Apples

Here's a little bit about what we have been doing this past week! We are looking forward to our trip to the apple orchard on Friay:) 

 Painting with red on the easel 

LITERACY

Apple Flannel Board Stories:

 Way Up High In the Apple Tree and Apple Tree

The kids loved writing a story, this was a suggested activity from Funshine. They helped me fill in the blanks and I will say I was impressed that they did so good! We are definately going to have to do more of these! 

 Here is an activity that we've been doing to help with name recgonition. The song goes, "If your name is on the tree, pick it please. If your name is on the tree, pick it please.."

MATH

 

This was a game from Funshine, we had to match up the seeds to the number. We concentrated on the numbers 1-3 as those are our numbers for the month. 

 

We also played the Where's the Worm? game from Funshine. We had to turn over the apple cards and try to find the worms. 

SCIENCE:

Checking out an apple and describing the apple. We also tasted the apple!

 

ART

The cute apple/worm puppet from Funshine! The kids loved having the worm on their fingers. The other is just a worm and an apple

We decorated felt shaped leaves to hang up for our fall bunting... I think it turned out pretty cute!

 We worked on our name recgonition by putting circle (shape of the month!) stickers on the first letter of our name

 

This is one of our annual projects that we do! Way Up High in the Apple Tree...

 Making apple pies from Funshine

We talked about the different seasons for an apple tree and made this cute little project.

Attempted to have the kids try weaving from our Funshine supplies. It was too hard for them to do but we will keep working at it!

Letter B

Letter B

 We made our capital B's into bows. I purchased the pattern from Laura @ Teachers Pay Teachers

 Another simple way to help with learning is to write letters/shapes/numbers in their ketchup and ranch! My kiddos love it! It's supposed to be a B and a circle!

Our B journal pages that was included in the September box from Funshine. 

It was suggested for the September curriculum on letter B from Funshine to have the kids pass a ball and practice saying /b/ sound.

Apples

We started Funshine's theme on Apples today! I know this is going to be a great two weeks... I love this theme, so many fun extender ideas to do with it.  

Books, books and more books! Here's a few books we will be reading the next two weeks. I also took the suggested list from Funshine and requested them from my local library. 

Apple Picking Sensory Table

The bottom is black beans, then I took a paper towel tube and cut a slit in it and added the tree out of cardboard that I had already painted. The "apples" are pom poms with velcro dots. They can pick the apples from the tree and put it in the basket!

Orchard Trees 

The orchard trees were included in the September box from Funshine. First, we painted the apples onto the green paper with a clothespin and a pom pom dipped in red paint. Once that dried we cut out our tree and then I had already taped together the trunk and cut a slit on the top so the tree could sit on the trunk. 

Apple Trees

To make these, we simply traced our arms/hand onto brown construction paper and then glued on a green tree cutout and finally used a clothespin with a pom pom dipped into red paint to make our apples.

Pass the Apple

The game of "Pass the Apple" was suggested from Funshine. They had a BLAST with it! Instead of playing "hot potato", we played "pass the apple". It did take them awhile to catch on, but once they figured it out, they didn't want to stop! 

Apple Picking

We also had fun with this suggested activity from Funshine, Ahead of time, I gathered enough baskets for them to each have one and then all my play apples and laid them out on the floor, It goes like this:                            Let's go apple picking today! Grab your basket and get in the car! (pick up the basket and pretend to clumb in a car. Pretend to drive and steer.)             Wow! Here we are! That was a long trip! (get out of the car and stretch.)      Look at all the apples! Let's pick some and put them in your basket. You might have to climb for some! (Pretend to reach and pick apples. Place them in the basket. Pretend to climb a tree.)                                                     Is your basket heavy? Mine is! Let's taste an apple. Yum! (Pretend basket is heavy. Pretend to munch on an apple.)

Once we were done with the above song of picking apples, we took our baskets and sorted them into colors, red and green and which basket did we think had more. Then we counted the apples. There was only 15 green apples and 26 red apples! 

Last but not least, we made patterns with the green and red apples! 

Songs, Circles, Number 2 and Fine Motor!

I always start the All My Friends song that is included on the Fireflies 2014-2015 song when we are starting circle time. Usually they are all singing along as they come running, but they knew I was recording them today, so they were camera shy! 

Another song they love to do with shakers... "shake hello, to ____, _____, ______. shake hello to ____,, shake hello! 

Today, in our September box from Funshine, we made circle puzzles.... it was a neat project that the kids could all do. We had a large circle and then they each got two tissue paper circles and as many circle dots as they wanted. They glued them to their large circle and then cut them into a puzzle. 

We also finished up our Number 2 journal from Funshine 

Working on a little bit of fine motor/pre-writing skills with tweezers and various fall shaped koosh balls and leaf shaped buttons. 

As suggested in the September Fireflies, we took applesauce into a ziplock and sealed the edge. Then we squished it and used it to write things with. Of course, I forgot to snap a picture, but they really enjoyed this activity!

Letter A, backpack

We added a bunch of red things to the sensory table, apple cinnamon scented red rice, curly ribbon, red buckets, small red bowls, red pasta, misc red foam stickers, etc... 

We played a Funshine game, Back to School. It was great for counting!

We talked about what goes inside a backpack and what doesn't

Time to work on our backpacks! I will admit, the kids loved this Funshine project!

the front view

the back view with the straps like a real backpack

We added astronaut and ambulance to our word wall (cards from Funshine), I want to add the kids names yet to under the letter their name starts with

Our word wall 

Pretzels make letter A!

Our journal page for letter A from Funshine

A is for acorn

A is on the floor! 

We went on a A hunt and we actually found quite a few around! 

Working on writing our names. I like to write in a highlighter and have them trace it in red. Red is supposed to be great for memory. 

The kids has fun acting out various directions as directed in the Fireflies curriculum... We stood on our tiptoes, stood up, waved our arms, reached for the sky, touched the ground, gave ourselves a hug.

For Social/Emotional we worked our our team work skills by putting together a puzzle.

Scarecrows, circles, name game

Can't feel like fall weather outside without these cute scarecrows I purchased on TPT

We went on a circle hunt! 

Here was our 3 circles we choose to put into order from smallest to biggest

Talked about our morning routines and what we do before coming to daycare

It was suggested for the Fireflies curriculum to play a movers and shakers name hunt. We did it a little bit differently as a memory game instead, but they sure had a blast making their own name cards and the excitement on their face when they found a pair was so cute to see... I loved it! Next week, we will play again probably both ways.

Overall, our first week back has been great, still working out getting into our routine and trying to find the time to accomplish all that I would like to get done with still having the much needed outside time before we start to get cold weather!  Fireflies-  I really like all the suggested activities for different categories such as daily basics, discuss/do, songs and rhymes, movers and shakers, creative arts, math, social/emotional, dramatic play, etc... Some of the ideas work for my setting and some don't. I also have to remember that my kiddos are age 3 and under, so I think this would work awesome for a preschool teacher with a whole class of a certain age, but I've been making it work for my group! The only thing so far that I'm not impressed with is the art projects... they are a little cheesy for my liking so we have been skipping them and doing more of "Nicci's style" projects!

One more week of Back to School and then on to Apples Everywhere the following week!