Jj is for...

Happy Monday!  Today we spent some time talking about polar bears.  First the children shared what they already knew about polar bears.  There were some misconceptions, such as that polar bears and penguins live together.  Then we read a non-fiction story about polar bears.  We learned that non-fiction means that it is real or true.  The children realized that the non-fiction book had photographs of real animals and did not have pictures that were drawn by an illustrator.  Some children were excited when they found other non-fiction polar bear books to look at in our classroom library.

Then we made a list of some of the new tidbits that we learned about polar bears after reading the story.  We learned all sorts of new vocabulary, such as what a male and female is.  There were also some neat facts, such as polar bears are the largest land animals that hunt animals.  We also learned that they do not only eat fish.  Polar bears also like to eat seals, walruses, reindeer, and berries.  Polar bears do not hibernate like other bears - they like the snow and have extra fur and fat to keep them warm.

Children visited one center today and they will rotate through the rest throughout the week.  At Miss McCabe's center, children had to go fishing to catch fish to feed to their polar bears!  This was a lot of fun!  Each child was given a type or color of fish to catch.  The blue fish had uppercase letters, the pink fish had lowercase letters, and the orange fish had pictures where the children had to identify the beginning sounds and write the letter the picture started with.  After your child visits this center, he/she will come home with some letter fish so he/she can practice letters or beginning sounds while feeding the polar bear at home!

At Mrs. DeKeyser's center, the children played a polar bear letter game.  They had to draw a card, identify the letter, and move their polar bear the corresponding number of spaces identified on the card.  The goal was to cross all the icebergs to get to the end where all the fish were.

The third center played in Ms. Mader's classroom.  They also did a polar bear number sequencing puzzle.  Each child cut apart the polar bear into strips, mixed the strips up, and then ordered the strips in numerical order to put the polar bear back together again!  The children were given different numbers to sequence based on the numbers they needed to work on.

Then we played.  Ice fishing in the sensory table was quite popular.  There were two types of fishing poles - magnetic and non-magnetic.  The children enjoyed discovering which fishing poles caught which type of fish!

During playtime, some children chose to use the easel to paint.  First, they hunted for the letters in their names and traced around them on paper.  Then we hung their papers on the easel and they painted in the letters.  This will be a choice at playtime all week!

We pretended to be polar bears while eating snack.  After snack, we spent some time learning all about the letter Jj.  We made the sound /j/ while tracing over jiggly, jello j!  The children are excited to make jello jigglers at school tomorrow!

We also read some books that helped us learn words that start with Jj, such as January, jump, jelly, jungle, jaguar, jar, jellybeans, jeep, jacket, and so much more!  Then we used our fine motor skills to make jewel Jj's for our alphabet books.

The children were also introduced to Brownie.  At the end of each week, one child will get to bring Brownie home for the weekend.  Brownie needs to come back to school no later than Tuesday so Miss McCabe can give him a bath before visiting the next house!  We looked at some samples of Brownie's past journals to help the children get ideas for recording their adventures with Brownie over the weekend.  If you plan on doing something special one weekend, please send a note to school so we can make sure Brownie goes home with your child that weekend.  We must give everyone one turn with Brownie before we can start second turns.

Have a great evening! :)