And more pumpkins

Parachute: We put a bunch of little decorative pumpkins on the parachute. We then lifted it high and low and fast and slow. We tried keeping the pumpkins in the parachute. It was challenging, they kept rolling out the sides and some fell through the hole in the middle. Some of our friends thought this was really funny!

Art Smart: We finger painted today. The children were given purple glitter paint, orange paint, black paint, and green glitter paint. We used our hands and fingers with yellow paper.

What’s Missing? Ms. Carly played the What’s Missing game with the Cockatoos. She used descriptive words to identify the pumpkins. She started with five and dropped down to two by the end of the game. Our friends liked watching the pumpkins disappear under the towel.

Visita de Wilfredo y Ximena

Hace un par de semanas Wilfredo y Ximena vinieron a comer arepas con nosotros. ¡La pasamos chévere! Comimos arepitas con pernil, caraotas, queso blanco, salchichón, etc. Nos tomamos un ron con café (Arakú) que nos trajeron los abuelitos Santana de Venezuela y estaba delicioso, y al final también hubo natilla y café para cerrar...

Aquí están Gabo y Ximena (con David en el fondo) disfrazados de Power Ranger y conductora de tren...

Aquí está Ximena otra vez, esta vez con David disfrazado de Power Ranger...

Pumpkins

Group time Activities: During morning group, the Tigers carved a pumpkin. The children used their senses to tell us about the pumpkin. They helped pull out the seeds, wash them off, and place them on a tray to bake.

Candy Gathering: Finally! The children were very excited to walk over to Roosevelt to gather candy from the various participating offices. It was so much fun for all of us to walk over with our special buckets and greet the friendly people at the university!

Math: The Cockatoos were given pumpkin file folder games. Each file folder had different pumpkin faces. The children enjoyed finding the different pumpkin faces and matching them to one another.

Halloween explorations

Art: The Tigers did golden leaf glitter finger painting.

Science: The children were able to play with corn kernels in the sensory table and had floam on the table.

Science Rocks (Pumpkin Exploration): Ms. Chrissy cut a pumpkin and showed the cockatoos what was inside. The cockatoos had the opportunity to smell the pumpkin and explore the pulp and seeds. Ms. Chrissy asked "how does it feel?" Some friends said "good" and other friends said "icky". We also talked about how the inside of the pumpkin felt cold, sticky, and slimy.

Sensory Table: We put in a mix of spooky items. We had spider webs, spiders, bats, rats, gourds, pumpkins, and balls with protruding textured things.

Autumn

Outside: Cockatoos enjoyed looking at the colorful leaves. The children enjoyed jumping and throwing the leaves in the air. We also rode bikes and played on the playground.

Fine Motor: Five different colored and shaped pumpkins were put out for children to explore. All different fall themed stickers were out for children to put on pumpkins. The cockatoos enjoyed putting the stickers on each pumpkin. The cockatoos seemed to really take their time using their fine motor skills to get the backing of the sticker off for it to stick to the pumpkins.

Muffins and pumpkins

Math Counts: Today we made blueberry muffins for the bake sale. The bake sale will be Tuesday and Wednesday. Our friends used one to one correspondence as they placed one muffin liner in each cup of the muffin pan. We also counted as we added the muffin liners and counted when we added the muffin batter to each cup.

Science Rocks: We asked each child if they thought the pumpkin would sink to the bottom of the water or float to the top. Most of our friends guessed correctly that it would sink. We then put two pumpkins in our sensory table and watched them sink to the bottom of the water. Our friends then used washcloths and soapy water to wash the pumpkins. When the pumpkins were all clean the Cockatoos used paper towels to help dry them off!

Rock and Art

Art Smart: We painted wooden train whistles. We used metallic pants. Some friends did not want to paint; they will get their unpainted wooden train whistle to take home. There is blue saran-wrap covering the mouth piece of each whistle. We did this so the children didn’t paint that part and it also is keeping the whistle more sanitary until the whistles are at home.

Kid Rock: We focused on inside and outside. We used a parachute and pretended it was a tree house, everyone got to run under the parachute and sit under the parachute. We used rhythm sticks and pretended we were riding bikes, bouncing balls, digging in the sand and climbing. We also pretended to jump in and out of windows (squares out of tape on the carpet.) We also moved like worms, crawled like a dog, and ran and pretended to catch rain.

The Bulls

Last night Alfredo took Gabo to a Bulls game. Gabo was chosen to greet the Bulls as the came onto the court. He high-fived all of them! He was really excited! Alfredo took a couple of little videos with his cell phone, here they are!

David stayed with me and we had lots of fun. Nene was thrilled to have mami all to himself. He "played" Playstation, we made and ate mac & cheese, he took a long bath (he loved having all the bathtub to himself!), and we ate some natilla.

I went to Tigers today during Rhyme of the Week. The rhyme this week is "Humpty Dumpty". We tried memorizing the words together. It was a little sad when I had to leave...

Here he is playing Candy Land at school.

Humpty Dumpty and stamps

Language & Literacy Activities: Our rhyme of the week is called “Humpty Dumpty” and the children practiced reciting and memorizing the words. The children answered question about the rhyme and were then read the story “Hansel and Gretel.”
Language and Literacy: Ms. Daiva let us play with her flannel board and its pieces. The children worked together and talked with each other as they used the various pieces. They dressed people, and played with animals including a bird, rabbit, and squirrels.
Art Smart: We used the “all about me stampers” and ink pads. The stampers included people, feet, and hands.
Science Rocks: We made our fingerprints using the ink pads. Ms. Daiva sang Where Is Thumbkin with the class and Ms. Chrissy named each finger as we were making the prints.

