Today our afternoon friends learned that the ocean is very big and has salty water. They also learned that there are certain types of animals that like to live in salty water. To introduce many types of animals that live in the ocean, we read the story Commotion in the Ocean. The story had a variety of ocean animals, such as an octopus, whale, shark, jellyfish, and swordfish. There were also sea stars hidden on each page that we had to find! The children were very eager to find the sea stars!
We also spent some time learning about sea stars. Did you know that their arms are really called "rays" and that if they lose a ray, they grow a new one? We learned all sorts of interesting facts!
We even got to touch some real starfish today! We learned that they are bumpy.
We had new centers today for our afternoon friends! We will rotate to one center each day.
At the first center, we made an ocean counting booklet. Each child's booklet had different numbers in it to challenge each child at his/her level. The children had to read the sentence, trace the number, and choose which ocean animal to stamp on the page. We did a lot of counting at this center! In addition, we worked on concepts of print while reading the booklet. Ask your child to read it to you when it comes home!
The third center worked on painting an ocean mural to display outside our classroom. We will make different ocean animals over the next few weeks to hang on the mural. While painting, the children needed to work together as a team to decide who would paint what part of the mural and what colors to use. We worked on using our words and manners at this center!
Playtime was a lot of fun today! There was a new Seafood Restaurant in the dramatic play area. We also had ocean animals and water in the sensory table.
Today we celebrated McKenna's birthday! She brought us a treat for her special day. Happy Birthday, McKenna!
Our afternoon friends had the opportunity to watch the aquarium webcam during snack! We got to see many fish, stingrays, sharks, sea turtles, and even a scuba diver! Click on the link below to check it out at home.
Aquarium Webcam
At closing circle, we learned all about our new letter Oo. We read some Oo books and met our new friend, orange octopus o.
We also played a game to reinforce the letter Oo. We pretended to be an octopus swimming in the ocean. When Miss McCabe held up the word "on," we had to find an orange octagon to stand on. When Miss McCabe, held up the word "off," we could swim around the ocean again. It was a lot of fun!
Have a fantastic evening! :)
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