Jan Brett Theme

Below are several activities we did for Jan Brett week at our school:

Writing/Reading:

• After reading The Hat, the students chose an animal to draw and an article of clothing to put on their animal.  They then drew a picture of their animal. 

• Before reading Town Mouse, Country Mouse, the students made a t-chart with what they thought were the differences between the city and country.  Then we read the story and discussed what some of the differences really were.
• As a class, we wrote a letter to Jan Brett telling her how much we enjoyed her stories and pictures and our class' favorite stories.  (http://janbrett.com/emailjb.html)

Math:

• We cut out paper plate hedgehogs and numbered their spikes.  After coloring their hedgehogs and putting a face on them, the teacher called out a number and the students would cut that number to make pointy spikes.
• The students colored a pattern on their mittens.
• We measured how long a mitten was using: pennies, unifix cubes, waterbottle lids, pom pom balls, small pencil etc.
• Each mitten had a number from 1-20 on it.  Then, the students sequenced the mittens in the correct order.

President's Day Theme

This week was full of fun and learning here in my classroom!

I wanted to share just a few of the ideas we did this week:


Math: 

• The students cleaned quarters and pennies and while cleaning we quizzed them on how much a quarter and penny were worth.  They cleaned the coins in warm soapy water.  They then dried them and put them on a paper towel to finish drying.
• We made a book about a penny and a book about a quarter.  The books were really simple.  For example the penny book said: This is a penny.  It is copper brown.  Abraham Lincoln is on a penny.
• We played coin bingo.  I made this really easily on word using a table.  I placed coin amounts in the different squares.  As I held up a coin, they said what it was worth and covered that amount with the correct play coin.
• I used google images to find a simple big.  Then I wrote different amounts on them. (1-10 cents for the 3 year olds and 10-20 for the 4 and 5 year olds.)  They then counted the correct amount of pennies and placed them on the piggy bank.

Writing:

• The students filled in the blank to the following sentence.  When I become president, I ________.  They then drew a picture of what they will look like as president.

Fine Motors/Art/Listening:

• We followed directions while drawing a picture of George Washington and Abraham Lincoln.
• The students listened to directions and cut out certain shapes to make Abraham Lincoln  

Reading:

• We read several stories about presidents and had several out for the students to retell and/or picture read.

Gingerbread Man Theme

Math, Art, Fine Motor Ideas:

We created a giant gingerbread house.  I made sure all of the students had a chance to decorate it somehow.  We had two groups working on patterns and coloring the candy cane.  We then had three different groups painting the house.  One group finger painted the white snow on the roof and isicle handprints dangling from the roof.  Another group made green handprints around the door for greenery.  The last group made thumbprint berries on the greenery (holly leaves). (We did all this in two days.)

We fingerpainted chocolate pudding on giant gingerbread men.  We then decorated the men with candy.  We then measured these men with unifix cubes and estimated how big we thought they were with yarn.

We painted watercolor gumdrops and added glitter as extra decorations on and around the house.

We colored red and white peppermint paper plates.  (A great listening and pattern idea! They made a + first on there plate.  Then they drew an X through the plus.  They colored every other spot red to make it look like peppermints.  We used these as signs and windows for our house.

We played number word bingo and number recognition bingo.  The words/numbers were written on the inside of a gingerbread man. You can do this with letters or sight words as well.

We practiced directional words by placing a gingerbread man that was taped to a popsicle stick to the spot that was said.  (above, below, under, beside, next to, etc.)

Writing:
The students decorated a gingerbread man and wrote a sentence describing their man or woman.

We practiced writing 2 and 5 on a gingebread man to help us learn how to write each correctly.  For example for 2: Start on left eye, round to nose, down to the left side of mouth and across mouth. For 5: Start on right eye, go to left eye, down to left part of nose, around to right side of mouth and across mouth to the left.

We labeled gingerbread men body parts.

Working with Words/Letters:
We played gingerbread men letter matching.  They flipped over two men and tried to match uppercase letters with lowercase letters.

We played word flip.  Using a spatula, we flipped a gingerbread man and read the sight word on the man. 

We played number word bingo. The words were written on the inside of a gingerbread man. You can do this with letters or sight words as well.



Dramatic Play:
We had dress up clothes for students to dress up like gingerbread man. 

We had a story box with the characters laminated on popsicle sticks for the students to retell the story. 

We had a gingerbread man cookie sheet to make gingerbread men with play dough as well as had cookie cutters to make them.