Hands Can and Feely Box

Dear Parents,

We began our week using the Feely Box. Everyone had a turn reaching in the box to feel an object and guess what it was. Some guesses were: a rock, a marble, a blueberry, a toy, a stone from the beach, and a couple of “I don’t knows”. We talked about using only our sense of touch to guess and not our eyes, ears, noses, or mouths. During circle we looked in the box to see what it was. Ask your children if you’d like to know.

We read Acorns Everywhere!, Fall Is Here! and In A Garden. We sang I’m An Acorn and everyone got an acorn to try and smash with their feet. There was a lot of stomping. We played Simon Says. Simon said to hop, balance on one foot, touch your toes, touch your nose, run in place, and have a seat.

We made a list titled Hands Can… The children said hands can grab things, grab food, put on our pants, hold water bottles, open cans, write, play with toys, and wash the germs off. We used our hands to decorate our art folders using ABC stamps and white paint. Everyone used the first letter of their name to stamp with. We made hand motions when singing The Itsy Bitsy Spider. Then we sang the great big spider and the teeny tiny spider. We read Hands Can, Hands Are Not For Hitting, Here Are My Hands, and My Five Senses.

On Thursday everyone took turns getting their hands traced. Then we used every color of the rainbow to color them. The next day we used red paint to make hand prints. We counted our fingers and noted that we have as many fingers on one hand as senses. We talked about using all of our senses when we eat snacks.

It was a feely touchy week,

Therese

Earth, Mars, and Our Spaceship

Dear Parents,

We began our week reading My Picture Book of the Planets, Mars ,and Not A Box. After snacks, we went into the big room to add more stars to our outer space mural. We used a Jackson Pollock-inspired style by dropping white paint onto our black mural, trying not to touch the paper with our brushes. We succeeded. Mostly.

The children got into our three spaceship boxes to see how it felt before getting to work painting them. Everyone voted to paint them red. We worked a bit covering all sides, washed up, and went to play in the big room.

On Thursday and Friday, we worked on creating our first two planets: Earth and Mars. We used two balloons, strips of paper, and lots of glue for our papier-mâché planets. We added red paper to Mars, and blue and green to Earth. We read Zoom, a book with no words. The children described the pictures as we turned the pages. On the last page we were in outer space.

Questions this week: How long does it take to get to the moon? How long does it take to get to Mars? Does a spaceship have wings?

We used paper clips and fine motor skills to poke as many holes as possible into a piece of our black mural to make a black hole. We taped it into a cylinder shape and added a light bulb. The children said the holes look like stars and they do. It is hanging in the classroom. We read The Night Sky and Life On Mars. We asked the children if they wanted to go to Mars. Everyone said yes, but one added, if our parents can come too.

On Friday, February 18th parents are invited to attend Blast Off! Our spaceship will be leaving the planet Earth at 9:15 am. Our entire trip should last about 15 minutes.

Next week, more planets.

Have a healthy weekend,

Therese