Last week, Memorial was decorated with Trufula trees, characters from Dr. Seuss' books and famous quotes from his stories in celebration of the author's birthday. In our classroom, the children learned about this wonderful author and his contributions to the literary world through a variety of activities.
Each day during circle, we engaged in an activity related to Dr. Seuss' books. After reading The Cat in the Hat, we talked about balance. The children answered the Question of the Day: Can you balance a book on your head? On Wednesday we celebrated Wacky Wednesday. The children had to find 14 wacky things in our classroom and then we read the book.
Integrated within our Seuss theme we continued our study of shapes that began before vacation. The children are not only working on shape recognition, but also describing each shape's attributes. The children are learning about sides, corners, and straight and curved lines. They are comparing shapes by their attributes and sorting them as well. In addition, the children are continuing to practice counting, patterns, and number recognition. The students have been working on writing upper case letters with straight lines; L, F, E, H and T, and name writing. We also spent time engaging in activities to practice identifying, producing and matching rhymes and opposites.
In the dramatic play center, the children were able to visit or cook at the Green Eggs and Ham Cafe. Items on the menu included green eggs and ham, Pink Ink Drink and Schlopp with a cherry on top.
At the sensory table, the children enjoyed the "gooey, slimey, hard, wet" feel of Ooblek, another Seuss creation.
At the block center were different sized "hats". The children were given the challenge to stack the highest tower of Cat in the Hat hats. We used hula hoops as Safe Spots. Anything inside of a safe spot should not be knocked down by other children. It was wonderful to see the students' creative minds planning out how to stack the cups in a sturdy way. Many of the children chose to work with classmates, putting several ideas together.
Students practiced making Cat in the Hat patterns using red and white Legos.
At the playdoh center, the children hammered golf tees into the playdoh and then topped them off with pom-poms to make truffula trees.
Children played the game Green Eggs and Ham which practiced counting and rhyming skills.
Rhyming skills were also practiced as the children tried to find words on cards that matched those on the outside of rhyming houses.
Stripe Spirit Day
Each of the classrooms had a community reader visit to read their favorite book. Our special guest was Holly Thurston from Beginning Years preschool. She read A Fish Out of Water by Helen Palmer.
The week wouldn't have been complete without a visit from the Cat in the Hat!
Finally, we got some snow! The children had a blast playing in the snow this week!
