Dear Mom,
Sunday was Dr. Seuss's Birthday, and Monday was Read Across America Day, so we spent this week celebrating Dr. Seuss's works. On Tuesday, we began with The Cat in the Hat. We read it and guessed the rhyming words as Ms. Marianne came to them. We especially loved Thing 1 and Thing 2, so we decided to make headdresses out of blue paper so we could look like them! We had long hair, short hair, curly hair and straight hair. Some of us chose to be Thing 1 and some chose to be Thing 2... we had some laughs when we tried on our "hair" when done!
Keeping with The Cat in the Hat story, we focused a lot on rhyming words. We played a Memory game that made us look hard at the words on Dr. Seuss themed cards and try to find matching letters- these were the rhyming words. If the letters didn't match on the two cards we turned over, then we turned them back over. Since we've learned all of our letters now (except Xx, which is next week), Ms. Marianne encouraged us to sound out the words on the cards. We were able to do most of them! We are also recognizing that when we change the first letter in a word, a lot of times we can make an entirely new word. This helps us to create new rhyming words when asked.
Another game we played all week was Match the Hat. It asked us to look carefully at the Cat in the Hat's hat and place it on the matching hat on the game sheet. Fun, but tricky! It really made us look carefully to get the hat card on the correct place on the sheet.
The letter of the week- almost the last one!- was Zz. We brainstormed Zz words like zipper, zap, zero, zebra and zoo. We even learned a new word (Ms. Marianne too!). A zither is a musical instrument. It's a small harp-like instrument, often played in the lap. See? You're never too old to learn something new! :)
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| Zither |
To tie Zz and Dr. Seuss Week together, we watched an animated version of Put Me in the Zoo written by Robert Lopshire, whose works were patterned after Dr. Seuss and used the same idea of only consisting of around 200 "basic vocabulary / beginner words" that children either know by sight or can sound out easily. Here it is to enjoy again- even set to fun music!
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| How many things can we pick up at once? |
For Science all week long, we played with magnets. An understanding of magnets is an Arizona state Kindergarten standard, but more than that, magnets are FUN! We each had a wand that we experimented with. Ms. Marianne laid out about 20 things that were either magnetic or not and we had to use our wands to sort out which was which. Then we played!
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| moving objects |
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| picking things up |
Another book we read this week was Green Eggs and Ham. This is a great predicting book, as the rhyming words are simple to rhyme and the story pattern is easy to follow. It also repeats itself, so kids can join in on the reading fun! Of course, we HAD to try green eggs and ham, and we all liked them, Sam I Am! :)
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| Empty plates are a good thing! |
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| LOVED the face and this photo bomb! :D
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| I will eat them at a table... |
For Math, we practiced measurement with standard and non-standard units. Basically, that means with "normal" measuring tools (like a ruler) and "random / fun" measuring tools (like Hershey's Kisses!). We measured various sized toothbrushes with a ruler and practiced lining the ruler up to the far left side to get an accurate measurement. We also measured a few things around the classroom with the Kisses. I'm pretty sure we liked that more! Especially since we each got to enjoy a "unit of measurement" treat when we were done! :)Our final Dr. Seuss story was Mr. Brown can Moo, Can You? This is such a great book! It allowed us to get up out of our seats and get LOUD- something we all love to do! Mr. Brown makes amazing sounds like the things all around him. He can buzz like a bee, hooo like an owl, crow like a rooster and eek like a shoe! Can you?
Following reading about Mr. Brown's sounds, we played a game Cows in the Pasture that helped us to understand addition and subtraction sentences more fully. We created pastures out of paper and used cotton swabs dipped in paint to make flowers as our art project. Then we used pom poms of various "cow" colors to represent cows that were either added to or taken away from the pasture. We made up stories to go tell how the addition & subtraction sentences worked and then had fun identifying and naming the cows we had at the end of each problem. We even extended the activity to make barns for our cows with our snack crackers that day! We're so creative!
Spring Break is the following week, so we won't have preschool the week of March 17-21. Yay for time with Mom!
Following Break, we'll begin our Community Helpers Unit and have a field trip! On Thursday, March 27, we'll go to the Fire Station at 10am and learn all about the Fire Fighters and what they do to help our community. Parents and siblings are welcome, just let Ms. Marianne know how many are planning to be there.
Your Child
and
Ms. Marianne
