Week 5 Day 1

Book choices for today:

Touch   Sue Hurwitz
Touch   Patricia Murphy
I Can Tell By Touching   Carolyn Otto
From Seed to Sunflower   Gerald Legg
The Missing Sunflowers   Maggie Stern
Sunflower   Miela Ford
This is the Sunflower   Lola Schaefer

Science: (first circle)

Need for lesson – Touch Boards, Touch Tablets, and Fabric Squares, sensory tub with fall objects (straw, apples, acorns, pumpkins, etc.)

Science 9
You use your sense of touch when you reach out with your hand to feel an object. If you touch a cotton ball it feels soft. If you touch a worm it feel slimy. If you fall of your bike and scrape your knee it feels sore. Your skin is a very large organ that covers your entire body. If you scratch or cut your skin your body can make new skin to take its place. Your skin is growing all the time. You have many nerve endings in your skin. These nerve endings send messages to your brain. You can feel different things because of these nerve endings. You can feel things that are hot or cold. When you get a hug from your mom or dad you can feel that too. Aren’t we glad we have the sense of touch?

This is the Sensory Table in the classroom. We had sand inside of it during the summer and changed it to rice when school started. I decided the rice needed some color, and so I used food coloring to give the rice a little Fall color. I added cinnamon sticks, tractors, pumpkins, pine cones, corn, and pieces of straw craft hay. If you do not have a table a small tub can be used (dish tub or other container).

Additional Work:

Balloon Feel and Match – Balloons are filled with various items seen the clear containers. Children feel the balloons to match what they think is inside. Color code the bottom of the containers to match the color of the balloon for control of error.

Art:

Finger Painting

Botany: (second circle)

Need for lesson – Sunflower heads and tweezers, Three-part Sunflower Matching

Botany 4
Boys and girls the air is changing outside. What do you think is happening? What change is taking place? That’s right, it is just about time for the season of Summer to change to Autumn. In the Autumn or Fall, the weather gets cooler. People are very busy in their gardens at this time of the year, especially farmers. The growing time for plants is about to end and the harvest, or the final gathering of fruits and vegetables is about to start. Animals also are busy at this time of the year gathering food. Sunflowers are one of the plants that have been growing all summer and now it is time to gather the seeds from the flowers. Sunflowers can grow to be very tall, taller than all of you, even taller than me! During the day, sunflowers actually will turn toward the sun and follow it as it moves across the sky. Isn’t that amazing? Birds, squirrels, and other animals enjoy the seeds from a sunflower very much. Some people like to eat them as well. We can save some of the seeds and plant them in the Spring so more sunflowers will grow. We will also use tweezers to remove the seeds from these sunflower heads to feed the birds with. Show the children sunflower head an all its seeds.

Additional Works:

Sunflowers 1-10 Counting – I made some small cards, and painted a sunflower on them, each having some seeds from 1-10 and stems with the numerals 1-10. The children put out the numbered stems across their mat in order from 1-10. They then take a sunflower card, count the seeds and match it to the correct number card.

Build a Sunflower – On a tray I have pre-cut felt pieces of yellow petals, a green stem, brown center, and green leaves. I also have a small fake sunflower on the tray. The children make a sunflower with the felt pieces.

Practical Life:

Wood Polishing
Flower Arranging

Art:

Sunflowers – On tray have pre-cut yellow petals, stems, and leaves, glue, pencil and blue construction paper. Children can make a sunflower how they would like using the pre-cut pieces.

Sunflowers – Small white paper plates, yellow and brown paint on small trays or plates, green pre-cut stems and leaves, sponges cut into a triangle shape and just a square shape, glue and marker for child’s name. Add clothespins to sponges and place the triangle sponge into the yellow paint and the square sponge into brown paint. Children write their names on the back of a small white paper plate. Glue their sunflower leaves and stem onto the paper plate. Then they will sponge paint brown in the center of their plate and then sponge paint the yellow petals all around the brown center on the plate.