October 9-12 Families Week 2

Families Theme
Children will be exploring and talking about families and the many different ways families relate to and help one another. Through the Story Time books, children will hear about a boy who helps his family take care of his baby sister, a boy who realizes how much he has grown when a new baby arrives, a girl who behaves badly when she want attention, and a lonely stuffed bear who finds a new friend. Besides listening to stories, children will begin to recognize initial sounds in words and identify rhyming words as they build vocabulary and comprehension skills. They will also be participating in a variety of music, poetry, mathematics, science, and art activities during Center Time and in Small Groups.
Theme Concepts:
*Family members have role names: mother, father, sister, and so on.
*Some family members live together; some live in other places but are still family members.
*Grown-ups in a family take care of the children. Younger children need more care. Older children can help take care of younger brothers and sisters.
*Children sometimes get angry at parents and may feel that their parents don't love them as much as their siblings.
*Sometimes grown-ups in a family don't like things that children do and tell them to stop or be quiet.
*Families do things together that are fun.

Books This Week:
Noisy Nora byRosemary Wells
Owl Babies
Peter's Chair by Ezra Jack Keats

Small Groups:
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continued from last week:
-Paint Chip Matching- We will explore paint chips from a hardware store and match the colors. This is related to Peter's chair. His family painted his old blue chair to pink for his baby sister.  As an extension, we will then match uppercase letters to their lowercase letters to create a paint chip train.
-Airplane Derby- We will create paper airplanes(just like Daniel airplane from our book Oonga Boonga).  Then we will fly our planes and see how far they go.  Children will then find the number that matches the distance the plane flew then put the same number sticker on their plane. We will compare our results with our friends.
-Peter's Chair Sequence- We will look at our unit book Peter's Chair and discuss the events in the story. Then each child will cut and paste the order of the story on a strip to retell the story through the pictures.
-Family Portraits- We will look in the books Oonga Boonga and Peter's Chair and discuss their families. Then children will be encouraged to draw and label their own family portrait.
-Watch Me Count- Children will count objects from our unit and label each set with a number. We will be working with sets of 3, 7, and 15.
-I pad app My Playhome (Which can be described as an interactive dollhouse.) Children will be able to explore this app and we will discuss what they are doing in their "dollhouse".

Centers
-Dramatic Play-  Painting Chairs (paint brushes, class chairs, paint buckets with soapy water)
-Sensory Table- washing a baby with soap, wash clothes, and towels to dry

-Art Table- tambourines with plates and rice

-Writing- unit words
-Blocks- Block Play with family people
-Math-Sorting buttons by color, shape, and number of hole
-Library- Books about families

Let's Talk About It
-Time for Bed book
-Paper Airplanes and other folded paper objects
-Mixing paint and paint chips (related to Peter's chair)
-Cook Books and Recipes (related to Noisy Nora; when she follows a recipe with her mom)

Songs, Word Play, and Letters
-Rhyming Words Song
-Dr. Jean Alphabet
-Stand Up
-Down by the Bay
-If your name starts with ____ raise your hand, jump, clap your hands (following directions game)

Handwriting
-We will be continuing our color books for the Handwriting Without Tears Curriculum. We will focus on proper grasp holding our stubby crayons.

Preschool Life Skills
We are continuing to review our previous skills 1-3.
1-When a teacher calls your name, stop, look and say, "Yes".
2-When a teacher tells you to do something, do it "Right Away".
3-When a teacher tells you to do 2 things, do it "Right Away".
We will beginning our new skill this week:
"When something is too hard, first try then say,"Can you help me please?"