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Wednesday Week in Review & Two Thanksgiving Freebies!

Hooray for the four day weekend!  Wednesday has finally rolled around and here is a look at the art, literacy, art, math and art activities we did this week.  Did I mention that we did lots of art?  :)



As mentioned Monday, we made these cute Turkey Hand Print cards.  You can find the free craftivity with cute poem insert here if you missed it earlier!


We finished our Thankful Hands Turkey Bulletin Board!  First, we read Thanks for Thanksgiving by Julie Markes (which my kiddos were able to identify as a list book instead of a story book!  Gotta love writer's workshop in PreK!)   Then, they traced their own hand prints and wrote on the inside what they were thankful for. 


Some of my more "ambitious" students wanted help sounding out the whole word, others only the beginning letter.  I have to say that I LOVE our environmental print word wall.  I have several new students (4 in the past 4 weeks!) who missed the foundation we set at the beginning of the year and are working hard to catch up.  I'm working with one in particular on building her confidence and independence; she oftentimes says things like "I don't know how to do that," or "That's too hard for me," or "I just don't know."  I stress that it's okay not to always know, but how to use the resources in our room.  So, to get back to our word wall, it is now mostly filled with labels the children can read (e.g. Walmart, Spiderman).  When my class has trouble connecting a letter sound with a letter, we practice using the word wall to find a word that starts with the same sound, and then identifying the letter that it is placed under.


We also have an ABC chart with pictures hanging in the room, but my kiddos prefer to use the word wall for several reasons.  Firstly, they helped make it!  Secondly, the alphabet cards all have magnets and can easily be removed, taken to a seat and looked at to help with letter formation, and then returned afterwards.  


We learned about the pilgrims on our Pies with Grandparents Day (which was hectic, to say the least!)  On this day we also made cute pilgrim hats.   


I had traced the shapes onto construction paper in advance and we spent some time identifying the rectangle (the band of the hat) and the square (the yellow buckle).  Then they cut them out and glued the pieces together.  They turned out so cute!  I had previously taken close-up pictures of my class and printed out the pictures to be ready to go underneath the hats.  They definitely spice up our "coat hook" wall!

Wednesday was all about Turkeys!  We started the day by spending some time with Letter T.  We looked for and underlined all the T's in our Morning Message.

We read Wendi Silvano's Turkey Trouble to start the literacy and art time block.  During centers, some groups were busy working on painting their TP roll turkeys (which turned out absolutely adorable!)  All you need are toilet paper rolls (of which I always have a ton, thanks to my awesome and sweet mother) and paper plates cut in half!


This craft is really quite easy.  They first painted the base of the turkey (the toilet paper roll) dark brown.  Then, they painted paper plate halves using their hands and red/yellow paint.  After they dried, they glued on googly eyes, the beak and the wattle.  Cute!


I was meeting with my small groups to work more with letter T.  We practiced making the /t/ sound, brainstorming words that start with /t/, and the correct letter formation for uppercase and lowercase T (I always use Fountas and Pinnell's verbal path of motion to explain how to make the letters).  After skywriting upper and lowercase T in the air, I rolled out a new handwriting practice game: Letter T Turkey Race.


They loved it!  In fact, they loved it so much I am going to laminate a few sheets and move them into our ABC Center.  I think I'm going to buy wooden blocks at Hobby Lobby to use as dice, since paper dice are not the hardiest of materials.  I am considering creating a letter race handwriting pack for each letter of the alphabet- what do you think?

You can find this fun and free activity by clicking here!

Lastly, during math we learned how to play Turkey Number Memory.  Notice how possessively they hold onto their matches!  :)


Here are some of the great books we read this week during Read Aloud or had available at the Library and Listening Center:


Thanks everyone and I hope you have a wonderful Thanksgiving tomorrow!

Comments

  1. Love your turkeys! Happy Thanksgiving! I just nominated you for a Liebster Award!
    Check it out by clicking here!

    Irene
    Learning With Mrs. Leeby

    ReplyDelete
  2. Thank you so much! :) Hope you are having a great mini Thanksgiving break!

    ~Jessica

    ReplyDelete

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