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!