Hello, Bluebird Families!
Your children are amazing, and I am so happy to spend my days with them! We continued to practice calendar skills, tracing and writing our names, matching uppercase and lowercase letters with each other and their sounds, and identifying words and pictures that begin with each letter. We used lots of puzzles, toys, and games to make this practice fun and exciting! We listened to another short chapter book, Magic Treehouse: Dinosaurs before Dark, to sharpen our listening, memory, and imagination skills. Ask your children about it, and see what they remember!
We practiced counting, matching amounts, and using math language, like “more than,” “less than,” and “equal to” while playing dominos. I also made a math marble game using paper towel tubes going into a container to practice the concept of adding. For 2 + 3, we put 2 marbles in the first tube, 3 marbles in the second tube and then counted the total marbles in the container at the bottom to see that 2 + 3 = 5. On Friday, I had a bluebird request to play this game again next week, so I think they liked it! We also had fun creating and reading patterns with our pattern blocks and determining what should come next.
I observed this week that when this class has mastered information and is confident using it, they start making jokes by using the information incorrectly. I loved seeing this and have fond memories of my own 3 children doing the same thing at this age! It shows me they really know it! It is funny to them, because they know what they are saying is wrong! This happened with our domino games using math language and with telling time to the hour. So, I’m happy to report that those skills have been mastered by your children!
This week we started learning about apples to help us get ready for our field trip to the apple orchard at Doe Creek Farm on September 30th. We read lots of books about apples, counted apples, and cut up apples to discover what’s inside and to study real life fractions! We discussed the different parts of an apple and the many varieties of apples, as well as the plethora of foods and drinks that can be made from apples. We painted small apples using the round ends of toilet paper tubes on Monday, and then painted with real, large apples on Friday. Some bluebirds preferred to paint with apple halves dipped in paint, while others had fun painting apple slices and rolling them on the paper. I loved seeing their different approaches to this art project! We will continue studying apples next week!
Thanks for sharing your children with me!
Anna
