Week 12 with the 4's: Thankfulness...

 

This week the 4's spent a LOT of time talking about what they are thankful for. We read the story of Jesus healing 10 lepers, but only one thanked Jesus. The kids helped tell the story using the felt board.

 

Next we talked about the letter Y and said the poem to help us remember how to form the letters. Then we used out tactile letters to trace the shape while we said the poem...

 

And we made Y's with popsicle sticks.

 

To work on our numbers, we tried a dot-to-dot...there was MAJOR improvement here since the last time we tried one of these. Way to go kids!

 

 

 

For our math activity today, I gave each kid a set of math rods. First, I asked them to find the longest one...you can see the boys holding up the blue ones, and Addison with the orange...

 

She put hers in order first to figure out which was longest and which was shortest...

 

The boys soon followed suit, but it was a little tricky.

 

Then they had some time to play with the rods on their own.

 

Next we did a little art project. I've always loved the look of Tibetan prayer flags. And then I saw this post on how to make GRATITUDE prayer flags...so I decided to put my own twist on the idea for 4 year-olds and this is what happened...

 

Each student got a few squares of linen fabric (leftover from another project). And they chose some colors of acrylic paint and foam stamps or brushes. The room was SILENT as they worked...

 

I also gave them some cut apples to stamp...

The first day, all we did was decorate the flags...the second phase had to wait till the paint was dry.

 

To wrap up the day, we played letter bean-bag toss. I put some letters on the floor (I chose ones that I've noticed the kids have trouble recognizing...) and I called out letters and they had to throw the bean bag to the letter and say a word that starts with that sound. They struggled with a couple but overall it was pretty successful.

 

 

Day 2 we decided to revisit the 7 Days of the Week song...and everyone had a turn being the "conductor"...

 

And the kids told the Bible story on their own using the felt pieces.

 

Next, I gave each child some strips of paper and we went around the circle each saying one thing we are thankful for. I wrote their thoughts on the strips.

 

Then we turned the strips into a chain. This was some GOOD motor skill practice!

 

The kids took the chains home and are going to add a link each day until Thanksgiving. Then on Thanksgiving Day, they can read all the things they are thankful for.

 

Next we read our book of the week...

 

And headed outside to play with the diggers for a bit!

 

After our break, it was time to get back to work...

 

We practiced writing Y's...tricky business!

 

And we did some mazes in our wipe-clean books...

 

Lastly, we put the final touches on our gratitude flags. The kids chose a couple things they were thankful for to write on their flags, and then came the hard part...they sewed a piece of yarn through the top to attach them all together! This was HARD...but each kiddo managed to stitch one flag each. I finished the rest for them real quick and then tied them all together. Unfortunately I didn't get any pictures of the work in progress...it was a little chaotic :)

 

The idea is to hang these outside somewhere so they will eventually break down and become part of nature :) I think it makes a lovely addition to our garden!

 

Week 9 with the 4's: Review and Some Haloween Fun

Due to more illness, I only had the 4's for one day this week (the sick one this time was ME!) But we did lots of fun activities as part of our review week. We started with calendar time and we spent a lot of time focusing on the numbers in the 20's...counting, and identifying numbers that high is still a bit challenging. We also read the story of the Generous Widow (Mark 12:41-44) since this is a story we didn't get to in earlier weeks. We talked a lot about what it means to be generous. And the kids were able to retell the story to the other moms later, which was great to see.

We read The Day Jimmy Boa Ate the Wash, and Charming Opal. And we enjoyed some Halloween-y snacks.

 

We also did a letter hunt. I placed some note cards with all the letters we've talked about so far this year on them. Then I gave the kids scissors and magazines and they had to find the letters in the magazines, cut them out and glue them to the cards.

 

Next we did some name-writing practice. They wrote their first and last names.

 

Nice work, Jack!

To get us in the mood for Halloween, we used candy corns to practice sorting into number groups. I gave the kids sticky notes with the numbers 1-5 written on them. They had to use tweezers to put the candy into piles of the correct number...and they couldn't use their fingers at all! This was a good workout for those little hand muscles.

 

Then we used pattern blocks to work on visual perception skills. I made a shape out of a few blocks, and asked the kids to copy me and make the same shape with their blocks. Noah was GREAT at this. He got it right away and was able to help the others.

We also had some free time making pictures out of these blocks. I have some picture cards that we will use with this set soon...Addison loves these blocks so much, she asks to "do puzzles" often.

 

We worked on balance by walking on the garden hose...

 

And for the grand finale of review week, we played with catapults! I made these out of sticks, plastic spoons, and rubber bands I found the basic instructions here. We launched candy corns, candy pumpkins, and pom-poms. We had contests to see who could shoot the farthest, and which projectile flew the best. We all agreed the pom-poms were best!

Look at the anticipation!

 

Great work kiddos!