This week is one of my favorite themes because we get to learn about authors and read their books! It also happens to be the start of our annual book play off! We read a couple books each day for the book play off and picked which book we liked the best. Each Friday, we as a center will give our picks to Ms. Holle and she will tally up which books were picked and put them in the bracket. The children are so excited to see which book will win. This is a great way for the children to be exposed to different authors and the books they wrote such as Chris Van Allsberg, Steve Anthony, Judy Schachner, Mercer Mayer, H.A. Roy and Margaret Roy. They were shown pictures of the authors and the books and some of the children have said that they are familiar with the books because they have them at home or they were read by other teachers.
We read the Polar Express by Chris Van Allsberg and the children had to recall details from the story. We made a Xx word list, practiced writing author’s names, practiced writing letters, and dictated, “My favorite book is…”. They also did an activity where they matched the author’s names to the books that the authors wrote.
They created numbers using pattern blocks and number mats. We did some simple subtraction, and did a Ten Frame 0-10 matching game where they had to count out the dots on the ten frames and find the number that matches. They did a number recognition 0-30 activity where they picked a number and said what number is was. They counted the number of dots on the cookies and placed it on the number line. The children also did a unifex cube patterning activity where they had to either match the cards or make up their own pattern.
We did some fun art activities this week. We read the book, Skippyjon Jones Class Action by Judy Schachner and the children made their own version as to what their cat would look like. The children created their own book cover and we painted with ice cubes that had frozen paint.
We discussed how we take care of our books so that other children can enjoy them and we talked about how we turn the pages carefully so that the pages do not rip, we don’t put our books in water because it can ruin the books and we don’t push books on the ground because it can ruin the books. We talked about the books that their parents read to them, we talked about what the books were about and which one was our favorite. The children expressed how much they like when I read books to them vs them looking through the books. We also talked about how important books are because it helps us learn how to read, learn new words by sounding them out, and we can imagine the story the author is telling us.
We have a field trip coming up to Playhouse Square to see, The Gruffalo’s Child. We are so excited to see it!!
If you have any questions or concerns, please feel free to reach out!