Love

Love is in the air at LAP this week.











We talked about Valentines Day and prepared for it with lots of art activities.















We used stamps, ink pads and crayons in the color scheme of red, pink, and purple.










Fine motor practice prepares our hands for writing.













We talked about the people we love (Moms & Dads topped the list!)















Heart collages were fun to construct using glue and sparkly sequins.



















We used our scissor skills to cut out hearts from folded paper.







What a surprise when we followed the curved line and opened the paper!



















New pink dough was the perfect medium for creating heart-shaped "cookies".









Many of our moms and dads came to school to help us paint pottery from Earth & Fire.

Nursery Rhymes

Nursery Rhymes and rhymes in general were our focus this week.






We began with " The 3 Little Kittens".



Pre-cut mittens were on the art table, ready to be decorated and hole-punched.


Our friends worked hard to cover them with stickers, punch a hole (or many holes) in each mitten and thread a piece of string through the holes to join them together.













"One, Two, Buckle My Shoe" had us counting again.









We stamped the numerals 1-10 on our paper.
Recognizing the number stamps when they are out of order can be a difficult task.






Some numbers look suspiciously alike.








"Jack be nimble" was our favorite. We all took turns jumping over a "candlestick" and adding our own names to the rhyme.















We tried rhyming something with our names at Group time. Recognizing our name cards still takes a lot of thought as we have five friends whose names all begin with the letter "C".



















A new item was placed in the sensory table this week.


It's a water wheel that does pretty well in the rice.




Our friends learned to open and close the valve that allows the rice to run through and turn the wheel. This was a very popular center for the week.





Finally, the letters "Jj" for Jump and "Rr" for Rhyme were practiced in the handwriting center.

Penguins

Penguins followed our study of ice and snow.













We read some informational books to learn about these funny birds along with some fictional stories.















After learning about how penguin eggs are carried on their father's feet, we gave it a try ourselves. We used white foam footballs as our eggs.














It was very difficult to keep them from rolling off, especially when we tried moving around.


















At the art table, we colored and sequenced three penguins from largest to smallest.














Water-colored penguins made for a colorful display versus the traditional black and white.

























Our fine motors skills were put to the test as we used stacking pegs to create tall columns and traced mitten shapes with markers.













We are leaving the cold-weather themes behind us now and moving into new territory next week.









Check back in to see what's new at our next post!

Ice (continued)

The magnifying glasses came out for some real observation of our snowflake, created from Borax and water.







We were able to see the shapes that create the beautiful crystals and touch them without worry of melting.







Everyone was very cautious and gentle as we took turns to view our science project.





















We continued to melt our ice sculptures with warm water and syringes. The children were excited to find new items hidden under the ice.
















Here's a peek at what our bookshelf will hold for next weeks theme. Can you guess what it is?



We read a cumulative story, "On the First Day of Winter", by Denise Fleming. Everyone was quick to pick up the repetitive phrases and read/sing along with me.













We spent some time working on our Memorybooks (our portfolios) that we will take home at the end of the school year. Our friends looked through photographs and thought about what was occurring in each. Ms. Amy wrote our explanations beside each photo.

Ice

We had a short week again thanks to wintry weather, but our one day was full of discovery about ICE.


Using Borax and a few other items, we're creating a crystal snowflake inside a mason jar to see the shapes found in real snowflakes.

Our science experiment should be complete by the time we return to school next week.









Several of our friends brought in containers of ice and hidden surprises.


We melted the ice with warm water and medicine droppers.













We know that water turns to ice at a certain temperature and that it turns back into water when as the temperature rises.






We'll continue working with ice next Wednesday when we return to school.

Snow

Back to school and back to exploring fun things like snow. With no real stuff on hand, we turned to shaving cream as a substitute.







Our fingers and hands moved the shaving cream around and we drew and wrote in the white.











It washes away easily and left our room smelling especially fresh after the fun.























All of our sensory experiences add to our fine motor skills preparing our hands to write.







Snowmen are the perfect example of sequential sizes. We talked about small, medium, and large circles as we drew, colored, and cut out snowmen all week.


















Our art activities included blue and white paint at the easel for wintry canvases.






















We made white playdough and added silver glitter to give it an icy, snow-like appearance.
















We used glue to add "s" shaped foam to blue paper, creating a unique "blizzard" of sorts.
















A favorite activity was making edible snowmen from three sizes of marshmallows. Learning is the most fun when it's tasty!











Cutting round shapes is especially tricky for those learning scissor skills. We made grand attempts and praised the efforts.






Drawing the letter "S" is also more difficult than those angular letters that do not require the hand to turn and twist. We followed a dotted-line for practice.