Harvest Unit September 15-18

Classroom Happenings:
-No School Monday- Columbus Day
-Back to School Night-Thursday October 17 at 6:30 (for info to follow)
-Science Center Visitor- I have given the children a hint that a special visitor from the Burlington Science Center will visit our classroom. We have 2 gerbils visiting our classroom from the Science Center. We named them Sugar and Spice.  It is very exciting! We earned them as our first class reward.

Harvest Unit (Week 3)
Books This Week:
The Little Red Hen
Eddie's Garden
The Little Old Lady Who Wasn't Afraid of Anything

Concept Questions For This Week:
-How does food get from the farm to your house?
-What can Apples
-Seasons on the farm
-Scarecrows on the farm

Handwriting Activities
Continuing with our Handwriting Without Tears color books.  We are work in these books to reinforce alligator fingers and how to color specific pictures using controlled fine motor movements.
-Making Big Lines and Little Lines with chalk boards and dry erase boards

Small Groups This Week:
***Special Small Group-After reading the Little Old Lady Who Wasn't Afraid of Anything, we will recreate the story by creating a scarecrow. We will stuff clothes with shredded paper. Then we will label each part along with the action word for each part of the clothing.
1. Language- We will be discussing jobs on the farm then creating books to reinforce beginning sounds in words. We will listen to the sound in a word such as "Collecting" (ie. Collecting eggs) Then think of the sound we hear first. Then we will either trace or write the letter in groups.
2. Story Sequencing- We have read Eddie's Garden multiple times. We will now discuss the story to sequence the story in small groups.  This will involve cutting, sequencing, then gluing.  Each child will then need to tell the story about how Eddie grew a garden to the teacher in their group.
3. Math- More and Less- We will be counting then comparing 2 sets of vegetables. Then discuss which set is more and less. Then we will create a chart to show our results.

Centers

Art Table:Scarecrow assembling 

Block Area:blocks and farm animals

Sensory Table: Acorns we collected last week

Book Area: books about farms and growing

Easel: painting with primary colors

Writing Table: Farmer To Do Lists

Dramatic Play: Farmers Market

Puzzles and Manipulatives: farm related puzzles

Science Table: Gerbils from the Science Center(drawing pictures and making observations)

Preschool Life Skills

Every week we will be reinforcing previous skills and introducing new skills. Some weeks we will spend more time with a previous skill before moving to a new skill.
New Life Skill: 
"When I give you an instructions, do them right away." (2-3 step directions)

Previous Life Skills:

"When a teacher calls your name, you stop, look at the speaker, and say "yes".

 "When I give you an instruction, do it right away."