Family Unit Kevin and His Dad week 3

Unit Book

Kevin and His Dad

Weekly Question and Vocabulary Related to book:

How does everyone in a family help?
(chore, clean, inside, outside, tidy, slippery, dust)

Literacy Small Groups

-Sequencing of our supplemental story The Little Old Lady who was not afraid of anything. We will trace numbers and put them in order on our papers then sequence the pictures. We will also trace the letters for the words in the story.
-Family Project: Children will be discussing their family projects.  We will be encouraging them to speak to the class and answer questions their friends ask.  They will sit in the teacher chair too which is always a treat.
-Journals- We will write more about our families.  We will write about something special we do with our family. Like in our unit book we will talk about how we can help them with chores or other jobs. 
-Zones of Regulation- Our friend Kate (social worker) will come in for an activity related to our emotions and how to regulate them appropriately. 

Handwriting/Letter Groups

-Handwriting Without Tears Program- Letters Uu and Cc.
We will learn what these uppercase and lowercase letters look like.  We will sort magnetic letters to find matches.  We will hunt for them in our names and the names of our classmates.  We used crayons to hunt for them on our papers too.

Math Small Groups

-Subitize Memory Game- We will use memory cards with pictures of set(ie. 2 fingers up, 3 dots, 1 dot, etc) We will use our skill of subitizing to say how many without counting the sets to play a memory game.

--Inside/Outside- We will use mats and counters to tell math stories with a up to a set of 5. After we tell stories to our group, we will draw a picture of our math story and explain our math story to our group.

-How Many in the House?-We will use house mats and people counters to act out math stories. Partners will take turns telling stories about a number of family members that were in the house and some joining the group. They will show these problems with their counters and tell how many altogether.  Our house will have 2 five frames and stairs to challenge us to use both five frames in our math stories.

Centers

Art Table- Family project

Block Area- House and families 

Sensory Table- washing dishes with bubbles (related to story)
Book Area- Exploring Books about families
Easel-Markers and paper
Writing Table- Draw a picture of your family and things you like to do with them
Dramatic Play-Dress Up Area
Math, Puzzles, and Manipulatives- Letters in a room hunt using clipboards
Rug- dollhouse and families

Science/Social Studies/Math Circle Concepts
-House Chores? What are they? How can we help?

- How to take care of pets?
-We all need food. Why?  
-How many are hiding? (5 objects all together, hid your eyes, cover 2 objects and ask how many are hiding)

STEM Week in the Cub Cadets

STEM Week in Preschool

In an effort to boost students’ interest and raise awareness of science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) education, the Baker-Polito Administration has declared a statewide STEM Week from October 22-26, 2018, and is asking educators at all grade levels to participate by planning lessons, events, and activities focused on science, technology, engineering, and math throughout the week.

Students from pre-kindergarten through high school and postsecondary institutions will be encouraged to take part in hands-on learning that aligns topics across STEM subjects and connects to other curricula.

This week our class conducted a variety of STEM activities:

Exploring Gravity

- We looked around our classroom for materials to use in an experiment.  A teacher held the object out and then we observed the speed it fell to the ground.  For example, the block fell quickly and made a loud sound, the feather took longer to fall to the ground.) We talked about why we think the objects fell differently. We notice the heavier the object was the quicker it fell like the block. The lighter objects like the feather and tissue took longer to fall to the ground.

Marble Mazes in the Sensory Table

-We constructed marble mazes in the sensory table this week.  They enjoyed watching the marbles on ramps, marble wheels, and marble drops.  

Ramp Racing

-We talked about ramps in a whole group. We talked about how ramps are simple machines and they help us move objects from one place to another. We then made predictions which ramp would make the car go further. (long, medium, or short ramp) The children raced the cars down the ramps and we marked the spot where the cars stopped. We discovered the longer ramp made the car go the furthest distance and the short ramp made the car go the shortest distance. We then added cars and ramps to the block center.  We explored on our own how to build ramps and how to change the speed of the cars.  When the ramps were diagonal, the cars moved. When the ramps were flat, the cars did not move.

Building Towers

-We used shaving cream to build block towers.  We used shaving cream to help hold the blocks together.  We counted to see how many blocks we could build in our towers before they fell.  We recorded the colors we used on our papers too.

Observing Physical Changes

- We found pieces of ice on the playground.  We took the ice into our school and placed them in two bowls.  We placed one in the freezer and one we left in our classroom. At the end of the day, we compared both pieces of ice and made some conclusions.  (ie The freezer is cold so the ice stayed ice. The ice melted in our classroom because our classroom is warm.)

Family Unit week 2 September 22-26

Unit 2 My Family

Unit Book
Quinito, Day and and Night
Noisy Nora

Read Aloud:A Family is a family
*We will also have a special reading of The Little Old Lady Who Was Not Afraid of Anything to go along with seasonal happenings

 Weekly Question and Vocabulary Related to book:

Who is in my family?
(Family, messy, neat, busy, hush, sticky, loud)

Literacy Small Groups

-Sound Eggs- In our unit story, Nora made a variety of different sounds.  We will be listening to different mystery sounds in eggs and trying to match them to objects we think are inside of them.  We will cut and glue our results. 
-What's in My Bag- We will be listening to parts of words(onset-rime) We will be listening to 2 parts of word and saying the word together. (ie C- AR). We will have an object in the bag and having them guess what is in the bag by presenting it in onset-rime.
-Family Member Syllables- We will draw members of our family and then recording the number of syllables for each member. 
-Journal- We will be "writing" about our families in our new journals.  We will draw a picture about who is in our family and tell a teacher our words.

