This week our 4K friends will be learning about apples! We'll end our week of apples with our field trip to Richmond's Apple Orchard. The children are getting very excited about this! We started out our day by learning a new shape. This month the shape we are going to be focusing on is a square. We also learned a new song about apples!
During our opening circle, we read a book about counting, which was titled Ten Red Apples. This book was about a farmer who planted apple trees. Every time he counted the apples in his tree an animal would come and eat an apple. One by one the apples disappeared until there was just one left for him! The children also did a flannel board story called Farmer Brown's Apples. There was a farmer that had an apple tree with many apples. One by one he picked the apples until he had none.
Each child attended two centers today and they will attend two centers tomorrow. Ask your child which two centers he/she visited today!
The children at the first center made name apple trees. Each child made an apple tree by cutting out the leaves and trunk. They glued them together and then added the apples. They added one apple for each letter of their name. Once the apples were glued in their tree, the students at had to write each letter of their name in an apple. We are still working on recognizing and writing the letters in our name.
In the second center, the children made torn paper apples. They worked on their fine motor skills by tearing up red, green, or yellow paper to glue onto their apple. When they were finished, they cut out their apple. The apples will be displayed on the wall outside of our 4K room!
At the last center, the children did some apple weight comparisons. Each child put an apple on one side of a balance scale. Then he/she placed another object on the other side. Finally each child recorded on their recording sheet which object was heavier by coloring in that object. Some of the other objects they compared to the apples were feathers, pumpkins, blocks, cars, and boxes of crayons. The children had a lot of fun talking about which objects were heavier and which were lighter!
This week the dramatic play area has transformed into a Fall Farmer's Market. There are apples and an apple pie for the children to buy. There are even some order forms for the children to mark which types of Fall food they will buy. In the sensory table we also have some new fun things! We have corn and balance scales. The children are doing some measurements with the corn! We had a lot of fun today playing with our new materials!
After snack, we got out our wiggles while singing and dancing to some number songs on the SMART Board. Then we read the book we created at one of our centers last week titled We Wore Our Spacesuits.
The children also played an apple number game on the SMART Board. They had to find a worm that was hiding under one of the apples. Each number had an apple on it and they children had to choose which number they thought it was under. We are working on number recognition and our 4K friends did a nice job of practicing this during our game.
Our morning friends had time to fit in a color sort game as well. Feel free to click on the link to play this game at home with your child. http://www.sheppardsoftware.com/preschool/colors/colorgame.htm
We hope you have a great night! :)
