Community Helpers

We had a really great week learning about community helpers!  Wednesday was our big community helpers day.  We all dressed up as our favorite kind of community helper and had a fun day together!

Burke's mom came in and helped us learn more about what happens at a dental office.

She explained to the kids what happens when you go to the dentist and also brought everyone a new toothbrush!

John and his dad helped us learn about firefighting.  They showed us their cool gear and taught us more about fire saftey.

He also brought fire badge stickers, coloring books, and everyone got their own fire hat!  It was so exciting!

Tate's dad, who is an orthopedic surgeon, told us more about his job and how he helps fix people's bones. The kids were pretty impressed by his tools!  He also showed us what kind of protective clothes a doctor has to wear to keep germs away from patients.

Michael's dad told us what a pharmacist does and also brought some different clothes they wear.  He went over how to be safe with medicine and pills.  It was so great to have so many parents come in and talk about their jobs!  Thank you!!

For centers that day, we read big books about communities and the people in them.

We made our own little books about community helpers.  The kids had to read a clue and then write who the community helper was.

They also sorted different objects by which job they belonged to.

And we hunted around the room for community helper jobs and practiced writing them during a write around the room center.

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This week we focused on learning the CH sound.  We first talked about some words that had the CH sound at the beginning or end of the word.  Then I told the kids I had something that could be eaten that started with the CH sound, hidden somewhere in the room.  I had them guess what it could be.  They came up with things like chocolate, cherries, Cheetos, chips, cheese, and more.  Next, we made a CHoo, CHoo train and CHugged around the room while making the CH sound.  When we got to my desk, where I have a little fridge, we found chocolate pudding!

The kids all  got to finger paint in the chocolate pudding and practiced writing CH in it.  Hopefully they won't forget that sound now!  :)

After washing our hands, the kids practiced writing things that started with CH on their papers.

We practiced reading words with a CH sound in them during centers this week as well.

In math, we have been working on making "partners" with numbers.  I gave the kids a pipe cleaner and had them put a certain number of beads on it, like 6.  We practiced making partners of that number with our beads, by putting some on one side of the pipe cleaner and the rest on the other.  For example, they had 0+6, 1+5, 2+4, 3+3, 4+2, 5+1, and 6+0.  The kids were noticing patterns and saw that it didn't matter what order the numbers were in to add them up.

After practicing with the beads, we worked on doing it on paper.  This is a skill we will continue to develop and work with the rest of the year!

We are also working on learning to count by 10's to 100.  Here is a fun song/video you can have your child practice at home with:

We are still working with teen numbers and will continue to do so the rest of the year.  We had a fun painting center and painted gumballs in gumball machines!

After testing the kids on identifying their letters last week, I noticed a lot of them were still getting b and d confused.  This is perfectly normal at this age, but I am going to try my best to get them remembering which way they go!  We played this fun pocket chart game and sorted words with b's and d's.  I have taught the kids that b goes "bounce down and bubble" and d goes "donut, draw up, draw down."

The kids had a fun time playing a sight word and letter game with this snow hat!  They picked out a card with a word wall word or letter on it.  If they could read the word or say the sound the letter made, they got to keep their card. But if they pulled out a mitten card that said, "Brrr!", they had to put all of their cards back in the hat.  It is something you could easily do at home with the word wall flashcards I sent home during parent teacher conferences!  :)

We also did this fun snowball fight song during music time this week.  It is super catchy and the kids have LOVED it:

 

In computers, we worked on the sh and ch sounds that we have learned.  Your child can play these games at home HERE!

Ivory was our star student this week and everyone laughed when she brought out her whoopee cushion to show the class!