Miss Susan is back from her cruise and will be returning to school on Tuesday. I want to thank Miss Angie for all her help with the children and the classroom this past week! She was a big help to the children and I and she enjoyed working and playing with our children.
This past week we studied bears and hibernation. We read some great stories and learned about the ways different animals and bugs and snakes hibernate. On Friday we had our teddy bear picnic with bark (bears eat bark before hibernating to help slow down their digestion)..and our bark was a spoon dipped into melted chocolate and sprinkled with chocolate sprinkles. We also had goldfish crackers, blueberries and strawberries and teddy graham crackers. During our picnic we put Miss Susan's bear and my bear into a box to hibernate. Hopefully no one will disturb the bears! I wouldn't want to wake a sleeping bear!
This week we will be learning about penguins..their habitats, what they eat, where they live and the different types of penguins. When my husband and I and our 3 kids (before the youngest was born), lived in New Zealand for two years we went to this awesome aquarium where this tram car took you through their Emperor Penguin exhibit. I had no idea they would be huge! At the tallest they stand at 4' tall and have beautiful markings of orange and yellow on the sides of their faces. They were fascinating! I wanted to bring one home with me!
Our letter this week will be Ss, the number will be 21 and our shape will be an oval. We will continue working on fine motor, math, stem and literacy activities in our small groups
I have been noticing that a handful of our children are exhibiting a lack of control of their fine motor skills which can be seen in their pencil grasp, ability to manipulate playdoh, use scissors correctly and hold utensils correctly during meals. The small muscles in the hands need to be strong for the children to be able to do hold a pencil and draw lines, color a picture button coats, use zippers, etc. During one of our small group activities this week I heard from many children it hurt their hands to use the gripper like tongs when they were transferring pom poms from a container onto paper and they were trying to use two hands to hold onto and control the movement of the kid tongs. At school we do many activities that help to strengthen those small muscles in the hands and sometimes more assistance is needed at home to help them gain that muscle strength.
Here are a few links that can give you some ideas that you can do with your child at home to help them build up those muscles in their hands....
https://www.naeyc.org/our-work/families/help-your-child-build-fine-motor-skills
https://www.prekinders.com/fine-motor-skills/
And these are the tongs we use in the classroom and can be found at Dollar Tree...
https://www.amazon.com/Teaching-Tree-Kids-Jumbo-Tweezer/dp/B01HBR6AJE/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&qid=1515951220&sr=8-3&keywords=kids+plastic+tong
- We will be closed on Monday, January 15th in observance of Martin Luther King day
Leaders For The Week Of January 16-January 19:
Monday: Closed
Tuesday: Landon
Wednesday: Logan
Thursday: Rachel
Friday: Lauren
Have a wonderful rest of the weekend and a fabulous week!
....Mrs. Wendy
pics from last week:
Logan built a bear cave
Haven made a bear cave to hibernate
Bradley hibernating with Haven
Landon wanted to hibernate too!
No comments:
Post a Comment