{Red Ribbon Week} & {The Cornfield Crew}

Every year we have a door decorating contest for Red Ribbon Week and we get pretty excited about it around here! We also can win money for our classrooms which is a pretty big deal for teachers. :) Pre-K 2's door was entirely made by the children this year! They did a cooperative project to build the scarecrow for the door.

They pieced him together...

And voila! They won Facebook Choice Award this year! Congrats Pre-K 2!

Our door was a dracula theme! I made the peas into mini counts and they made bats and wrote numbers counting down from 19. I think it turned out pretty stinkin cute! We got 2nd place!

 Love these counts!

And Pre-K written numbers. :)

Here's some more creative doors.



One of my buddies did this door! She is always super creative!

This door won 1st place, it was adorable!

Next, Pre-K made corn at art.

 They used bubble wrap to make the kernal patterns.

 It got kinda messy!

The final product was pretty cute!

 In Pre-K 1 we started the week by shopping catalogs to decide what we will spend our money on. Every year the peas get to make choices about what our classroom needs and in November we will rally and campaign for the item we think will be used in the best way. Then we vote! They took a number chart with 75 circled so they could remember how much they have to spend.

 We did scarecrow journals!

 We did some more phonetic writing this week.

 "They scare away crows." I LOVE THIS!

 We read this story: 

And then we did a story map about it.

In math, we patterned with corn. Ms. Rhonda showed the kids the pretty patterns in Indian corn, then we made our own patterns. 

 Pre-K 2 also put out these fun sensory trays!

 

 We enjoyed the trays, but there might still be traces of corn laying around our room, haha!

 We read about corn, brainstormed some questions and answered them.

 And what else to do next, but to taste some corn products? We had corn tortillas and of course, popcorn!

Both classes made scarecrows, Pre-K 2 started with these super cute paper bag scarecrows.

 They laid them out to dry....

 And then stuffed them.

 Then they were added to the cornfield!

 Pre-K 1 made shape scarecrows.

 I wouldn't mind having a couple of these out in my cornfield.

We have continued our daily work and now everyone does it pretty independantly in the mornings.

 

Pre-K 1 did some sight word games in literacy. We wrote our sight words on Doodle Buddy, then stamped over them with Halloween stamps. 

All week, we had super fun dress days for Red Ribbon Week. Here's a few pictures of our special dress days:

 

Mixed-Match day may have been my favorite! 

 

 And that cowboy on the right below? He's just demonstrating how cowboys sleep. Standing up. Ha!

This week we have already been busy, busy, busy with pumpkins and Halloween preperations and pumpkin contests. My favorite month has almost come to and end, but it has been a whirlwind of fun and silliness! Happy hump day!



Visit from the Colleyville Fire Department!

No words are really necessary. The peas were thrilled and listened to every word the firefighters shared with them! They had the opportunity to see the gear they wear, learn about fire safety and walk through the fire truck! Here's some pics of our very fun visit:

 

 

Making Music!

So last week was music week in Pre-K and I am excited to share all the learning we did last week! Some weeks are fun and some weeks are just awesome, where the children generate wonderful questions, become really involved and show a lot of interest and when that happens, it's so much fun to watch! This was one of those weeks.

First, we began discussing what we already know about music. The peas knew a lot already and after discussing what they knew, they were able to add many questions about what they wanted to know.  Our first conversation was about guitars, so we began by labeling an acoustic guitar for Morning Message.



In Pre-K 1, we used the ipads to listen to acoustic guitar music & electric guitar music in a center, then the peas graphed which they liked better. This was my first clue that this group was very interested in our theme...they spent a great amount of time listening before they made a decision.

 Electric guitar won!

Here's the two videos we used if you are interested in listening:

 

Pre-K 2 started the week by making some instruments of their own!

 These shaker/maracas were great!

They also experimented with sound using beans and cups in centers.

We downloaded several music apps to use with the ipads, but this one was a favorite and highly recommended as a free music app. It was great for tapping out patterns in a group, exploring tempo and rhythm, and making the peas laugh at the silly monkey!

I love this picture of tapping in progress. :)

Next, we met a member of a rock band! Ms. Molly's son travels with a band and he and one of the guitarists came up and showed the peas electric guitars and explained how they work. They were really cool.

 

We explored some instruments in class.

 

 

On Wednesday we all brought instruments to school!

 And after printing out pictures of all of us, we graphed them along with other instruments. We graphed them by Electronic, Brass, Wind, String and Percussion. They were really good at graphing. I had to check a couple in the wind/brass categories, but they were always right!

 

 

We also had another awesome visitor! One of our pea's moms had a friend that brought his bass to show us!

He was wonderfully patient and answered all the peas questions. My favorite one was "How does that fit in your car?!" Good question! He tapped out a beat for us and we clapped along and told us how he learned to play guitar when he was a little boy. He even let every pea strum the bass.

 

 

Thanks for coming Carl!

Lastly, we made our own music using a lesson Ms. Mary from PPK showed me years ago and it remains one of my favorite lessons! We fill glasses with different levels of water and color each glass of water with a different color.

Next, we offer a small mallet to the peas and give them space to discover that the glasses all have different tones or pitches. After listening to each one, they use snap cubes to build a song!

 After putting the cubes together, they play their songs, moving cubes as they see fit to make the song work.

Look at this concentration! 

We rounded off the week by dancing-in Pre-K 2-and listening to some Beethoven in Pre-K 1.

 You can listen to the orchestra we listened to here.

Besides all this, we fit in a lot of literacy, math, and fine motor work as well as a trip from the fire department and preparing for our door contest! It was a wonderful, busy whirlwind of a week and I loved it. Happy Tuesday!