Thanksgiving 2012 and Review Week

For this age group, I don't get into the history of Thanksgiving.  Instead I focus on the "now" and what will happen in one week.  We talked about what we are thankful for, the food we will eat, and the family we might see.

We read a couple of books about Thanksgiving that were about the "now" and didn't focus on history.  They'll get their history lesson in elementary school.

I did a certain type of art project, which goes against my whole philosophy on art see "Arts and Crafts".  I chose to do a handprint/footprint turkey.  I don't have an assistant on Tuesday/Thursday mornings and Monday/Wednesday/Friday afternoons, so everything I do in those classes - I do on my own.   It was challenging, to say the least.  My assistant was a HUGE help on the days she was there!!!!  In one class, we decided to keep it simple and just do one hand print to be the whole turkey.  These rare craft projects really are for the parents' amusement and joy, because really, there is not a lot a child is learning when they have an adult press their hand/foot in paint or tell them exactly where to put their hands/foot.  When a child is able to freely take the directions and explore, then they develop their art.

For music, we sang, chanted, and acted out some fun Thanksgiving songs.  My favorite is the "Turkey Pokey"!

For writing, they practiced tracing their name.

For letter/phonics review, they played a game where they had to match the upper and lower case letters (only the ones we've learned) and say the sound that the letter makes.

For centers, on day one, they pretended to make a Thanksgiving dinner using the kitchen and accessories.  On day two, they played with puppet and had to follow the rule of being nice and not hitting another puppet.  This is challenging for children at this age.  This lesson is good for social development and oral language development.

Here are some pictures of our day to day routines:

A little bit of free play after snack.

What a sweetie!

Reading a book while waiting for his friends wash their hands.

Washing hands and waiting for a turn.

Here are some pictures of one class during their outside play who instigated using water to create a pool for dinosaurs.  I took a lot of photos using my action setting.  Click on the photo and you can scroll through, quickly.  I only put captions on a few.

"We need more water - it disappeared!  Quick!!"

When the water level was low, this child used a smaller cup to scoop and pour into a larger container.