Check out what we're learning and doing in the Bananas Classroom at Frankie Lemmon School!
Bananas SHAPE Up!
Get link
Facebook
X
Pinterest
Email
Other Apps
February Study: Valentines + Shapes + 100 Days Smarter
With all the snow days and special events, February was such a disjointed month, but we made the most out of it! We decided to spend one week doing special Valentine's Day activities and the others focusing on shapes. After our winter assessments, I found that this was a skill that we needed to work on and it is also an objective in our Teaching Standards Gold curriculum. Many of the students knew basic 2-D shapes, but we decided to also dive deeper into learning about 3-D shapes. We didn't get a lot of photos of our shape study, but instead focused on the shapes that we see around us and they have had so many good observations! As you move through your home each day, help your child notice shapes you see every day, such as the cylinder that is a soup can or the cube that is the dice to a board game.
We transformed the dramatic play area into a post office. We had different sizes of boxes and envelopes, 'stamps', packing materials, and a letter/card writing station. We provided the students with word cards for popular people they may send a letter to as well as popular greetings, such as Happy Birthday or Get Well. They were also able to pretend to be the mail carrier and they loved taking turns in this job.
Anthony may have a future as a mail carrier!
For Valentine's Day, we focused on heart themed activities that also incorporated literacy, math, and fine motor skills. Students laid on the carpet on their stomachs and used large push pins to poke holes around a heart, color it, and cut it out. Laying on their bellies is a great way for students to work on building core strength and aids in body regulation. At home, you can have your child read a book with you on their stomachs, draw a picture, or do a puzzle. A few minutes a day can make a real difference! We also sorted candy hearts by color and made a graph to see which color we had the most of. The students really enjoyed this activity, but were mostly exited that they got to take the candy hearts home!
Harmoni is sorting her candy heats by color
Declan is working hard poking holes around his heart
One of our favorite days in the month of February was our celebration of the 100th Day of School! We started this tradition last year at Frankie Lemmon and I'm not sure who loves it more...staff or students! We put 100 stickers on the number 100, made 100 dots into a gumball machine, and worked on putting 100 pieces of cereal on a necklace. Whether we counted by 1's, 5's, or 10's, the kids got so excited each time we reached 100!
Janae may be the cutest grandma EVER!
Grandpa Julian casually reads a book in our library
Wright loved practicing his fine motor skills putting stickers on the number 100
February also brought along several new Letterland characters! They students continue to get excited about the new letters we learn each week and the sounds that they make. Below are the video links for the stories, songs, and chants that we use in class. Feel free to use these at home. If you would like ideas to help your child work on learning letter sounds, please let me know!
We have had so much fun learning together and I can't believe we are on the downhill direction of the school year! There is so much more to learn and we can't wait for all of our upcoming adventures. Please let me know if there you have any questions!
Bananas in Pajamas...and Shirts, and Dresses, and... For our first study of 2024, we decided to focus on clothes and use the Teaching Strategies Gold Clothes Study! Winter brings all kinds of changes in weather and I thought it would be a good idea to take the opportunity to learn more about all the different kinds of clothes we wear, the features of clothes, how we take care of our clothes, how clothes are made, and who wears certain clothes for their jobs. While it may seem like a simple study, the students loved digging deeper into this topic. Before the students even came back, I put out a variety of dress-up clothes in our dramatic play center. These were given to us as part of a grant from SmartStart and gave our students the opportunity to see kimonos from Japan, try on textiles from Africa, and accessorize with scarves, mittens, hats, and more. Josephine loved showing off her new outfit When we explore a topic, we try to incorporate it into our daily learning, includ...
Banana Entomologists After our wheels study the weather was warming up and I could tell the students were itching to get outside. I presented options for our next study and surprisingly, most of our students chose to learn all about insects! We started out by learning what an insect is...did you know that bugs are insects, but insects are not bugs? We learned that all bugs have three body parts, six legs, and two antennae. Some have wings, some have two sets of wings, and some have stingers. We learned that spider are not insects, they are their own special species called arachnids. Next we talked about how insects live; what do they eat, where do they live, and how do they protect themselves? We discussed the word camouflage and what that means. We looked at lots of different insects and how they hide to protect themselves. In the middle of our unit we introduced cups of caterpillars to our classroom. We used magnifying glasses to observe them eating and moving ...
September Wrap-Up! I cannot believe that the month of September is gone and we have been in school for a month! These kiddos have been doing amazing things at school and I can't wait to tell you all that we've been up to! I've also had a few people ask me for another link to our Amazon Wishlist so you can find that here: https://www.amazon.com/hz/wishlist/ls/1YRSO7IXK43F0?ref_=wl_share And many thanks to those who have so generously already donated from it! The first couple of weeks in school we focused on routines and expectations at school; how to use the materials, appropriate behavior on the playground, and to clean up after ourselves. These are things we need to do every day so we have to make sure that we are doing them correctly! As the materials that went home outlined, we also made sure to talk about our feelings and how they fit in The Zones of Regulation. That has really helped give us language to talk to the kids when they are upset and help them problem so...
February Study: Valentines + Shapes + 100 Days Smarter
Comments
Post a Comment