Happy Thursday!

There was a sale on popcorn this morning; it was free!  :)  

Thank you for all of the good junk donations!  We will continue to collect good junk throughout the school year! 

We had fun sorting and exploring the buttons this morning.  The friends began to put one button in one egg space in the egg carton.  This strengthens one to one correspondence.  One to one correspondence is a foundational skill that is crucial to both math and literacy development. 

We had fun in the blocks.  The friends each had different ideas of what to build, but they worked together to decide what to build and how to build it.  This skill will benefit the children throughout their lives.  

Police Officer Jordan wrote tickets for anyone running.  He worked to write the letter T (for ticket) on each ticket.  This is a great example of meaningful writing! 

Some of the friends wanted to write on the write and wipe boards too! 

As I am sure you know, the friends love to make cards for everyone.  Eli worked hard to write a card for his dad.  He worked to write daddy on the card too!  This is another example of meaningful writing.  :)  

Outside we found a spider and put him in the jar!  The friends had a discussion of what should go in the jar.  The discussion shows how much we have learned about spiders.  

Child One: "Let's put flowers in there to decorate it!"

Child Two: "No.  We need bugs.  The spider doesn't eat flowers he eats bugs."

Child One: "You're right!  Without the bugs he will die!"

Child Three: "Let's all look for bugs for the spider!" 

Child Two: "Okay!  You look for bugs.  You look for stink bugs.  You look for butterflies." 

We had a surprise in our surprise bag! The surprise bag is a fun way to engage children in small group activities.  Today's "surprise" was numbers! We used these numbers in small groups as we continued to explore the pine cones, rocks, balances, and scales.  The friends wrote down the number that they saw on the scale or the number of pine cones that it took to make the balance equal.

With Mrs. Zwetter, the friends made a spider with play dough and pipe cleaners.  We worked to count out how many legs each spider needs re-enforcing the concept of one to one correspondence. 

With me, the friends did a reader's theater of The Very Busy Spider.  They used words such as character, beginning of the story, end of the story.  These book concepts are an important literacy skill.

During Jesus time we reviewed the story of Abraham.  We sang the Father Abraham song.  We were reminded that God always keeps His promises! We praise God for keeping His promise of sending a Savior- Jesus!  Jesus died and rose again to save us from our sins.

After lunch and quiet time, we headed back outside.

Second free choice time 

We loved observing our spiders.  Some of the friends wrote nametags for the spiders.

During small group time, we carefully practiced scissor skills as we cut the straws. 

We also independently made playdough spiders.

During free choice time, one of the friends wanted to count all of the pennies in the movie theater so we could equally split them between the two cash registers.  During small group time, the friends helped me count out all of the pennies so we could split them equally.  We practiced one to one correspondence as we counted.