Monthly Madness Planning Blog Hop

 What do you have in the works for the month of November? 

I like to plan for a month of activities so that I am not caught with nothing to do,  but I still like to leave room for all of those teachable moments.

We will be starting off the month by talking about families since Thanksgiving is near and family is a big part of that.    

 How many people are in your family?  Graphing activity

 Children will be writing and drawing about their families and their homes.

Creative art project Who's coming for dinner?

 The month will end with many different activities centered around turkeys.

 Blog Hop Party Rules

Your link must go directly to a blog post with photos and  any  links to books and products that you will be using for your lessons.   The post must also include the image above and a link back to this post. 

Planting Trees with Children and Families

Our outside play areas were in need of shade, so what better way to fix it then to have a family night tree planting party with BBQ.

The Sacramento Tree Foundation came to our school with 32 donated trees and staff to help our families plant a tree with their child. 

We live in an urban forest.

The Sacramento Tree Foundation's mission is to grow healthy, livable communities in the Sacramento region by building the best regional urban forest in the nation. We are leading the effort to plant 5 million trees in our region. 

You can also find us in the Appeal Democrat

Tree planting at Yuba City's Richland Housing tree, yuba, city - Appeal-Democrat

Graphing our Families

In the 3 year old classroom the teacher there is introducing her class to graphing.  This week they found out how many people are in each of their families.

This teacher had them pick out shapes to represent the family members in their family.  Once the children identified the shapes that they had chosen, she then had them draw a picture of each family member on each shape.  Once they had drawn on their shapes she had them find themselves on the graph and glue the shapes on their row.  When they were done she had them count how many members were in their family.

Some of the children got really detailed in their drawings as you can see above.

This teacher will then use this activity to help her meet her observations for her assessment of the Desired Results Developmental Profile.

Thank you Lyndah, for sharing and inviting me to visit your classroom.

What In Your House

The children talked to one another about what they had in their house and the different kinds of rooms that they had.

As they talked about it with each other they also drew what was in their house.

This was a great activity for building on vocabulary and language skills as the children talked to one learning about different things in each other homes.

This is our school community.

Family

This week we have been talking about our families. We have been meeting some of our friend’s families and they have been showing us what some of their family tradition are. We have learned that roti and tortillas are similar family traditions. We have learned that some of us live with our grandparents and our parents in the same house. We have learned that some of us only have a mom living with them and some how only have their dad. We have learned that some of us have our moms and dads over seas because they have been deployed for duty. The most important thing that we all learned is that we are all different and that is OK because we are all friends.

One of the things that I did was to have all the children take home a large cut out of their choice to make a collage on of their family and bring it back to school a share with us. We had cut outs of house, trees and flowers. Once all the children brought them back each child took the time to tell us about their family. We then hung up all the family collages through out the classroom, this helped to bring about the classroom community and that we all belonged.

The children also drew pictures of their families and told us about what they drew.  We dictated what the children said.  Once the pictures are done being on display I will make a book out of all the family pictures and place it in our book nook so the children can keep telling one another about their family.

Craft Stick Homes

The children created their own homes with craft sticks and markers.

Family

To show all the different types of families we had amongst us. We had each child take home a cut out of a house shape. Each child and their family filled their homes with family pictures and decorations. The children brought their house back to school and each child shared who their family was. We placed the houses through out the classroom bring in the individual cultures of each child.