Falling for Leaves

This is the view of our school backyard.  Isn't it absolutely gorgeous?  I love the beauty that fall brings - the colorful leaves, the harvest of fall fruits and vegetables, and the crisp autumn air.  It's my favorite time of year!

 

 

Since it was a short week, we packed in a lot of fall leaf fun in just two days. We read the books I Am a Leaf and Ruby's Falling Leaves.  We learned that leaves help make food for trees and that there are many different kinds of trees and leaves.  We went outside into our beautiful backyard, and each kiddo collected a bag of colorful leaves.  They paid special attention to the color of the leaves, and they noticed that leaves come in different shapes and sizes.

 

 

Again this week, we had the spider web shape sorting activity out, since only a few kids got to do it last week.  They are doing great sorting and using the tongs to pick up the small objects from the basket!

 

 

In writing, we practiced tracing straight and zig-zag lines, which will help with letter formation.

 

For math, we played a scarecrow roll & cover game.  (Roll the die and cover the number.)  This game reinforces numbers 1-9, and is a fun learning tool to practice number recognition. 

 

 

We made hand/arm print fall trees with ink fingerprint leaves that turned out simply beautiful!  There is an adorably sweet poem attached, so that your child's tree can be a keepsake.

 

 

Have a wonderful Fall Break!

 



Silly Spiders

Friday's class was all about spiders, and boy were we busy!

We read the books The Very Busy Spider and Boo Who? (a lift-the-flap trivia story), and had several spider activities for the kids to do.  I'm thinking that in the future, I may need to devote an entire week to spiders!

During centers/playtime, one of the activities the kids could choose was this spider counting game.  The spiders started out in a bowl, and the kids had to put one spider at a time at the end of each webline.  Then they had to count them, using one-to-one correspondence.

 

We also had a free play spider table, with a web, several colorful spiders, and lots of realistic-looking spiders.  I think they creeped-out a few of the kids, but I did notice most of them playing and making up their own silly spider stories!

I wish I had gotten pictures of the other things we did.  We were just sooooo busy!

For writing, each child traced his/her name on a spider web.  If you'd like your child to practice name writing at home, I recommend first writing their name in highlighter.  Then have them trace over the letters with a pencil, marker or crayon.  Highlighter is a lot easier than dashes or dots!

In literacy, we played a spider web letter game, using letters we've covered so far - Aa through Ee. 

In math, we sorted a basket of small blocks shaped like triangles, squares and circles onto spider webs that were shaped like triangles, squares and circles.  The kids used tongs to pick up each block, so they also got a fine motor muscle workout as well.

  Ask your kiddo how many legs a spider has, and how a spider catches its food.  What was your kiddo's favorite part about our spider mini unit?

 

We had an absolutely spiderific day!