3 Rs : Reduce, Reuse, Recycle

I love this song by Jack Johnson!

3 Rs Song

We read some books and have some projects that we are doing concerning the 3 Rs. We are also busy making Mother's Day projects. We are loving the sunshine!

We are playing the Ring around the R words game.
It goes like this:

Ring around the rabbit
a pocket full of babbit (or any rhyming word)
silly! silly!
We all fall down!

We do this with as many r words as we can. The idea came from the R Sound Box book we read.

HAVE A WONDERFUL WEEKEND AND HAPPY MOTHER'S DAY!!!

May

Happy May everyone! We are loving the weather! Even the worst days are so much better to play outside than winter. Keep in mind it does get muddy and children get grass stains while they are playing hard.Don't send any favorite outfits to daycare! We got some sand in the sandbox, so things will be sandy too. 

I have a curriculum planned for May:

Letters: R and S

Animals: raccoons, rabbits, skunks, snakes

Number: 9

Right and Left

Christian lesson: Ruth

Reduce, reuse, recycle

and much, much more! We had to switch computers and my documents are still on the old one, so I will get the calendar printed out as soon as I can. Thanks for your patience :)

I get many, many books from the library which correlate to our curriculum. I am putting a few books up in the entry so you can see what we've been reading.

I hope all the mom's have a wonderful, blessed Mother's Day!!!

Happy Easter!

We have been having a wonderful month of April! We have been talking all about Earth Day and ways to save the earth. We made our own little recycling boxes with all kinds of things we can recycle to put in them. We have read many books about caring for the earth and the animals and people. Turn off the water while brushing your teeth, recycling, planting trees, picking up litter, walking or riding your bike whenever possible, and many more ideas have been discussed. 

We have been investigating the letter P and learned about pigs. Pigs are pink and we also learned about purple. I hope you've enjoyed the many projects and papers that come home! The kids put a lot of work into them. We sing a lot of songs and have many discussions throughout the day.

Now it's time for Easter! We had an Easter Egg hunt today. It was raining, so we had it indoors, but it was still a lot of fun :) We colored some eggs and talked about eggs and ovals. We discussed how eggs are a symbol of new life. The true meaning behind Easter is the new life of Jesus! We have read many stories about Easter, some of them are Easter egg hunts right in the book! 

The weather has been warmer (some of the time!), but it gets very wet and muddy. Make sure to bring an extra set of clothing, please. 

We are looking forward to May and the warmth, the sun, the flowers it brings!

March 28-April 1st

This week we will be wrapping up March and heading into April. 

 We are still on the letter O and we will start the week with Oscar the Grouch. It's a familiar character that starts with O and is green. It also gives us a chance to see grouchy and talk about that emotion. 

We will talk about outer space. We have already been reading the book "There's No Place Like Outer Space" featuring the Cat in the Hat. 

We will also learn about office workers for another job that people in our community do and doing our review. On Friday, we will begin our Earth Day Celebration. It's more like "Earth Month". I decided to do this for many reasons, but one is that Earth Day is also on Good Friday, which will be our Easter celebration and egg hunt here at daycare. We will have plenty to talk about throughout the month about going green, planting trees, composting, recycling, and so forth. 

March 21-25

This is another eventful week. We are saying goodbye to Chloe and Deeken who have come here for a long time. We will miss them and wish them well in their new town. 

We have been learning about the letter O. We also are learning about owls, oranges, opticians, and outdoors. If you ever get a chance to see the birds of prey at the Kalamazoo Nature Center, it is wonderful to see the owls and some other cool birds up close.We are also working on a really cook "O" book that we are making all by ourselves!

March 14-18

This was a busy and exciting week! We learned about Noah and his ark. We learned about rainbows and all the colors and the symbol of promise it is. This is cool because there is a rainbow in the story of Noah, but they are also associated with St. Patrick's Day which is this week. Everyone wore green, which we are also learning about, just in time for Spring and green grass and leaves (hopefully soon). We also celebrated Braden's 5th birthday. What a lot of fun!

March 7-11

On the 7th, we talked about the number 7. We read Snow White and the 7 Dwarfs, talked about the 7 days in the week. We love to sing the days of the week song-see the link below for an example. We counted things outside and around the house up to 7. 