Even more trains

Thursday:

Art Smart: We did train wheel painting using circles. We used the inside of various tape rolls and cut paper tube rolls. The Cockatoo’s dipped the circles in paint and then made prints on their paper.

Math Counts: Several of our friends worked together to complete the train puzzle with very little help from Ms. Chrissy. They worked great together taking turns and trying to fit various pieces together.

After the puzzle was done, everyone was very excited. We lined up chairs and pretended to go on our own train ride. We sang a song we made up called “Wheels on the Train.”

Language Works: The literacy students from Roosevelt visited and read the story The Teacher from the Black Lagoon by Mike Thaler. They brought a dragon puppet that looked like a character from the book. The children loved interacting with the puppet. After the students left we took out our own puppets to play with.

Friday:

Trains: David brought in a cool bridge to connect to our train tracks. We made a big track and followed the tracks. We also used a train track play mat that Ms. Chrissy brought in. Felix brought in a train that moved and made train noises. We sat in a big circle and shared the trains. We had the train come to each of us and took turns turning the train towards are friends.

This picture was taken at the beginning of the day. David loves this puzzle!

Trains and dominoes

Cockatoos - Box Train Project: We painted shoeboxes using metallic paints. When the shoeboxes dry, we will tie a string to them and use them as trains. We may try to connect two or three boxes to make longer trains.


Tigers - Math: The children played with color counting bears, links, and dominos.

Train trip

Language Works: Ms. Carly had the Cockatoos pretend they were going on a train trip and talked about what items they would need to pack in their suitcases. Then each child chose an item from their cubby to pack in the suitcase. After our suitcase was packed and ready for a trip, Ms. Carly read Sesame Street’s, The Train Station, where Elmo is preparing to go on a train trip to the country.

Math Counts: The Cockatoo’s worked very hard to put together a train puzzle. They really enjoyed trying to match the pieces in their correct places. The Cockatoo’s used teamwork and helped their friends during this activity. When the puzzle was finished, the Cockatoos sat on the puzzle and pretended they were going on a train ride and made sounds like “Chugga Chugga Choo Choo.”

Art Smart: After discussing what items the Cockatoo’s would need to pack in their suitcases if they were going on a train ride, they used pictures cut out from magazines to create collages of things they would choose to pack in their own suitcase. The children loved looking at all the different items and deciding what they should glue on to their collage.

Group Time: The Cockatoos had an activity filled group time. Ms. Carly talked about what sounds a train makes and used the sounds blocks to show what sound a train makes when it is on the train tracks. Olivia shared her train from home and talked about how her train was green. David also shared his Thomas train along with his train tracks and was excited to demonstrate how Thomas goes across the bridge to his Cockatoo friends. Then, Ms. Carly read Choo Choo Clickety-Clack! And Thomas and the School Trip and the children were so excited to look at all the different pictures in the stories.

Big tower

Slug...

We were looking at a slug and then let it go outside when we were done with it.

Puff painting project…

Read for the Record

Science: The children made “bun buggies” or cars out of bread and vegetables and ate them with dip.

The children were read stories by Roosevelt students and had their “bun buggy” snacks during our journal time.

Read for the Record
This Thursday was the national Read for the Record day and celebrated the book The Very Hungry Caterpillar by Eric Carle. Schools across the country were encouraged to read this classic children’s story on October 8th in an attempt to break records in reading, service, and fun. ECEC participates in this event each year. This year, we had special readers visit us from Roosevelt University’s language and literacy group to read the story to the classrooms. Each classroom had the story read by students, much to the delight of the children! The Very Hungry Caterpillar is an excellent story for children of all ages, from infants through kindergarten. Check out the book at your local library and see how much of the book your child will be able to recall!

Math and Science

Math Counts: We used the geometric links. We practiced linking them together and tried sorting the links by shape. Some friends sorted by color. We also named the shapes and colors. We had red, blue, yellow, and green triangles, circles, and squares.
Sensory and Science: We talked about clouds today. We compared clear water to cloudy water. To make the water cloudy we added shaving cream to it. We used our hands to mix up the shaving cream and water. We also used small cups to dump and pour the cloudy liquid.

The Weather

Math Counts: Ms. Carly put different cloud shapes on the carpet. Ms. Carly then asked the Cockatoos to look at the different clouds and describe what they looked like. She asked questions like do clouds come in different shapes and sizes? How big do you think a cloud is? The Cockatoos then tossed a bean bag on each cloud that was on the carpet. Children also enjoyed jumping and counting to each cloud. Finally, the Cockatoos danced on the clouds to “Spin Again” and “The Number Song.”
Sensory and Art: Cockatoos painted with sponges and loofahs today! Each child was given white paint and green paper to create their own work of art with a sponge or loofa. While painting, the children talked about how the paint felt and what different designs the sponges and loofas made on their papers. The Cockatoos really seemed to enjoy the textures of both the sponges and the loofas.
Outdoor Play: Cockatoos enjoyed playing with their Toucan friends out in the gazebo today! The Cockatoos had a blast racing around the gazebo in the cars and going down the slide.

Making goop

Sensory and Science: We used cornstarch and water to make goop. We enjoyed using our hands and a plastic cup to explore the goop. As we played in the solution we talked about how it felt. Our friends noticed that it was wet, sticky, and cold.

Art Smart: Each child poured goop onto a piece of blue paper and then were asked what it looked like. We will use their pictures and their answers to make our own version of the story.