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Today we talked about the EIGHT planets in our solar system! After creating our own awesome space helmets, we went on an outer space journey, where we used our sense of touch to feel what other planets are made of. Ask them what Jupiter is made of! We learned a lot about our solar system by reading the book Planets by Jennifer Dussling. Afterwards, we reviewed what the planets look like, and why there is no life that we know of on any of them.  For our math activity, we colored and numbered pictures of the planets in our solar system, and glued them in order away from the sun. We also brainstormed more words that we could add to our space word wall; the students came up with more excellent words. All they need now are space suits and they will be ready to travel the solar system!
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 The last feeling we talked about this week was being scared. The students LOVED reading Judith Viorst's My Mama says there Aren't Any Zombies, Ghosts, Vampires, Creatures, Demons, Monsters, Fiends, Goblins, Or Things. Afterwards, we drew our own monsters, and practiced our monster walks while listening to some scary Monster music! In the afternoon, we turned out all the lights and told scary ghost stories! We also talked about things that make us scared, and how we can help others not be scared. Since we sometimes cry when we are afraid, we made melted wax tear drops for our craft. In science, we learned about volcanos, and watched Mt. Kozy Heart erupt! Overall, I think that the overall feeling of the day was actually happy- everyone had a fun time learning about being afraid.
Today we talked about what to do when we are ANGRY! We shared different events that made us angry, and using our problem solving Puppets, we acted out the appropriate way to respond when someone makes us mad. Step 1: Walk away! Do an activity that helps you cool down, like counting to 10 or coloring. Step 2: Use "I" statements to let your friend know what made you angry- "I really don't like it when you cut in line ahead of me." Step 3: Come up with a solution, or ask a teacher to help you come up with one.   During circle time, after identifying the day of the week and the weather, we counted to 100! Then we read two books about being angry: Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good Very Bad Day by Judith Viorst, and When Sophie Gets Angry... Really, Really Angry by Molly Bang. Today's letter of the day was A; we practiced writing upper and lower case a's, and some students even spelled words that start with a, like apple and airplane! In the afternoon we learned that the idiom "Seeing red" means someone is angry- so we made red art! Using pipettes, we dropped globs of paint on to our papers, then blew on the paint with straws. It made a cool, explosive-looking masterpiece.
Today we also spent part of the morning outside! Sometimes running around can help if we feel angry :)
Well, not really! Today we talked about feeling sad. We practiced the letter "s," which by the way is an extremely tricky letter to learn. We read two silly-sad stories, The Boo Hoo Bird by Jeremy Tankard and The Pout Pout Fish by Deborah Diesen. In circle we talked about things that make us sad and some of our answers were: getting pushed, mean words, and a friend not wanting to play. We also learned how we can be bucket fillers and help our friends feel happy instead of being sad. Friendly hugs, compliments, and offers to play together are a few ways that we can spread cheer. 
Even our sensory tub of moon sand had the blues!
We used our 5 senses to describe being sad.
Sadness feels likehurt, smells like bad things, tastes like salty tears, sounds like crying, and looks like sad faces.  Things that make us happy. Today we talked about feeling happy! We made a list of things that make us happy, sorted happy and sad pictures, and read stories about feeling happy. We even got to chase bubbles around the classroom because bubbles make everybody happy!! In the afternoon we had different stations where we got to use our senses to "sense" happiness. Happiness tastes like a rainbow (Skittles), feels like opening a present, smells like freshly baked cookies, and looks like bubbles!
 Today we started our week-long unit on Feelings! Following up on the bucket filler idea, we will be talking about how we feel, and how we can communicate those feelings with others. During circle time, we brainstormed different types of feelings we have, and made a bar graph showing how everyone in the class felt at that moment... glad to say most had happy feelings!
 For our art project today we practiced showing feelings by making thumbprint people who were in many different moods! We also practiced the letter F, and did some other letter practice during centers. Overall it was a great day! If you want to know more about what kind of feelings we will be learning about this week, see Friday's blog post to download lesson plans for the week.
Friday was a day for foot-tivities! We learned all about feet and toes, and how they are the same and different. We traced each student's foot, and practiced counting all five toes. We also made beautiful artwork by using our feet to create a painting. It was a Foot-tastic day! The kids were all EARS today while we learned about our sense of hearing! We started the morning with our usual letter practice before reading a book all about hearing. We learned that sometimes when people can't hear well they have to wear a hearing aid. We talked about the basic parts of our ears (outer, ear canal, and ear drum) and then we got to pretend to be a giant ear, ear canal, and ear drum while one friend pretended to be the sound. We took turns vibrating, just like sound vibrates through the air to our ear drums. Miss Nicole showed us a short video that she made with her second grade students all about sound and hearing. We had two science experiments this morning: ear drums and glitter dance. First, we used paper towel tubes to simulate our ear canals and we covered one end with plastic wrap to be our ear drums. When we talked really loud or really close we felt the plastic wrap "ear drum" vibrate more than when we talked really soft or farther away. Some of us tried talking through our ear canals without an eardrum and we noticed that we didn't feel a vibration.  Can you see the glitter? We also experimented with paper cups that had plastic wrap across the tops. We put glitter on top of the plastic wrap and watched what happened when we talked down to the cup.....the glitter danced!! The sound from our voices made the glitter dance on our cups!
In the afternoon we learned about animal sounds and read Polar Bear, Polar Bear, What Do You Hear? by Eric Carle. We drew pictures of what we can hear, made animal ear headbands, and tried to identify what animal sounds we heard from a special animal sounds application.
Today we explored two of the five senses: smell and taste. We also read My Nose by Douglass Lloyd and learned about different parts of the nose and how it works. Then we used our noses to play "Can you guess the smell"? by trying to identify mystery scents! In the afternoon, we learned about taste, and tested our tongues by trying to identify flavors of skittles without looking at the color. We finished the day with more sense of smell activities, which included scented play dough and paper flowers that smell great! Come smell our beautiful garden when you pick your student up from school. Recipe for kool-aid play dough we made in preschool: http://bit.ly/yI3JfX |
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