We started off the New Year by learning about New Years Eve and traditions. We talked about fireworks, and watched a couple of short videos of firework displays. The kids loved learning about how they worked and watching all the different colours light up the sky. We celebrated 2015 by decorating a sheet of paper with 2015 on it with 2, 0, 1, and 5 stickers. We "rung" in the New Year, by having our own countdown and making lots of noise with the tambourines!
Then we talked about hibernation. We read "Sleep, Black Bear, Sleep", and talked about what it meant to hibernate. We categorized animals into lists based on whether they hibernated, migrated, or adapted during the winter months. We also talked about where animals hibernate, and turned our tables into a cave where we pretended to be bears getting ready to hibernate for winter. It was great to listen to the children play, and see where their imaginations were directing their play! Andrew would run in and out of the cave exclaiming that he needed to go to the grocery store to buy more food for the winter! And Logan would tell Andrew to lay down and go to sleep. Even little Emily had fun pretending to sleep in the cave! For our craft, we made bears. The children had lots of fun stuffing their bears, and getting them nice and fat often explaining the many foods their bear ate to get so fat to be ready to hibernate.
Next we talked about penguins! For our book we read "If You Were a Penguin" and talked about all the neat things penguins can do. We learned that they keep themselves warm in the cold arctic water with a layer of fat called blubber. We also learned about how penguins keep their eggs warm, and practiced it out for ourselves by waddling around with a rubber ball between our legs. It was hard work! Our waddling slowly changed into a game, where one child was a fox trying to steal the penguin eggs, and the penguins had to run (or more like waddle) away without loosing their egg. We played a different game called "Sharks and Penguins". One child was a shark, and the rest were penguins. We laid white pieces of paper on the floor as ice burgs, and the children had to swim from ice burg to ice burg without getting caught by the shark. If they were caught, then they became the shark! For our craft, we made our own little penguins out of construction paper. It always amazes me at how different their crafts turn out when they all start with the same pieces! Rylan decided to use some fancy scrapbook paper to give his little penguin swimming trunks!
Polar bears were our next exploration! We read "A Polar Bear's World", and learned all about the arctic! We also learned some cool facts about polar bears; they don't have eyelashes because their eye lids would freeze shut! The children thought that was a very strange thing about polar bears. We learned how big a polar bears' paw gets and how it helps them walk on the ice without falling in.We used cut outs of polar bear paws to go around the room and measure what things were bigger than their paws and what things were smaller. Then we played a version of "Red Light, Green Light" called "Swim, Stop" and all took turns being the one to decide when it was safe to swim, and when it was time to stop.
Next we learned about walruses! All the children thought walruses were pretty funny looking animals! We talked about how they have blubber too just like penguins and polar bears to keep them warm in the cold Arctic waters. We watched a short video of a mommy walrus and a baby walrus, and were surprised to see that baby walruses aren't really babies! For Writing Time, we created a short story about about a baby walrus as a class. I found it interesting to hear that cookies fix tummy aches! I just thought they caused tummy aches! We made walrus puppets and had fun incorporating them into our play. We replayed "Sharks and Penguins", but called it "Sharks and Walruses" and had fun trying to escape the shark. We also replayed "Swim, Stop".
Then we had a whale of a time learning about...whales! We read "Baby Beluga" and learned a catchy song to go with it. We also looked at pictures of different whales that live in the arctic and learned some interesting facts about them. For our craft, we finger painted whales! Emily dove right into the finger paints, whereas both Ethan and Logan were a bit more conserved and started with a paint brush. But by the time they were finished, they had tossed the paintbrush and had both hands covered in paint! Then, we went on a whale hunt! The boys went to the door while I hid whales around the room. Once we found them all we counted how many we had in total, sorted the different types, then counted how many of each type we had.
For the last week of January, we explored mittens! We read "The Mitten" and "Three Little Kittens Lost Their Mittens". We decorated our own mittens by gluing tissue paper onto mitten cutouts, and then guessed what animal we thought was going to crawl into our mitten to keep warm. We also used mittens to measure how tall everyone is. The kids had a lot of fun counting the mittens as we added them beside our friends. We also went on a mitten hunt around the room.
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| The boys decided for writing time to work on matching letters on the magnet board, and spelling names! |
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| Having some fun with the light table! |
