RADIO VISIT!!

One early morning in November, I heard on a local radio station that they were asking local businesses to help collect food for the Food Bank.  I called right away to request a box because this fit in perfectly with our Community unit.  In October, we focused on working together and helping each other in the classroom, and in November, we focused on our Community outside of our classroom.  We worked all month on how our Community helps us and how we can help our Community.  We collected food for a week and then arranged to go on a field trip to the radio station to bring our food box and participate in the festivities.

We are waiting sooo patiently....

We had a special snack....

And we got to go into a real radio recording booth!! 

We sang our turkey song...5 Fat Juicy Turkeys and it got recorded.

Then we got to listen to ourselves singing; first how it sounded...

Then, we got to hear our voices sound like chipmunks; low; slow...

And backwards!!

Here we are posing for a picture before going on the air live in a different booth.  We were so excited to be able to visit our local radio station, have a tour, and be able to have our voices recorded and be on air live!!!  Radio stations help us learn about news and weather, local events, and play music for our listening pleasure!  

COMMUNITY MAP

After drawing individual maps, we worked together and helped each other to make a large community map.  The children cut strips of construction paper and glued them down for roads.  They also drew different community buildings including houses, a library, bank, school, hospital and market.  They glued the different community buildings and added a train track.  

Gluing roads...

Cutting roads...

Adding a house...

Gluing the hospital down...

Adding the school.

BLOCK CATERPILLAR

Continuing with our October theme of community, I asked the children what we could build together out of blocks and they decided to build a caterpillar.  Each child added one block for a few turns and then they all started to work together and help each other to make a giant block caterpillar!  

Here they are adding the legs.

Almost finished!!

We took tape measures out to see how big our caterpillar was, and we did a little measuring of our bodies first! :) 

The caterpillar was 71 inches long!!  The children were interested in measuring things for more than a week after this activity.    

HELPING EACH OTHER WITH OUTSIDE GEAR

Continuing with October's community theme, the preschoolers were paired off and needed to put their friends outside things on.  It was hard for some of them not to do things themselves and let their friends be in charge!  Here, a child is putting on her friend's shoes.

Helping with a sweatshirt...

Helping with boots...

Once one friend was ready, they switched to help their partner.

Putting their friend's coat on...

Helping with shoes...We love to work together and help each other!!!

WORKING TOGETHER AND HELPING EACH OTHER

This is one of my favorite activities to do with children and is the first working together activity I do for our Community Building unit during the month of October.  Two or three children work together and help each other to make one thing out of play dough.  They need to pose questions and discuss what they will make and how they will do it while also making sure each person is participating.  The children really get into this activity and often make a few different things together.  Here, they are making snow people and caterpillars.  

This year, instead of two children working on one paper with two paintbrushes...two friends worked together with one paintbrush!  It was amazing to see the coordination and cooperation for this activity!!  Here they are painting together...

Dipping the brush in the water together...

Painting together....

Adding more paint to the brush together...

Painting together...

Adding more paint together...And later in the week...

r

We worked together and helped each other make a person...again we used one pencil and had to cooperate and communicate how to draw the picture.  They came out great!!