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Showing posts from November, 2016

What Are You Thankful For?

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All last week we talked about what it means to be thankful.  We read some great books and had some meaningful conversations.  The children thought of things they were thankful for and picked one to draw. They drew them initially with black marker. For added color they used watercolor pencils.  We put all of their beautiful drawings together and made a thankful book.  If you have a chance look for it on our peace table.  We sure do have a lot to be thankful for! Happy Thanksgiving everyone!

Pumpkin Pie!

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We used pie making as an opportunity to talk about "measuring".  Earlier in the year we measured things using rulers but this is the first time we have used cups and tablespoons.  We also had a conversation about what a "recipe" is. We named all the "ingredients" in our pie recipe.  Everyone had a turn pouring and mixing .  The smell in our classroom was amazing while they were baking.  The next day we made whipped cream .  We watched the cream go from " drippy" to "firm".  We ate our pie during snack. It was delicious!

F is for Family

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With Thanksgiving coming up we have been talking a lot about being thankful and having gratitude. Some friends said that they were thankful for their families and so we decided to draw pictures of our families in our journals.  We happen to be on the letter "F" in our journal writing practice, so this was perfect timing!  We practiced making the "F" sound and drawing upper and lower case Fs before illustrating the pictures of our families. 

I Voted!

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As adults, we figure that grown up things like presidential elections are far from what a preschool aged child should be concerned with. For the most part, of course, this is true. But, little ears are taking in all that they hear, and they hear so much. During a morning meeting, we asked a few questions about what the children knew about the election, and we got an amazing response from our class. Everything from opinions about candidates to real questions about what it all means. What is a president? What does a president do? How do we choose the president?  We read a few age appropriate books about voting and had some interesting and thought provoking classroom discussions. The book we read told us, "Voting gives each of us our very own voice. It allows a large group to make one single choice." One person, one vote.  We set up a voting booth, ballots, and a ballot box and the children all lined up to vote for cat or dog. We counted the votes together. Cat had  more  votes

I live in a Country

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This week we started talking about where we live. Most of us live in Gainesville, and all of us live in Florida. Gainesville is our "City" . Gainesville is in a "State" called Florida. Florida is one of 50 states. These states are in a "country" called the United States of America. Little ones tend to get these a bit mixed up.  We took a good look at our globe. We found our State and our Country. We read a book that talks about what the earth would look like if you could flatten it out. We have a great big fabric map that that helps children visualize that concept. We located where we live on it and other places, like Canada ( where Grandma lives), or England ( where one of our friends visited this summer).  The seniors traced all of the States and our younger friends traced the outline of the U.S. On the light table.