Sunday, September 22, 2019

Our Class Was a Zoo!

What a fun week we had learning about zoo animals! As their teacher this year, I am realizing sometimes it is the simplest things that bring the most joy and the most fun! Mrs. Katie and I are truly blessed to be their teachers. 

We enjoyed reading about fun at the zoo this week with the books Giraffes Can't Dance, Walking Through the Jungle, Zoo-Looking and Whose Feet Are These? We also sang fun animal songs, including "The Zebra Song" and "Zippity Zoo Zah" (in their poetry folders). Our letter of the week was the letter Zz. All of the friends in our class are doing very well identifying the letters, tracing them, sorting them, and remembering the sounds. For those of you wanting to review what we have learned so far at home, the letters we have done to this point are as follows: M, P, F, A, Z, and C. Some fun activities to practice these letters include laying out or writing letters on a mat or tray and having them find the letter you say or the sound you say, letting them trace letters in shaving cream, building letters with small pieces of food (such as cereal or raisins), and looking for these letters in books. 


To go along with our zoo theme, we also practiced matching numbers and counting animals, played a giraffe dice game where they had to find numbers, practiced lacing zoo beads, "rescued" zoo animals wrapped in rubber bands, and built our names with animal name puzzles. (You can continue to work on building and tracing names at home with the name puzzles we sent home!) We even painted and cut lions to work on our scissor skills! Make sure to look for your child's lion on our bulletin board! Everyone is enjoying our end-of-the-day table trading time. Everyone also had a blast sharing the animal they drew and building an enclosure on our carpet zoo for their animal!


We continued to practice our verse of the month (Genesis 1:31). We also continued our focus on creation, talking about the sun, moon, and stars. You might ask your child a few more questions about the creation story... We had good discussion about it this week!


Thank you for giving me the joy and privilege of being your child's teacher. I look forward to seeing them Thursday! Give them a hug from Mrs. Rachel. 


This week, see if your child can...

1.  say their Bible verse with the motions! 
2. Write a Z!
3. Find all the Zs in their poem of the week in their folders. 
4. Hop on one foot!
5. Cut something with scissors. 


Lion painting!




We were experts at our name this week!



Zoo animal rescue!


Look at these good painters!



Cutting practice is so important!

1, 2, 3, 4, I can count animal ckers!



We loved our animal cleaning table!




These are the counting books 
that will go home this week!





We built a zoo for our animal drawings!


We continue to love the green room
and our outside time!

Sunday, September 15, 2019

A is for Apple!

Apple week in our room was quite a success! We are truly learning so much and making great progress every week! Being this crew's teacher is such a joy. 

Our apple week brought with it lots of hands-on fun! We had a blast making our "apple shakers" thanks to help from a sweet parent volunteer! We also enjoyed gluing red paper apples and getting to taste test different types of apples to create a graph of our favorites. We had a blast with "apple bobbing" with tongs (all the while practicing taking turns nicely, following directions, and counting).


To go along with this week, we also read several apples books, including Apple Countdown, Apples, and a fun book from Mrs. Laura that compared the parts of an apple to the Trinity. We focused on the letter A, sorting uppercase and lowercase letters, tracing the letter, painting it with Q-tips, and finding the letter in books. We even got to do letter tracing in applesauce! 


In our table centers this week, we worked on sorting different sized apples, making apple trees from play dough, and counting apples out onto an apple tree. Everyone did a great job counting the apples one-to-one. We are turning into math experts in our class! In addition to this math fun, we worked on our fine motor skills with "hammering nails" (pushing golf tees) into apples. 


We topped off our fun this week by making baked apples and apple volcanoes!

Our Bible focus continued to be on creation, this time Day 3! We celebrated that God made the land, plants, and trees.

We look forward to being back together this coming week! Until then, see if your child can...


1. Tell you what happened on Days 1-3 of creation (you might use our song again at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w6GHjqks4pY. 

2. Count out one, two, three, and four objects. 
3. Tell you the parts of an apple and help you make something with apples. 
4. Find three things in your house that start with the letters M and A. 
5. Find apple-colored objects in your house (yellow, red, and green). 









Look at us reading and writing!


A is for apple!!

We did great sorting apples by size!

Thank you Mrs. Melody for coming to help us make apple shakers!




We are playing so well together!

Silly girls!



Fun bobbing for apples!


Red or green... Which do you like? 

We worked with Mrs. Laura's class 
to make baked apples!

Our apple volcano was quite exciting!