It's a Pirate's Life for Us!

Arrrgh you ready to hear about all of our pirate adventures this past week? What a fun week! We did a lot of learning and a lot of giggling. Here's Pre-K 1's first morning message of the week which is adorable. Look at all those stick pirates!

Of course we put treasure in the sand table. X marks the spot!



We started off the week making pirates in art, of course! These Pinterest inspired pirates arrrgh awesome!





Pre-K 1 started on their pirates, too.

I let them use a sharpie to draw their eye patches on and they were thrilled.



I love these pirates!

We read a lot of great pirate books, but here are a few of the favorites if you want to check them out.

Two sweet peas in my class brought these cute books and we really enjoyed them both:

Pre-K 2 worked in their journals.

On Wednesday everyone came to school dressed like a pirate. Here's our group of our swashbucklers!

Last week something VERY exciting happened. Ms. Molly surprised us with ipads for our classrooms! The Pre-K classes were each assigned 6 ipads and I was OVER THE MOON about it!! I couldn't wait to incorporate the ipads into our curriculum. Besides, I've had a Pinterest board ready for over a year in anticipation of this moment ever possibly happening....and it did! YAY! Last week we spent time learning how to use and respect the ipads. This week Ms. Amy and I loaded games, including 3 educational pirate games and added them to our center rotation. They loved them!



We added a simple rote counting page to evaluate number recognition in our daily math binders.

How they did work wearing the eye patches in beyond me....I couldn't walk straight with one on. :)

Pre-K 2 made handprint parrots at art to go with their cute pirates!



Even pirates have to practice their ABC's.

 Pre-K 1 made pirate ships in art. They were inspired by the amazing art site Deep Space Sparkle. I modified one of their wonderful ideas for this project.

After painting in various hues of blue, we took plastic forks and made wave designs in our wet paint.

After they dried we added pirate ships! SO cute.

One interesting fact we learned is why pirates wear eye patches.

Finally, pirate week wouldn't be complete without making treasure maps and going on a treasure hunt!

 

On Friday we made our maps.

We have been doing a LOT of cutting.

Some people crumpled their paper to make it look older.

Here's one pirate showing us his map:

After we made our maps, we went on a treasure hunt! It started with our morning message.

Each time we scanned a code, it gave us a new clue! Some of our clues included finding where the bow would be if the ECDC was a ship, figuring out where the Captain's Quarters would be and searching for the Galley!

The final clue asked which class a pirate would think is the best at the ECDC. There was some debate between Pre-K 1 & 2, and it turns out they would think BOTH are best because the treasure was right in between our classes under Happy's cage!

Everyone got to choose a piece of treasure from the chest!

Well, that wraps up pirate week! So Pre-K pirates out. We have so much more exploring to do!

 

Apples All Around!

This week was full of fun and learning. We studied apples all week, one of my favorite themes during the year. It gives me that exciting feeling of a new year starting, and it reminds me of the fact that as hard as Texas is trying to convince us otherwise, fall will be here before we know it. Also, we always finish up with a yummy recipe, so I love that, too! This year we kicked off our unit by discussing describing words. After reading several apple books, we brainstormed some words that describe apples.

One of the books we really enjoyed was:

It led to an in depth discussion about apple varieties. We tasted five different varieties and decided which were our favorites.  In the sensory table we added red, yellow and green balls and measuring worms. I also added some cinnamon to make it smell nice. :)



We continued with our daily work, this week we added an apple ten frame to assess rote counting to 10. Everyone did a great job!



Pre-K 1's first craft was apple cores and it was an independent project from beginning to end. I love independent projects, they always reveal a lot about the peas personalities. It also shows how well they can follow multi-step instructions.

They get so much great learning: fine motor, creativity, critical thinking skills, counting (the seeds), and so on.

 

Here's the completed works!

Pre-K 2 made some apple trees for their first art project. They did a lot of cutting!

They made their trees and added a sweet little poem.

 

Next, both classes did some apple painting.

They traced and painted three apples by themselves.

 Both classes did some table work. Pre-K 2 did a roll an apple activity.

We sequenced the life of an apple.

Pre-K 2 did some apple patterning.

This week was letter B, so Pre-K 2 journaled letter B and drew things that begin with B. I adore Pre-K writing.

 We continued with our handwriting.



Pre-K 1 brought apples to school, and we graphed what color everyone brought!

We also made our first class book in Pre-K 1. Crooked picture, sorry!

Are these precious or what?

 Next, we weighed apples with cubes.

The peas went around in a circle adding a block at a time until we balanced the scale. It took 30 cubes!

Next we decided to see how long our apples would be if we laid them out in a line.

They were longer than our leader of the day! 

To end the week we read this:

Then we made mini apple pies!



I have the peeler/corer/slicer from Pampered Chef and this is one of the coolest contraptions around. And it's pretty fun to use! The peas cranked the handle for me.



After peeling, coring and slicing we added some sugar and cinnamon to the apples. Um, YUM.

Sadly, my apple pie picture is very blurry, but I couldn't help but add it because how sweet are these tiny apple pies?! Here's the recipe if you are interested in making some at home!

So we ended the week with apples pies after lunch with a little ice cream on the side. Because what's apple pie without a little ice cream?

 

Hope you all have a wonderful weekend! Get your peg legs and parrots ready because next week we will be doing literacy, math and art pirate style!