Week 9 - Thursday

Circle time:
As described in earlier circle time post
Letter of the week: I
Theme of the week: Instruments & Music

Arts & crafts:
The kids painted drums made from old mixed nut cans and used Popsicle sticks as the drum sticks.




Free play at stations:
As described in earlier free play post

Station 1: colouring I word pictures and pictures of houses & homes, drawing and cutting
Station 2: various puzzles (The Wiggles, Mickey Mouse, Doodle Bops)
Station 3: Mr. Potato Head, Play-Doh, Code Couleur game
Station 4: free play with instruments of all kinds - piano, drums, tambourines, shakers, etc
Station 5: Lego set and Mega Blocks
Station 6: basket of theme related books



Story time:
The Little Mermaid Ariel's Beginning by Depken
Dora's Show Time! by Lee
Sesame Street Elmo Look and Find - M is for Music by McCafferty/Zimmerman/Mawhinney

Cooperative game:
Today we played a game where I spread a bunch of pictures of various instruments out in another room and then handed each kid a piece of paper with the name of an instrument written on it. They were to read the word (I helped Roxy of with this of course) and then race to the other room to find the corresponding picture. If they came back with the right picture, they got another instrument name to read, but if they were incorrect they had to go back and try again!

Science experiment:
The themes for this week's science experiments will all begin with the letter I!

Insulators
Today the kids investigated how well different types of materials act as insulators. Before we began I let each kid manipulate the 4 materials we were going to test (newspaper, cloth, fake fur and foil) and had them hypothesize as to which material they thought would work best as an insulator. We then filled 4 cups with very hot water and covered each one with a different material, securing it in place with a rubber band. We let the water sit for 30 minutes and then came back to test the temperature of the water in each cup and discuss their findings.


Physical activity:
None.

Outing/social time:
None.

Worksheets:
Coloring I word pictures, tracing letter I, tracing I words, matching uppercase to lower case letters E-H, counting and finding numeral, tracing the numeral 8, matching instrument name to picture of instrument, finding which item does not belong in a group, cutting curved lines of various shapes.

Hands on math:
Today we focused on sorting by sorting groups of instruments in various ways - type (string, wind, percussion), size, shape, colour, etc.

Computers:
Instruments and music games on the iPad (Music House, Virtuoso, The Woodsy Band Jam (story), Discover Musical Instruments, Guitar HD, Drums HD, Xylophone HD, Kids Box, Young Music Genius).

Music:
Danced, sang and played instruments to our Instruments & Music theme compilation cd. We also reviewed the basic hand positioning on the piano and had them practice playing notes with separate fingers rather than just one and even brought out the bongo drums for a little jam session!


French:
French is emphasized throughout the entire day; especially theme related words. Today we practiced saying "J'ai fini" when they are done doing something and also continued to reinforce all of the notions that we covered in previous weeks. We will continue to practice these sentences all week.