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Monday, January 30, 2012

March (or January) of the Penguins!

This month we covered Arctic life spanning from the people of the arctic to the weather and the animals. One of my *new* most favorite activities paper mache penguins!!

 These are just DARLING!! We learned that the biggest penguin is the  Emperor Penguin. We also talked a little about Polar Bears and did this cute activity. The kids had to stretch the cotton balls out before they could have any glue which inspired them to work a little harder than usual.

After all that stretching and gluing we winded down with a little Gummy (polar bear) graphing. We laid them out and then colored in the squares. Most of the kids did a great job waiting to eat their bears. We talked about greater than, less than, more, less, most and least. They loved the activity and I'm sure there will be similar activities in their future!









Sunday, January 22, 2012

Blurrrr

The holiday season is always a blur for me but my goodness! Now that I am blogging (really new and not too great yet) I can really see how long I have been away. So this will be one long catch post. We are in out Arctic Animals theme this month and we are covering the people, the animals and the homes that you would find in the arctic. Here is our temporary Igloo with the tissue paper fire...


We learned that the Inuit or Eskimos sometimes have to cut a hole in the ice to fish so we have ice fishing available in our dramatic play area and also have a drying rack set up for the Eskimos to hang their fish after catching them.



We tried to bring the theme out to the patio too so we put our figurines in dry cornstarch, I mean snow.

Our Arctic Toob in the snow (cornstarch)















The kids are getting really good with their beginning sounds and they have lots of practice with them as we make lists, charts and copy our picture "flash cards" to make our very own books.  We do a cooking activity each week and this is our first week's activity, Iceberg Jello. We learned that we only see a part of the iceberg because so much of it is under the water.
Iceberg Jello

We created our own puzzles by using pictures of the arctic and cutting it into a puzzle. These puzzles were way harder for the kids than I imagined though.


 And my favorite of the whole month...
 The Milk Jug Igloo! We lined up the milk jugs and counted, wrote our count (or estimate) and in the end looked at the info to see who was the closest. After the counting I started construction.
 Its only about 1/3 of the the way but this is what we have so far!!
 


Tuesday, January 3, 2012

What a break!

Our break is coming to an end now and I am more excited than ever to see my kids and get started on the next theme "Arctic Life." While the kids have been away I have been busy, busy, busy planning a little boy's birthday party. I don't like the fact that he is growing up so fast but thrilled to see the boy...man...he is and will become.
10 days and counting