Planetary Fun!

It was so nice to come back to school and hear what a wonderful job the 4K students did with the substitute teacher on Tuesday!  I am so proud of them! :)

The arrival activities from Tuesday were rotated so each table got to do a different activity from Tuesday.  The blue table played with space goop and even Ms. Behnke spent some time playing with it too!  It is very calming!  I will include the recipe in the weekly "Here's the Scoop!" newsletter that will go home tomorrow so you can make it at home too!  The red table looked at books and the gray table drew in their journals.

 

Today we continued to talk about planets.  The 4K students know how to recognize planet Earth very well!  We read the story Going Around the Sun: Some Planetary Fun and learned that Earth is the third planet.  We also learned that the planets revolve around the sun.  We decided to try to make our own solar system where the planets revolve around the sun.  Since the sun is so big, a group of children formed a big circle to make a huge sun.  Then the rest of us pretended we were different planets rotating around the sun.  Miss McCabe even got a little silly and pretended she was the moon rotating around Earth!

Then it was time for centers.  When we went to Ms. Behnke's table, she read us the story Poor Pluto! and we learned that Pluto is not really a planet.  Then we played a planet bingo game while practicing identifying shapes and numbers.

 

We also spent time at our independent centers doing a variety of activities.

 Playdough

 Planet beanbag toss

 Games

 Listening center

Writing center

 Exploring manipulatives at the math center

During playtime, the train set was very popular in both sessions today.  In the morning, some children chose to play in the water in the sensory table.  In the afternoon session, some children chose to draw pictures at the writing center and play in home living.

 

We also did show-n-tell.  It was exciting that we got to sit in Miss McCabe's rocking chair!  I learned a lot about each child!  What an interesting, exciting group of children there are in each class!  Look for the class book to come home in the near future so you can learn about your child's classmates!  Please only keep it for one night so that everybody can have a turn!

      

There was a little bit of extra time in the morning session for us to dance the Tooty-Ta and read our spacesuit colors class book together.

Tomorrow we will get to make a special snack to eat!  The children are very excited about it!  We are still in need of cheese and clear plastic cups for an upcoming snack next week that will work on shapes!  If you are able to send in any of those items, please let me know!  It would be greatly appreciated!

Have a great evening! :)