All About Me Books and Fire Station

Dear Parents,

This week we worked on adding pages to our All About Me books. The class used crayons, oil pastels, and water colors on one sheet of paper. Needless to say, the pictures are colorful.

In anticipation of our trip to the fire station, we made a list of things we might see there: fire trucks, ladders, a fire pole, a bell, a steering wheel, and a fire. We asked the class if the fire station would be on fire? No, some knew that would be unusual. We reread Flashing Fire Engines. We did our second fire drill on Monday, the day before our trip. The class was quick and quiet as we left the building.

Our trip was fun. When we arrived at the fire station, the firefighters were arriving back from a call, so we got to see them back the truck into the station. The firemen showed us tools for cutting, oxygen tanks, a walkie-talkie, and how to slide down the pole. One fireman put on his full gear so the children would know to go towards the fireman if there is a fire. All the children got to get in the fire truck and got to spray a little hose.

After reading The Mixed Up Chameleon we worked on the covers of our Me books. Everyone chose the color they wanted, and got to work. Afterwards, we looked at books and worked on puzzles.

We read I Like It When… and everyone took turns completing the sentence. The responses are in our Me books. On Friday we read Where You Came From and When I Was Born. Afterwards the children got to use the stapler to connect the pages of their books together. One person asked how they used to connect books in the olden days. We talked about stitching books together, and that now we use glue. We looked at a book on our shelf to see if they had used staples or glue to connect it.

Have a productive weekend,

Therese

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