Harvesting Pumpkin Fun

This week we learned about pumpkins, parts of pumpkins, growth cycle of pumpkins and the color orange.  There was a lot of fine motor needed to cut out our pumpkin faces.  We put them all together on a paper to make a "Pumpkin Quilt".  Practice cutting at home with thumb up to the ceiling, pointed part of scissors going away from child and helping hand holding paper. 

 Creating and label just like scientists, the parts of a pumpkin.  Stem, skin, pulp, , seed, leaf, vine are all parts of the pumpkin.  We hung these up too!

Hope you were able to read the pumpkin growth cycle book with your child.  They all worked very hard on this.  And we learned yellow and red make orange too!

All About ME!

It has been a super week getting to know the kiddos even more.  Finding likes and differences between ourselves and our friends.  We even have some new centers in our classroom for this week.

 Super potato heads, super hero capes and masks

 Loose parts... using objects to construct faces

We decorated our own hand prints and hung them up.

Enjoy our photos celebrating a Super First Month of 4K!  YES, we have already had school for a whole month.  We are really developing our social and independence skills.

Me & My Friends

All about ourselves and are friends.  We see how we are alike and how we are different.  A challenging thing that we are learning is that  we are still friends with each other even if we choose to do something different than one of our friends.

I  switched our painting project,with the Mat Man project at the last minute to make sure no paint got on our wonderful picture clothes.  I have been editing and the kiddos look so nice. Hoping to have order forms ready for Fridays, red folder.  YES, FRIDAY!! We have school on Friday, September 20th.  This Friday will also be our super hero dress up day.  Wear a costume or put on a pillow case for a cape.  Be as simple or as elaborate as you like.

Enjoy  the self portraits your little person created in class. If you didn't make the open house they are decorating our entry way.

Me and My Family

This week we have been learning about each others families. We all have different kinds of families.  We made our own family trees.  We hope you can make our open house on Wednesday, September 11, from 5-6:30. 

Ask your kiddo about magic coloring.  We are learning to color in the lines, using a tripod grip, and fill in the entire area.

Coloring

• Grasp
• 3-fingers to hold crayon
• Show video/use crayon song
• Use tiny crayons (broken crayons) 
• Prevents holding crayon with fist
• Coloring hand
• Need to rest dominant hand on surface to stabilize
• Helps with control of crayon
• Helping hand
• Needed to hold paper in place
• Coloring tools
• Markers offer less resistance
• Good for those that struggle to use crayons due to weakness
• Offer less control than crayons
• Crayons offer more resistance 
• Allow for more control
• Help build fine motor strength
• Accuracy
• Bolded boundary lines
• Thick > thin
• Gradually decrease thickness
• 1/4” > 3/16” > 1/8” 
• Raised borders
• Stencils
• Cookie cutters
• Glued lines
• Completion / Thoroughness
• Size of area to color
• Small > large
• Less fatigue with smaller area
• “Magic”
• Encourage students to do magic and make the white area disappear

It has been a Fantastic start to a Fantastic Fox 4K year!!!  We celebrated today with woodland animal masks and play!  We have been working hard on learning routines, waiting, listening and taking turns.