We also talked about the opposites of noisy and quiet. We learned about nutrition and eating balanced meals of healthy food from all the food groups. We also investigated rectangles and found that rectangles can be fun to eat when they're graham crackers! We read many, many books on these subjects. We spend some time outdoors being still and quiet like a little boy in his garden and talked about what we notice when we are quiet. 

Seven Days in a Week Song 

Week of 2/ 28-3/4

I sure am glad February is over and the first day of spring is this month! 

We started this week reviewing much of what we have been learning about. 

We learned about the letter N, then took a look at nests (science), celebrated National Noodle Day and read a book about how noodles were created in China, and of course ate lots of noodles this week! We also learned about nurses and the important job they do for our community. We read lots of cool books about all of our subjects this week. The snow melted long enough to find our nest we made last fall, but it was too muddy on the ground for the kids to want and sit in it. We looked up in the trees for nests. This is the perfect time of year because the leaves are still off, so take a look at all the nests you can find. We also learned that many nests are not in trees and about the eggs and baby birds that the nests keep safe. 

Week of February 21-26

We are learning about mice. I like to teach the children about animals that we can find in our geographic area as much as possible. From an early childhood education class on nature I learned how important it is for children to learn about their immediate environment before expanding to the rain forests and deserts. We also learned about monsters. Are they real or imaginary? We talked about how they are in our imaginations and the great thing about our imagination is that we can change it any way we want! So if we are imagining a monster that is mean, we can turn it nice, or make it go away. We read some cute books about monsters too! Also, the Sesame Street monsters are really nice and teach us lots of neat stuff, but of course, they are just imaginary too. 

We talked about meat in the food groups and looked at the food pyramid.

Week of February 14-18

Today is an awesome week! Our opposites are about love and hate. We talked about foods we love and foods we hate. 

Branden loves spaghetti at home, but hates to eat bugs! 

Deeken loves pizza and corn, but hates bugs too!

Braden loves beans, grapes, chicken and hates mushrooms! 

I hoped to get the concept of how love and hate are opposite with the food the children can relate too. We then discussed how God wants us to love and never hate each other. 

We learned about the letter M and the job of mayor, plus about musicians. 

Check out some links of what we learned about his week:

Letter M Song

Sesame Street: M is for Mouth Music

Happy Valentine's Day!

I hope everyone is having a love-filled day! Love is for everyone! We have talked about how we say "I love you." but also must show love with our actions. I was so proud of the kids when they helped Braden pick up the spilled buttons. I told them I was very proud that they showed their love. 

Thank you for the Valentines. We had a wonderful day and being warmer and sunny was nice too! We had cupcakes with sprinkles. The kids helped! They were pink, our color of the month. The children are bringing some home, but unfortunately our heart-shaped sprinkles fell to the floor and we decided our families would probably not like those, so you get plain pink, but very delicious. The children have been working on many projects lately. I know you will love them all!

If you are interested in sharing the subjects of the month with the kids, I often Google "youtube letter ----" or "number 6" or "Llamas". Many Sesame St. videos come up and it's nice because we can see many clips for the number 6 or letter L. The kids think they are fun and they help to reinforce the learning. 

February

I"m sorry I haven't been posting daily, but it has been very busy at daycare lately!

For February we are learning many exciting things!


Letters: L, M
Number: 6
Color: pink and Mouse Paint (mixing colors to make green, orange, purple)
Shape: heart
Opposites: Love and hate
Animals: Llama, mice
Christian Message: Love (of course!)
Holidays: Groundhog Day, Valentine's Day
Careers and Hobbies: Librarian, Musician and Music, Mayor
Food: Meats
Other: Monsters: Real or Imaginary?

Kites

Today we learned about kites! We talked about kite flying as a hobby, something you can do for fun. We talked about the many shapes, sizes, and appearances kites come in and watched some video of kite flying. We noticed that a kite has a tail, and flies in the sky, and might even look like a bird, but it is not alive. 

We made blue, diamond shaped kites which the children had great fun decorating. They took a lot of time selecting the decorations and where to put them, so praise them for that! We put tails and bows on our kites. Notice it has 5 bows. 

We held up our kites and I told them to take it home and say, "Look at my kite. It's a blue diamond and has 5 bows. Let me count them. 1...2...3...4...5. Now in spanish...." If your child does not start this conversation, initiate it and they will probably remember. 

