Tigers ROAR!

We practiced ABAB patterns to create a tiger mask! From paper plates, the students cut out a center circle and snipped teeth. Our cutting skills and perseverance have greatly improved! The students each cut their own black and orange stripes--all of them!

Monkeys hangin' from a tree!

Understanding the concept of "5" and "10" is an essential early math building block.

We love to sing "5 little monkeys swinging from a tree....teasing Mr. Alligator, can't catch me!"

Animal Hospital Center

We finally converted the "Home Center" to an "Animal Hospital." We have seen a great increase in dramatic associative play! To stop students from "microwaving" the animals we added a visual support board (taped down tightly). No more microwaved elephants for us!

Thinking Map: Tree Map

Who lives on a farm?

We finger painted sections of the barn and put them together after they dried. "Big puzzle. Red puzzle. Barn!" one student said with great excitement!

You can see our pigs and sheep and our positional words emphasis (on/off).

Thinking Maps: Family Brace Map

Each student created a brace map to show the parts of his or her family!

Some students drew the picture of their family. For others, who needed more support, we used an actual photograph of their family for the "whole" part of the brace map.

Many students were unable to supply a family picture so we used the pictures we took at the back-to-school conference. :)

Community Helpers

We are learning about our community! We dressed up in different community helper outfits. Some students could verbally identify the community helper, others could match the picture icon to the "real" photograph, and some are practicing matching picture-to-picture with the boardmaker picture icons.

There is a long velcro strip at the bottom of the bulletin board where the picture icons (boardmaker symbols) "live" to make this a true interactive bulletin board.

The top of the bulletin board shows firetrucks created by some of the students. One student cut his own shapes and the other student students were given pre-cut shapes to create their firetrucks.