Learning about Friendship and Cooperation

Last week our theme was friendship. During the first few weeks of school we made these friendship trees out of the kid's fingerprints. Both classes have them displayed in their respective rooms. Aren't they sweet?

We focused on cooperative learning and how to make and treat friends which are such important social skills for our peas.  :)

We started by making friendship bracelets in art. We took home a different bracelet than we made to celebrate our friendships!

In Pre-K 1 we measured our friends with snapcubes.

Then we counted how long our friends were!

Pre-K 2 did some math with counters and numbers to reinforce number recognition.

Pre-K 1 added this poem to our journals and colored pictures to go with our poems.



Both classes did guided reading with the little book "Friends Move." Afterwards, Pre-K 2 drew in their journals about the story.



Next, we read The Important Book by Margeret Wise Brown.

It is a very sweet book about the diverse qualities of many items: the grass, an apple, the wind, etc. We made class books of what is important about us!

I LOVE the things that they shared were important about them. SO precious.

We also played with Care Bears. Old school, lol! My mom had these at her house from when I was little from the first Care Bear craze in the 80's! There are books about them, too, and they were a great way to have fun pretending and reinforce the concepts of kindness, sharing, and friendship. Even the boys loved them!





We also made a friendship quilt! Each friend in Pre-K 1 made a square, then we tied it all together.



Here it is completed!

On Friday, Pre-K 2 did a cooperative art project after reading "Caps for Sale" for letter C!

Each group participated in making one part of a larger picture. This group made the monkeys from the story....

These sweet peas drew the cap salesman.

And this group worked on making the tree.

The fourth group made the caps!

Here is the finished product! What an incredible learning activity!



We learned a lot about each other this week and concentrated on cooperating and how to treat others which will lead perfectly into our unit on celebrating diversity. So that's a wrap for friendship week!
Have a good one.

 

Apples, Apples, Apples

 

Last week our theme was apples. We did SO many fun apple activities, and our classes smelled great all week. :) Our class guinea pig was pretty oinky with all the apples around, too. He is such an piggy when it comes to fruit and it made the peas giggle all week to hear how loud and demanding he was when he saw an apple! Here's a peek into our week, and if you can believe it, this isn't even everything we did!

 

We started with this simple apple book:

 Pre-K 1 made the seasons of the apple tree in art, using little arms as trees. So sweet!

Both our classes have journals we use weekly, and then the journals are sent home at the end of the year. Pre-K 2 drew apples in their journals this week.



I love watching how their writing and drawing evolves as the year progresses.

Below shows us making apple pie playdough, which was a pinterest fail! It smelled great and was so fun to play with the first day, but the second day it was super sticky and wet. Of course I still let them play with it, because where else are you going to have fun getting messy besides in Pre-K?

On Wednesday everyone brought an apple to school.

Ms. Rhonda made this really clever graph in Pre-K 2 out of a shower curtain. Love it!

 As a group activity they graphed all the apples they brought to school. 

Pre-K 1 sliced up a few of our apples and stamped with them.

For morning message, we examined an apple and then labeled one together.

Then both classes made really yummy apple treats. Pre-K 2 made apple pies using cresent dough. They smelled SO good.

We had the apple peeler/corer/slicer which is a pretty amazing invention. The kids loved helping get the apples ready.



Pre-K 1 made applesauce in the crockpot.

We had our applesauce with ice cream. It was so yummy!

We also learned some super cute apple poems and songs. Pre-K 1 made these apple trees to go with our poem.

Pre-K 2 learned this cute song.

Ms. Rhonda did this adorable activity with the Pre-K 2 class. They measured how many apples tall they were.

Everyone was close to the same height!

During centers Pre-K 2 added beads to pipe cleaners with number tags on them. This was a great activity for number recognition and rote counting.

Pre-K 1 counted apples onto apple trees.

In math, each group guessed how many seeds their apple had, then Ms. Angela cut the apple open and they counted and recorded the number of seeds.

We tore paper for fine motor and glued it on apple trees. Those are some pretty big apples! :)

After reading this favorite:

 Pre-K 1 made these:

They thought these were really funny and they turned out super cute.

We added some worms and apple colored tools to cinnamon flavored oatmeal for some sensory fun.

We also worked on our handwriting, and the peas are off to a great start in their handwriting books! 

And on Thursday, my mom came to visit! She lives in Victoria, Texas and always visits my class each year to meet my new group of kids and play. She loves this age group, and the kids loved meeting her. Thanks for visiting Mom!

It was a successful week and we had lots of fun. Wishing you all a wonderful weekend!