This week we learned about Rain Forest and Jungle. The children learned about the layers in the rainforest such as emergent (highest layer) , canopy, understory, and forest floor (bottom layer) and they learned where the animals reside or can be seen. They learned that it rains a lot in the rainforest and they can get up to 79 inches of rain! That is a lot of rain!! We listened to different animal sounds and they had to guess what animal it was that made the sound.
We did a rainforest word wall where they wrote the words on a strip of paper using the rainforest word cards as reference. We did an Aa word where the children learned what sound the letter makes and they came up with words that start with the letter Aa. They played a “What Am I” Rainforest animal game where they were given 3 clues and they had to guess what the animal is. We did a Rainforest Letter Matching game where they matched the uppercase letters to the lowercase letters. They were shown pictures of different animals and they had to verbally name the animals.
They sorted the animals by its size. They did an “Our Favorite Rainforest Food” where they to say which food was their favorite and chart it. After charting, we counted up how many each food has and they had to say which food had the biggest number. It was a tie between bananas and chocolate. They measured the animals in the classroom using unifex cubes. This activity is where the children had to count out the number of unifex cubes and say how many unifex cubes it took to measure the animal. We did a Rainforest/Jungle animal pattern block activity where they used pattern blocks to match the shapes on the pattern block mat. They used animal counters and numbers cards to count using 1:1 correspondence. During this activity, we had the children pick a number, and then count out the number of animals counters using their pointer finger to touch each counter as they are counting. Children tend to count fast and this activity helps them slow down so that they do not miscount.
We did a Red Eye Tree frog, Macaw, and Toucan projects in Art. They were given the pieces of paper that had the shapes already drawn, they had to cut them out and glue them together using my examples. The children had to draw eyes or glue googly eyes. We wanted to challenge the children to see if they remembered how to told scissors, how much glue to use, and to use their pincer grasp when picking up googly eyes.
We learned the different parts of a bee’s body and they drew their own bee using the different pictures of bees as reference. I asked them questions to see what they remembered about bees. They said they remembered that bees like nectar from flowers and they carry pollen using their legs. Some children said that not all bees are yellow and black but they can be black, big, small, fuzzy, and some are green. They learned the difference between a bee, hornet, and a wasp.
We had music and the children were so excited to have music class back! Next week is Colors and I have sent out an email detailing what colors the children would need to wear next week.
If you have any questions or concerns, please feel free to reach out!