Apples APeel to Us!

The theme this week was apples. The children read and sang "Apple" and made a TLC apple core to illustrate this poem. We made a chart listing our schema or background knowledge about apples. We read many books about apples so that we could add to our schema. Apples and The Seasons of Arnold's Apple Tree by Gail Gibbons were two favorites. We are also leaning about the four seasons. With this in mind, Mrs. B made season wheel showing the seasons of an apple tree.


Each child brought in an apple and we talked about the ways our apples were alike and how they were different. We had an apple tasting day with apples for snack and then we made construction paper apples to show which we liked best. Tart, green Granny Smith apples were the favorite with red close behind.



We began learning about body parts and talked first about external parts like our skin, eyes, nose, mouth and ears. Then we began learning about some of our internal parts like the heart, lungs, and stomach. We are making scarecrows with all these body parts. We will continue to work on these next week. We will also continue the apple theme.

Going on a Bear Hunt

The letter of the week was Bb, so it seemed like a good time to have bears as our theme. We actually work on all the letters and sounds in morning message, reading time, and writer's workshop, but we choose one letter to focus on each week. Each child is making an alphabet book and we draw and label two things that begin with the letter and then practice writing the letter. We will compile all these pages at the end of the year. We read so many bear stories this week, but a favorite was Going On A Bear Hunt. We also have two different versions of "Going on a Bear Hunt" song. The children love swimming the peanut butter river and eating their way through the candy factory in Dr. Jean's version.

We went back to another favorite book, Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See? We illustrated our own version of the book. The children were amazing artists! We did the pages together as a directed drawing lesson. I gave directions and drew on the Smartboard and the children drew in their books. Their illustrations were so much cuter than mine! We will read the books together one more time next week and then the children will take them home. The children also made a smaller version of the Brown Bear book and that one will go into their book boxes. The book boxes are used during Read to Self time. Each child practices reading from his/her box while Mrs. B and I move around and listen to them read. We practiced using our fingers to point to the first letter of each word by reading some E books on the Smartboard. The children are able to read on their own for about ten minutes now.

We made TLC pictures for the nursery rhyme "Baa Baa Black Sheep". They are hanging in the hall outside our room. A child from another class asked one of my students if they were black dogs. The student replied very indignantly, "No, those are our baa baa black sheep." I had to smile because those sheep are a bit strange looking. We have a really rocking version of "Baa Baa Black Sheep" on a Jack Hartman CD that everyone enjoyed.

Next week we will finish up with bears and start on an apple theme. We will be doing the letter Ss.

Colors and More Colors

The theme for the week was colors. The children made traffic lights to go with a poem. They read "Rainbow Song" and made a balloon picture to go with the poem. Both projects were TLC projects. TLC stands for Teaching Little Children. They are lessons where the children take pre-cut shapes and follow the directions to make a picture. Squares are cut to make circles and rectangles are cut to make triangles. Children learn shape names, position words and work on following oral directions.

We began a science unit on the five senses. We had fun smelling different things and trying to guess what each thing was. We also shook packages and tried to guess what was inside each one. We tallied our guessing for the packages on a chart.


We began to write in our Drawing and Writing journals. The children drew pictures and added labels and sentences to their drawings.

Next week the letter of the week will be Mm and the theme will be Mice. We work on all the letters and sounds as we read and write but we will focus on one letter each week.

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