Fire Prevention Week Kick-off

It's Fire Prevention Week...we have had a couple of rocky days around here with all the Owlets being sick with a nasty fever virus...finally, today we were able to start our routine again!
 In group time we did a little fill in the blank story about firefighters.  I used it last year, so I wrote the poem out on poster board, had it laminated, I also colored and laminated the cards to use with it.  I laid the cards out on the floor and read the sentence then asked the Owlets to find the picture they thought should go in the blank.  They did a really good job of picking out the correct pictures!  The smallest Owlet really liked the picture of the dalmatian, so she kept picking it up and trying to put it on the poster! 
I added flame cutouts to the block area and a toy fire engine, the Owlets built houses and added the flames and then sent the fire truck to the fire!  I cut out flames, wrote /F/ on them, and added them to the water table.  The Owlets were encouraged to squirt the flames with water bottles to put the flames out!

Our Firefighter poem chart...I found this at www.themailbox.com.

Mother Goose on the Loose!

Our theme for this week is Nursery Rhymes!  The Owlets enjoy nursery rhymes, so I thought this would be a wonderful unit.  There are so many fantastic rhymes, but we are only focusing on four (we took Monday off), Humpty Dumpty, Sing a Song of Sixpence, Little Miss Muffet, and Jack and Jill. 
Yesterday we focused on Little Miss Muffet.  After reading the rhyme, I read the morning message to the Owlets, "Why was Little Miss Muffet frightened?"  After explaining what frightened was, the Owlets said with conviction that "She was scared because their was a spider that sat by her and wanted her food."  Then it was center time.  Here are what the centers have to offer this week:

Language/Literacy: I wrote the nursery rhyme Jack and Jill on sentence strips twice.  I placed one set in the pocket chart, skipping a line between the strips.  I cut the other strips and placed them next to the pocket chart.  The object is for the Owlets to place the cut out words in the empty spaces underneath the matching words.

Dramatic Play: There is a lot going on in our dramatic play area this week!  The Owlets will be hanging laundry on a clothesline (made with yarn), I added doll clothes to the prop box for them to hang.  I added bowls, spoons, rolling pins, plates, and pie plates in the prop box so the Owlets can make pies.  Finally, I will be adding props so the Owlets can be doctors.  I am incorporating fine motor into this center as well by using the clothespins. 

Gross Motor:  I added a candle cut out to three different heights of wooden blocks, the Owlets jump over them.

Math: I made ten cat cutouts and ten mitten cutouts.  I numbered the mittens and the kittens 1-10.  the object is that the Owlets match the mittens to the kittens.

Blocks: The Owlets are building walls and putting plastic eggs on them.

Our letter of the week is E.  The story we are reading is an awesome classic, Green Eggs and Ham by Dr. Seuss.  We are doing some pretty cool activities related to this book and the Owlets used their hand prints to make elephants! 

So far in art the Owlets have made spiderwebs after saying Little Miss Muffet and added a plastic spider ring and today we made crowns after reading Sing a Song of Sixpence. 

Blast Off

This week we learning about outer space!  I am a serious space enthusiast, so I love this theme!  Recently I ordered a book from Amazon www.amazon.com, it is a Mailbox book called Prop Box Play, I was especially excited to see the awesome space themed prop box that was included in this book!  I have been preparing all weekend for this unit, cutting out stars and programming them with letters and numbers, creating and collecting props, and everything else that goes along with getting a unit ready.  Papa Owl was quite confused when I asked if he had any MRE's or emergency blankets I could have for my prop box!  I made a control panel for our space shuttle by folding a piece of poster board into three equal parts.  I glued on some lids and caps, but you could also use spools. I found pictures of a speedometer, clock, view of the Earth from a shuttle, and a control panel, printed them off and glued them to my poster board.  I also drew on some windows and controls.  In my space prop box I added backpacks, flashlights, water bottles, a magnifying glass, and tongs.  I am looking for things to use as space helmets, space suits, and astronaut food! This is our Dramatic Play activity for the week!  The Owlets had fun being astronauts today, flying the space shuttle, and doing space walks!  Hopefully tomorrow they will get to find some moon rocks!
I finally got my pocket chart hung up and it is getting used all this week for a literacy activity.  I wrote the words to Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star on sentence strips and placed them in the chart.  I made glittery star wands to use as pointers and the Owlets can use the wands to point to the words while singing the song.  Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star is one of the Owlets favorite songs so you can imagine how much they enjoyed this activity.
Our letter for the week is "N".  So, we made nests our of brown lunch bags.  The Owlets glued three blue pom poms into the nest to look like little eggs.  Since we are trying to do a hand print craft for every letter, the Owlets used their thumbs to make a thumb print necklace.  
Art: I put white tempera paint into spray bottles and added water.  The Owlets sprayed the mixture onto black paper to create a solar system.  We did this activity outside because paint ends up everywhere!
Math: I cut out 20 star shapes, on 10 of them I wrote the numbers 1-10 and on the other ten I placed dots for each number.  The idea is to pick a star, count the dots, and find the matching star.  I laminated the stars for durability. 
Writing: I cut out 16 star shapes and programmed them with some of the letters we have been working on and some new letters.  The Owlets were encouraged to find the matching pairs of letters.  Again, I laminated the stars for durability!
Blocks: I found pictures of the International Space Station, the moon, and the solar system, I printed them out, laminated them, and put them in the block area with some play people.  The Owlets built space shuttles and sent their play people off to new planets, the moon, and the space station.
Fine Motor: I incorporated a Montessori activity into our fine motor center for the week.  I put out two bowls of water and some sponges.  The Owlets squeezed the water from the sponges out of one bowl of water into the other bowl.
This was a great first day of our Outer Space week!