Jan 7- Jan 10

Our letter of the week was Uu.  We talked about the sound Uu makes (like in umbrella, up, and umbrellabird).  We practiced our hand symbol (which they REALLY enjoyed this week!), practiced the hand writing sheet, and made our hand print book page (umbrella).  The students are doing really well with our alphabet letters.  I am so proud of their progress with the sign language symbol, the sound symbol, the letter and even our handwriting sheets are improving!  

We decorated the letter Uu with mini umbrellas.  While doing our alphabet letters, many are self explanitory what they are, but some aren't as obvious, just thought I would share our little learners having fun practing letter sounds, using a variety of materials, letter recognition, and fine motor skills. :)

We continued our theme of Polar Animals.

To start this week, we made some fluffy polar bears.  Mix shaving cream and glue 50/50 and you will get shaving cream that dries fluffy!  Students then painted/dabbed the fur on with a paint brush.  The kids loved it and they love that they get to pet their bears.  We worked on our fine motor skills and worked with a new materials.  

image from mycutegraphics.com 

As we are building our igloo we have also been saving our milk caps.  Our friend started sorting the caps by color!

The next day (in a completely different class) This little friend sorted the caps by color and stacked the dinosaurs on top of the caps!

Earlier in the week we had done a sorting small, middle, big  sheet.  In play time, I observed the students making small, middle, big  towers with dinosaurs on top.

The boys were so proud of their cardboard block tower!  I love to see team work, imaginative play, and enjoying school together.  

I created a little work sheet that worked on scientific thinking.  

The "blubber" is vegetable oil in a ziplock back.  I got actual snow from our playground area. I showed the students that the entire bucket was full of snow and then put the blubber over the top.   

First the students guessed (hypothesized) what they thought would happen when the touched snow with a blubber hand and a plain hand. 
The students then tried the experiment out for themselves (experimented).

They then recorded their results (observations) on their sheet.

After doing the experiment we discussed the scientific methods as well as what the results mean for polar animals.  Polar animals have fat and/or blubber to keep warm.  The blubber kept their hands warm just like it keeps the animals warm walking on the snow.  We also discussed how we cannot walk on the snow barefoot because we do not have the fur or the blubber that the polar animals do. 

We also practiced walking like a walrus. We had fun,  did some weight bearing exercise, and learned about walrus all at the same time!