Kindness

We have been learning about the letters J and K. Last week, we learned about Kangaroos and Joeys. We colored some pictures, had discussions, listened to stories, and watched some National Geographic video on them too! 


We have been reinforcing the number 5 and I introduced the song Five Little Speckled Frogs. Look for a project we're doing related to this fun song!


In our opposites, we are talking about being kind and mean. I talk about nice and kind interchangeably because the children comprehend the word nice more, but are beginning to see what kind means too. We have a kindness chart that the children will bring home. I am recognizing their kindness. We heard a story about all the kind things a little girl does. First, she decided to be kind right when she woke up. She made her bed, helped with breakfast, smiled, shared, helped friends, etc. We talked about all the kind things we can do for our families and friends. The children decided that helping to clean and sharing were kind things they could do this week. If you notice kindness in your child, praise it! 
While it's best to praise the positive way more than point out the negative, meanness does need to be addresses. If I hear a rude tone or comment I say, "Is that the kind way to say that?" Often, the children will simply say it a nicer way or add manners, depending on the situation. Sometimes, I need to explain and demonstrate the difference between the way it was said and how it could be said in a kind way. Other times, if a child hits, takes something from someone, or any of the other things like this, I will say, "Is that very kind?" or "Do you want to be kind or mean right now?" and "What could you do that's nicer?" 


We must remember that children learn most from watching us. If we want our children to learn kindness, then we must be kind. Open the door for people, use manners, show patience and grace with our family and the public, smile and say "hello", help people out for no ulterior motives, and so many other things. A friend of mine was out to dinner at a restaurant (not a cheap one) and the were told that an anonymous stranger paid for their meal. I know we can't all afford that, but small acts of kindness can go a really long way in life. Another friend of mine paid for a woman's entire grocery cart full of groceries because her debit card was rejected. The woman was so shocked by a stranger's kindness that she couldn't believe it and walked away without her groceries and my friend had to convince her they were really paid for. She first chose not to be irritated, which is an act of kindness in itself. Remember, everyone has a story. We all do many acts of kindness already and I can see this reflected in the children, and I'm proud of what kind children they already are. Just keep up the kindness and so will they!

Diamonds and other things...

Today we are learning about the shape diamonds. The kids are doing a few worksheets with diamonds. There is a baseball diamond and also a sheet where I have the children find diamonds amongst other various shapes. We will also be taking two triangles to make a diamond. The children love the song Twinkle Twinkle Little Star which has the line "like a diamond in the sky". I am taking a star in the night sky, in the shape of a diamond, and having the children put it on a craft stick so that when we sing the song, they can hold it up. I will send it home at the end of the week so you can do this at home too! 

We reviewed a few shapes and colors that we've learned over the last several months, but we are focusing on the color blue. Here are a  couple of links to the color blue, including one of the Blue Man Group making music with some "letter J" piping. 

The Color Blue

The Blue Man Group

Yesterday the kids made a blue jacket out of some blue letter Js. Did you notice the 4 Js on the jacket? I also sent home the rhyme of Jack and Jill and we will be saying this during circle time this week.

Potty

Every day, we have our basic routine that we follow. We have breakfast, snacks, and lunch at the same times. We also go outside most days. Because breakfast is at 8, snack at 10, lunch at 11:30, and snack around 3ish, those are good times to reinforce our routine of going potty. I say, "It's almost snack time. What do we need to do?" The children know that they clean up, then get in line to go potty, wash their hands, then sit down at the table. I'm trying to make it so that I  am not saying "go to the bathroom." all the time, but simply, "What do we do?" so they take the initiative to realize that it's been awhile, so it's time to go. It's not the same as realizing the need to go and getting up and going, but it's a step in the right direction. They also go as soon as rest time as over and before going outside. I keep having them practice saying, "Kelli, I have to go potty!" so they feel comfortable with that phrase and excited to say it.

This was some wise words of advice from my doctor and a few others who noted that children love routine and to know what is expected of them. I thought it would help to let you know what we do here, so that you might want to try something similar at home. Additionally, if you find something that works well at home, let me know!

Jobs

Today, we reviewed the letter J briefly and then talked about jobs. One job is a janitor, which also starts with J. We talked about how there are many, many jobs. Some jobs help us earn money, some we have to do (like chores), and some are to be helpers. I asked the children a job they would like when they grow up. Here are their answers:

Braden: A doctor and a teacher

Deeken: A daddy

Branden: A mommy (we discussed how mommies are women, but that he could be a daddy which is the same idea!) 

