Shark Teeth!

Happy Thursday! Today we continued to talk about teeth. All week we have been discussing how to take good care of our teeth. Today we also spent some time talking about animal teeth. We learned that animals have different types of teeth. Animals that eat eat plants have flat teeth and are called herbivores. Animals that eat meat have sharp, pointy teeth and are called carnivores. Then we learned that there are some animals, such as chimpanzees, that have both pointy and flat teeth. That is because they eat both plants and meat. They are called omnivores. We learned that people have both pointy and flat teeth because people can eat both plants and meat!

Our story today was Big Shark's Lost Tooth. In the story, shark loses a tooth and wishes for a visit from the tooth fairy. Ask your child if the tooth fairy was able to make it to the bottom of the ocean. While reading the story, we learned that sharks have a lot of teeth. Each time they lose a tooth, they grow a new one. We learned that people only grow two sets of teeth - their baby teeth so they can learn how to take care of them and then their grown up teeth. If we do not take good care of grown up teeth, we do not grow new ones so it is very important to take good care of the teeth we have!

We visited our final center for this week. Ask your child which center he/she visited today. A few children ended up missing centers due to vision/hearing retesting.

The first center make a queen Qq alphabet book page.

The second center played a tooth counting game.

The third center used a toothbrush and white paint "toothpaste" to practice brushing a yellow tooth to make it nice and clean. Then this group played a tooth war game.

We spent some time playing in the classroom and working on developing our social skills.

As we finish snack, we have been enjoying looking at books until everyone is done eating.

Then Miss McCabe modeled a shark counting game on the carpet.

Then everyone went to the tables and played the game in small groups. They recorded their results on a shark journal page. Each child rolled a die and counted the corresponding number of teeth onto the top of the shark's mouth. Then each child rolled the die again and counted the corresponding number of teeth onto the bottom of the shark's mouth. Finally, each child counted the total number of teeth in the shark's mouth and recorded it in a sentence. We are working towards developing independence in preparation for the independence that will be needed in Kindergarten. This was an example where the teacher gave the directions to the entire group and then the children had to complete the activity in small groups independently.

Next week will be our Valentine's Day classroom party. Once your child has written his/her name on each card, please send them in to school! You do not need to wait until Thursday to do so. It would be helpful to receive the cards earlier in the week so we are not scrambling to help each child pass out the cards at the same time on Thursday!

Enjoy the weekend! :)