{Cat in the Hat and All That}

 Last week was Dr. Seuss' birthday and we celebrated it with plenty of Seussical fun! We began the week by reading and doing everything Seuss style!

 

 One of my favorites to do is Ten Apples Up on Top. We do a lot of counting activities with this book every year and this year Ms. Amy gave us some mini apples and an idea to put the peas pictures on blocks so they could stack the apples up on top. :) We added red and green so we could pattern the apples, too.

 

 

 Next we read My Many Colored Days and discussed feelings. We wanted to incorporated some writing this week, so we made this an art and language arts activity.

 I love how unique these turned out and they did great with their writing! They found the color words on their own and wrote them independently, then we helped them spell the feeling words.

 We had a roll and cover red fish blue fish game I found on pinterest a few years ago and we talked a lot about working cooperatively, taking turns, and being fair. They did a fantastic job!

 Half way through the week the peas brought their favorite Dr. Seuss books to school. We did a people graph of their books! I made a graph of the books below, but everyone wouldn't fit so there's some more pictures below, but you get the idea. :) We tried to read as many of the books as we could.

  

On Wednesdays we do journals and we usually add a poem, but this week Ms Angela found a great Dr. Seuss quote to add and we talked about what a quote was. It was hard concept, but we talked about how Dr. Seuss had SO many great words to share with the world. They could illustrate anything they wanted with the quote, but they wanted to draw cat in the hat for the most part. Are these adorable? 

Dr. Seuss week=rhyme time. We practiced rhyming ALL week! We played a game where everyone had rhyming words and we sounded them out as a group. Everyone had to find the words that "matched" or rhymed with them.

Afterwards we read Hop on Pop. I found some bubble wrap Ms. Molly brought to school and after reading we put the "pop" in the middle of the circle. Each pea got to "hop" on the "pop" for being such great rhymers! We even invited Ms. Molly to hop on the pop!

 We were ready for more rhyming, so we read this next:

 I knew wanted to surprise the peas with wockets to take home and I have been brainstorming a way to use all these Starbucks stoppers I won't let my hubs throw away. I'm all about the upcycling! ;) So when I got ready to make the wockets I decided to laminate and hot glue the wockets on. I'm not sure how well they stayed since they went home Friday, but they turned out pretty cute. I think I might make the rest pointers...let me know if you have any ideas!

 The wockets loved their new homes!

 The traveled to centers with the peas all day. Can you see that wocket in her pocket? ;)

 

Last, but never least, we read:

 Inspired by Ms. Amy's class who did some fantastic free expression painting, we decided to paint cat in the hats. They drew the cat in the hat all week, so they were excited to paint him, too.

 Aren't these guys precious?

We celebrated Dr. Seuss' birthday in style and it was a fantastic week. Now we are off for a week of relaxing for Spring Break. I hope you all have a wonderful break!

Bears

 We learned all about bears and other animals that hibernate. Did you know ladybugs hibernate? We read this book that lists many animals that hibernate and the kids loved it.

One of the funniest parts of teaching the tech generation is that they aren't intimidated by using technology and they already know the term "google it." So all week they would be thinking out loud or talking to each other and they would come to me and ask, "Do (fill in a random animal here) hibernate?" and if I said I wasn't sure they would bring me an ipad and just say, "Let's google it." Ha! We did find out that most animals that hibernate burrow into the ground or find a cave or burrow. So we added non fiction books about hibernating and built caves in blocks. 

 For math we couldn't pass up the opportunity to do some delicious graphing with gummy bears. We counted how many of each color we had and then colored our graphs accordingly.

We also read this favorite and made our own Corduroys to retell the story with.

 We also made bears in a cave which I didn't get a picture of but I got a picture of this cutie pie working on cutting out and coloring her bear!

We also planned a honey hunt for our little bears. I can't take it, they are so adorable. Here they are with their honey pots. 

 

Ms. Angela hid the honey (honeycomb cereal in snack bags) outside for them to hunt. Then off they went! 

 

 Here's what they found!

 

For our journals this week we had a poem about hibernation and the peas glued down a bear and made him a cave. I love that they're still wearing their bear ears!

My favorite part of the week I missed because I was out of town, but Angela took lots of pictures for me! One of my favorite books ever is The Teddy Bears Picnic. I read it to the peas before I left and we loved looking at every page!

After reading the story we invited the peas to bring their bears to school, put the book out and added a picnic set. It was a big hit.

 

 

 

 

 That wraps up bears week. See you next week!

{Silly Soup Stories}

Towards the end of January we had a theme called "Silly Soup Stories." There are SO many soup books. There are even pins on Pinterest full of soup stories. We dove right into the silliness and had a great time doing it! We started by reading some soup books. These were our favorites!

Then we set up our home center with materials to cook with. We had big pots, ladles and plenty of fake veggies for our little chefs!

 

 

At one of our independent centers we had our group morning message which asked what they thought would go into "yuck soup." They cut out pictures and glued them into the pot on our morning message.

 

One of the biggest hits of the week was our alphabet soup sensory bin. We added letters to the water tubs with pitchers, bowls, spoons and tweezers. They LOVED this center! 

We are moving forward with teaching letter identification and sounds so Ms. Angela did this literacy listening center with small groups.

   Next we learned about pop art and saw a few of Andy Warhol's masterpieces. Here is a kids page and here is the Warhol museum page. Since we were doing everything about soup, we made some Warhol inspired Cambell's soup cans!

 These turned out SO good! Especially for little hands, this was a lot of coloring. But of course, being a sneaky teacher, that was the plan! Fine motor work and muscle building while having fun!

We made a display of them in our classroom. Come on by to check it out!

Next we discussed a lot of soups and our favorites and the class voted on making Chicken Noodle Soup. Ms. Angela led the cooking activity by having the peas help her follow a recipe!

 The best part was when Ms. Angela made us all homemade grilled cheese sandwiches to go with our soup! Our lunch was delish.

The next day, one of our sweet moms made our runner up soup of choice, Taco Soup for the peas to enjoy. It was a hit!

 

 During our group time we read this story: 

 and then worked together to list the wolf's character traits before he met the chicken face to face and after. He was a changed wolf.

Another story we couldn't pass up during soup week was this favorite:

 After reading the story we each made our own stone soup. This was a fantastic activity because the peas drew their own veggies and then cut them out.

 Here's a coup of adorable peas and their soup pots.

After reading the story we graphed if they would eat stone soup. As you can see, they didn't get past the "stone" part. :)

We also used a stone soup poem for our journals for the week. They illustrated the poem.

 

Well, our whole week was soup-er! See what I did there? ;) Hope you all have a soup-er week, too!