CAR RAMP

We got this great idea to try from a teacher group that I belong to.  A car ramp made from a box!  The kids loved taking turns letting go of their cars and watching them "drive" down the ramp!  They all loved watching from the sidelines as well.

Here they are gathering up all of the vehicles to put them down the ramp again!  

SORTING AND COUNTING CONVERSATION HEARTS

One of my favorite math activities is to estimate, count and sort conversation hearts.  This year, since I have so many older kids, not only did we estimate, sort, count and figure out which which color had the least amount and most amount of hearts, but we also documented our findings.  

Each child colored in a heart and figured out how to write the color by checking the list.  It was great practice for figuring out what letters were in each color.  They all did a wonderful job figuring out the first letters right away.  Many of them were also able to listen to the word to figure out more letters.  Then they were able to choose and copy the right word.   After the wrote the word, they wrote the number of hearts next to the word.

Here, the children are counting the hearts.

Counting orange hearts...

Writing the names of the colors on the corresponding line...

Counting pink hearts...

MAKING AND DELIVERING VALENTINES

Valentine's Day gives our classroom a great opportunity to work on some literacy skills.  During Valentine's Week, the children were busy making cards for their friends.  They worked so hard decorating and writing their names on the homemade cards.  The bigger kids wrote their friends names as well!  Great writing practice for these up and coming kindergartners.  On Valentine's morning, they delivered their cards to their friends.  They had to read the cards and find the matching names on the big envelopes.  I saw some great reading!!!  

MEASURING

February was a bit of a hodgepodge month.  We finished up our sewing projects the first week.  Then we spent a week doing some measuring.  First, we used mittens (and gloves) to measure our bodies.  Measure, mittens, math...Perfect for our letter of the week "M!"

Then we used measuring tape and walked around the room measuring all sorts of different things!  This child is measuring a chair while another child helps to read the number.

This child is using a ruler to measure this block.  The block is almost the same size as the ruler.

Teamwork was needed to measure the piano!

This child figured out how to slip one side of the measuring tape into the door crack so he could measure the door by himself.

Measuring train tracks...

Cooperating to measure the hallway.

Not only can we measure height vertically, but we can measure each other horizontally as well!

MUD PUDDLE SCIENTISTS

This was after the first melting before spring when the snow piles started melting...There is nothing better than when nature provides us with adventures.  I just love how the children immediately became engaged with using sticks to measure how deep the puddle was and stirring the water around to see if there were any treasures to be found.  So much great learning happening!!  

This child is using our barrier as a natural balance beam.

PAINTING AND SEWING NOODLE NECKLACES

I had decided to have the children make some noodle necklaces to help celebrate the letter "N".  When the children tried lacing the yarn into the noodle, it was too tricky.  Well, since we all had so much practice sewing, we took out the needles, threaded the yarn and Voila!!  We sewed our noodle necklaces!  The extra length from the needle worked perfectly to help the children thread the yarn through the noodles!  

RECYCLED CYLINDER BUILDING

I was able to take a trip to a recycling center and they had these really cool plastic tubes in all different sizes.  The children started building with them right away.

Working together...

Making a big tower!

Spreading out...

Can my arm fit in there?

Just look at the focus and concentration on this investigation with cars and tubes!

A fun hat!!...

And a perfect chair!!