The children did a sheet where they drew a line from the person to the job. We did discuss how men and women can be nurses, construction builders, firefighters, bakers, etc. I always stress how a job does not have to be for a certain type of person.

We also talked about how it's the kids' job to learn. They are students. They also have the jobs of picking up toys, going to bed on time, using listening ears, and being good helpers to their parents. 

To reinforce this at home, you can give jobs. You can say, "I have a job for you." You can point out people doing their jobs, like the cashier or butcher at the store, the barber when getting a haircut, the bus driver on the street, the server or cook at the restaurant, the doctor and nurse at the doctor's office, the dentist, the receptionist, and so forth. You can talk about your jobs to them and what you do there and why it is important. 

Last Week

Last week, we learned a lot! First, we introduced the letter J! Check out these favorite "J" videos of the kids... they would love to see them at home, too!

Letter J

J Train- Sesame Street

We learned about exercise for health. This just seems to flow with the New Year's Resolutions, but also is important because in the winter we tend to slow down. One of the exercises we discussed was "jump" which begins with J. The children came up with their own, like skiing and basketball. They also stated their favorite, which is on the sheet from that day. 

On January 5, we learned about the number 5. January starts with J, so this day just worked out great for two of our subjects! 

Gimme Five- Sesame Street

Animated 5- Sesame St.

We also celebrated Deeken's 3rd birthday today! 

Next, we spoke about joy. This is a Christian message, but also an everyday message. We learned the song, Joy in my Heart, which I sent the words home with so you can sing at home. We continue to sing this song many days of the week. We only learned the first verse to keep it simple for now. If you don't know this song, check out this link! Kittens are singing Joy in My Heart which is cute, but we will also be learning about kittens later this month.

Kittens singing Joy in my Heart

On Friday, we learned about the color blue. Everyone wore blue. We are often using blue to color our pictures, so point that out or better yet, ask, "What color is this?" Point out blue wherever you notice it. 

We colored a picture of Blue from Blue's Clues and glued her to a paper bag. I then set out several blue things, like yarn, stickers, and pictures from magazines on a table. I also put out some items that were not blue. The children took turns finding 5 blue clues from the table (see how we incorporated 5 into our lesson about blue?). 

Happy New Year!

Well, we had a very busy few weeks! Over the holiday weeks we spent a lot of time making crafts and getting Christmas presents ready. We also sang songs. A favorite of the kids is Jingle Bells (of course) but we also sang Away in the Manger, Frosty the Snowman, Rudolph the Rednosed Reindeer, and Santa Claus is Coming to Town. I bought a toy Nativity set for the kids this year and we talked about the song away in the manger in relation to it. We also discussed stars as a shape, but as a part of the Christmas story and the three wise men who followed the star to find Jesus. Did you know that Jesus was probably a toddler by the time they got there, and were not there immediately after the birth? The Three Wise Men were astronomers and traveled in extremely harsh conditions for two years, risking their lives, because they knew the boy named Jesus was so special?

We are starting the new year off and have many exciting things in store. The children have been wound up since Christmas, so we are working on getting back into our routine. Routine is something that comes naturally for some and not as naturally for others, but children crave it. Here, I alternate between quiet or sitting time and active time. This means that if we have story time we will next have free play or dancing, then craft time, then outdoor time, then meal or snack time, etc. This would be a good rule to follow at home too. Very young children cannot sit for too long and stay focused, so it's important to give them time to let them have activity. However, if they are always allowed to have free play and are constantly stimulated with activity, then they get overwhelmed. Children can react in a variety of ways to this.

January's Cirriculum

Letters: J&K

Number: 5

Colors: Blue & White

Shape: diamond

Animals: joeys and kangaroos, kittens

Occupations and hobbies: jobs, exercise, king, kazoos, kites

Food: healthy grains

Christian messages: joy, Jesus, Jonah and the Whale, kindness

Opposites: kind/cruel

Other: MLK Day, Popcorn Day, Inspire Your Heart with Art Day (a perfect segue to February and Valentines :))

We will sing songs, go over the calendar, and practice all of our previously learned material as we go along. Keep practicing at home, too!