Sign of the Week - Bread

This week we are focusing on the fairy tale of Little Red Hen.  We'll be making bread with our buddies so this week's sign is 'bread'

The song we will sing is a modified version of Patty Cake

Patty cake, patty cake bakers man
Bake me some bread as fast as you can
Roll it and pat it and mark it with a 'B'
Put it in the oven for baby and me.

Seuss Week Final Day

Apples Up On Top, a great book for rhyme and math.

When each child arrived this morning I took their picture and quickly uploaded it to the computer.  Cropped, printed and it was ready for the art table.  The children were encouraged to use bingo daubers to add apples on top of their picture head.

Some children dabbed in a straight line on top of their head.

Some scattered their apples all over, as if the apple cart him them.

Others experimented with the dauber and watched it slide and glide across the paper.   I thought it made the apples look juicy.

Some children made patterns with their apples, red-blue-green or red-red-green-green.

Some enjoyed listening to the story.

The grownups wrote a sentence on each picture after asking their child how many apples were up on top.  Not all children said a number, some said 'too many' or 'lots', some just guessed.  Shows where they are in their development of math.

At story time I read the book but before starting gave each child 10 little blocks.

As we read through the book we built a tower.  I enjoyed watching how involved the children were with their towers and waiting and watching to see when to add the next.

 We also had apple shaped bean bags to try to stack on our heads.

Grownups tried too - no  hands!

At the snack table I brought out my apple peeler, corer, slicing machine and let the children prep some apples to share.  It's always fun to use this machine, very simple and efficient.

And always lets us do math with the peeling.  How long is it?  Is it as tall as I am?  Or as tall as my mom?

It's been a really fun week full of Seuss books and activities.

Suess Day Three

Since we were closed yesterday we doubled up on some of the activities today.

Our book of focus was to be Put Me in the Zoo (my favourite when I was a little girl) and yesterday's should have been The Cat in the Hat.  So we combined them.

 At the art table we made Cat in the Hat hats but with stripes and spots.  We used the tape painting method to make the stripes.

Put tape on your paper.

Then use paint rollers to paint over the whole paper.

Peel off the tape to see your white and red stripes.

Use a bingo dauber to add your spots.
Or if you prefer no stripes just go ahead and make lots of spots.

Look how high of a swing he takes to make his spots.  He's learned that the harder it hits the bigger the mark (splat) it will make.

This looks very 'Seuss' like.

I also encouraged everyone to wear spots today.  I did and a few others did too.

If they forgot then I set up a "Do you need a spot" centre.

Also our music teacher, that visits once a month, got involved.  She brought sticker spots and handed them out to the families and then sang a song about our favourite spotted shirt.

At the snack table we made a Cat in the Hat snack.

With this snack we learned to read a recipe, recognize numbers and count, use our fine motor muscles when using the tongs, patterning and self regulation (taking only enough and leaving some for others).

Light Table Ideas

It's a snow day here, our Seuss week is on hold till tomorrow.
So I thought I would post some of the ideas we've had for our light table so far this year.

Using coloured overhead transparency sheets we cut them into different shapes so they could build and decorate a tree.

Coloured paddles, similar coloured beads and little wooden spoons to match, sort and move from one place to another.

Old slides, slideviewers and magnifying glasses for discrimination of details.

Pill boxes, little pipettes (eyedroppers) and coloured water to squeeze, load and unload then mix together.

Coloured transparent tiles of various shapes to build and create.

Coloured flat marbles and clear tubes to fill and pour and do it again.

 Coloured gel stickers, flat beads and tongs to create stories.

Old microfiche film, plastic coloured ice cubes to build.

Laminated tissue paper with spider web designs plus black and white flat beads.

Laminated pressed leaves, plastic leaves and acorns from Michaels Craft store and later the children added toy people and animals.

Black and orange flat beads, mini scoop, paper and black and orange markers for pattern building, matching and sorting.

Stuffed squirrels, mini baskets, plastic acorns for colour sorting, one to one correspondence and for feeding the animals.
I would love to hear what ideas you use at your light table.