Handwriting/Letter Groups

-Handwriting Without Tears Program- Letters T and I

Math Small Groups

-Block Towers- We will be creating sets of 5 by building towers of 5 and recording the colors we used for each set.  We reinforced 1:1 correspondence and the concept of "total" (in all).
- Sequencing- We will sequence our story of the scarecrow by writing numbers and discussing the ordinal position of each element

Social Thinking Small Group

-Kate will continue working in our Zones of Regulation Books

Centers
Art Table- Family Portrait Frames

Block Area- House and families 

Sand Table- marble maze
Book Area- Exploring Books about family
Easel-Markers and paper
Writing Table- ABC stamps
Dramatic Play- Apple Pie Bakery
Rug- trains

Science/Social StudiesCircle Concepts
Food Groups/Everyone Has A Home

Family Unit Week 1 (Oonga Boonga) Sept. 15-19

Unit Book
Oonga Boonga/Quinto Day and Night

Read Aloud:Keisha Then and Now

 Weekly Question and Vocabulary Related to book:

How do family members care for one another?
(lullaby, sob, tear, care, baby, pediatrician)

Literacy Small Groups

-Letters in My Name Class Book- We will be counting and comparing letters in our names to create a new class book. It will come home with your child shortly.

-Journals- We will do more journal writing to write about our families.  

Handwriting/Letter Groups

-Handwriting Without Tears Program-We will learn what the uppercase and lowercase letter T and I looks like.  We will sort magnetic letters to find matches for Qq and Gg.  Then we will hunt for them in our names and the names of our classmates.  We will use crayons to hunt for them on our papers.

Math Small Groups

-Subitize How Many?- We will be subitizing (knowing the total of how many without counting) with quantities 1, 2, and 3. We will try to know how many are hiding under a bucket quickly before the teacher covers the total. This is an important skill to learn in both math and reading readiness.
-How many people in the house?- Using a five frame we will develop math stories using people counters.
-How many on the bus? Using a five frame and pictures of friends, we will count 5 friends and then develop math skills about the people on the bus.

Centers

Art Table- Pumpkin Heads

Block Area- House and families 

Sensory Table- washing babies with soap
Book Area- Exploring Books about families
Dramatic Play-Taking care of babies/Pediatrician
Science -Making Sound Harmonicas
Rug- farms (animal farmilies)

Science/Social Studies/Math Circle Concepts
-How do we grow up?

- Math Concept- Stack & Take Down Four Cubes-We will work on understanding that no matter the order we count them, objects in a set remain the same.  We will use a set of blocks to build a house and counted them carefully.  Then, we used the same set of blocks to build a new house.  Each time, we counted the blocks to find the quantity stayed the same no matter what order we counted them in.  

Unit 1 Friends Are Special Week 4 Oct 9-12

Reminder No School Monday
Unit 1 Friends Are Special

Unit Book
Matthew and Tilly

Additional Read Aloud:The Door Bell Rang

Weekly Question and Vocabulary Related to book:

How Do Friends Get Along?
(happy, apologize, argue, accident, sad, mad)

Literacy Small Groups

-Syllable Segment:We used this week’s story, Matthew & Tilly to clap and sort pictures by their number of syllables.  We sorted by 1 and 2 syllables.  Have fun clapping syllables at home.
-Zones of Regulation Activity - Weekly we will be working with our friend Kate (social worker) to create a zones journal. At the end of the year we will have a journal book to bring home.
- My name/Your name- We will be creating a special
-Matthew and Tilly- We will cut and sort pictures from our unit book Matthew and Tilly to retell the story.
-Letter/Not a Letter- We will be sorting letters and non letters.

Handwriting/Letter Groups

-We will be writing in our straight line letter books focusing on the letters E and H. We will focus on formation and include fun practice with chalkboards.

Math Small Groups

Monkey Sharing- We will be sharing bananas with 2 hungry monkeys.  We will try to give each amounts to each monkey so they are both happy.  We will sort 4 bananas so each monkey gets 2 bananas, they 6 so each gets 3, etc.  Then we will glue down our final amount after practicing this skill. 

Centers
Art Table- Chalk drawing

Block Area- foam letters to make a hopscotch

Sand Table- Searching in colored rice for uppercase and lowercase letters
Book Area- Exploring Books about friends
Easel-Markers and paper
Writing Table- ABC stamps
Dramatic Play- Ice Cream Stand
Rug- Legos

Science/Social StudiesCircle Concepts
-Sorting and Classifying Objects

Songs, Word Plays, and Language

-Building Syllable Ice Cream Cone Chart Whole Group

Back to School Night Oct 3 6:30-7:00

Cub Cadet Classroom Back To School Night Presentation Time is 6:30-7:00. 

Information from the BECC Blog:

It's time for Back to School Night at the BECC!  We hope you can join us on Wednesday, October 3rd from 6:30 PM - 7:30 PM (our class is from 6:30-7:00) for this opportunity for you to see what is happening in your child's classroom on a daily basis.  Please check your child's classroom blog for specific times of presentations. 

This night is designed for parents and guardians only. Because of the large amount of families attending, we cannot accommodate individual conferences.  We look forward to seeing everyone on Wednesday!