Night.

Pre-K 1 started with a fun pocket chart rhyme. It says:

The leaves are falling down,

Red, yellow and brown.

The leaves are falling down,

All over ______ and all over town!

We had our name cards out to take turns reading our names in the rhyme and then we added some really silly name cards with ideas from the class. Santa Claus, Ms. Molly, Luke Skywalker and Happy all had their names added to cards!

Pre-K 2 cut out owls for a door bulletin board after reading Owl books. Owl Babies by Martin Waddell was very popular. You can watch the story being read on YouTube here.



Pre-K 2 also had adorable owl sheets numbered 1-5 that they cut out and sequenced.

This owl roll and cover game was very popular, too. The peas made progress with counting, taking turns and visually discriminating numbers.

Pre-K 1 did a cut and color tree sequencing art project.

At circle time we discussed what grew on trees. These are some smart kiddos! They guessed many fruits, leaves, apple blossoms, etc.

We studied leaves and examined them under magnifying glasses.

We make little books usually once a week to use for guided reading, learning predictive text and sight words. They are very short but the kids love making them.

More pics of the roll and cover game. I love how serious these guys look!

Pre-K 2 worked on visually discriminating between different types of leaves.

They also played a beginning sounds game on the white board.

Ms. Rhonda did the coolest project of the week! She talked about day and night and brought this really cool prop to demonstrate how the sun provides daylight.

Then she made a night box! As you can imagine, the kids LOVED it. Pre-K 2 played with it and then let Pre-K 1 have a turn. Here she is making it with a little help!

How clever is this? She punched holes for a string of Christmas lights that fit into the holes. They illuminated the inside of the box with this lovely glow.

Acting silly in the night box.

And you know that old lady who swallows EVERYTHING?!

She's done it again.

And since we are working on sequencing right now, we used the story to sequence everything she swallowed. Don't you love that concentrating tongue bite? Love it!



Lastly, Ms. Rhonda had a really neat art and literature connection activity. We read this story:

It is the perfect mix of spooky tale and practical explanations! When a brother and sister are sent on a late-night errand by their mother one evening, they realize that they'll have to pass by the Ghost-Eye Tree to reach their destination. They may think they're tough, but what will happen when they have to face the tree in the dark of night? After reading the story, we made our own Ghost Eye Trees!


Pre-K 2 also made these festive fall leaves. They are sun catchers, and the picture doesn't do them justice. They are so pretty hung in the windows of their room.

Pre-K 2 made this adorable sad scarecrow and crows, too! The scarecrow was done during a cooperative project where groups worked seperately on the head, arms, legs, body, etc. I really love him. Those crows are pretty adorable, too.

Pre-K 1 rounded off the week with these scarecrows. Their favorite part was stuffing the bags!
Happy Fall, ya'll!