Transition W/F, Week of February 23, 2015
Up, Up, and Away!
I hope everyone had a wonderful vacation! I'm sure you feel as excited as I do to get back to our regular routine this week!
We are jumping into one of my favorite themes this week: Transportation! We will learn that transportation is a fancy word for how we get from one place to another. We have so many ways to travel! We will start off focusing on air travel, as many of our students have recently traveled on an airplane. If you have any mementos from travel, like tickets or luggage tags, please feel free to send them in for your child to share! We will learn about traveling on an airplane and the concept of packing luggage to prepare for your trip. We will also learn about hot air balloons with a class experiment. The children will practice making predictions about which passengers will allow our classroom "hot air balloon" to float and which will cause it to sink! We will not focus on whether these predictions are correct, focusing instead on creating an atmosphere of inquisitiveness, where the children feel confident coming up with predictions and sharing them with others!
Some of the vocabulary we will introduce and review this week includes transportation, airplane, airport, pilot, co-pilot, wings, flying, passengers, flight attendants, helicopter, and hot air balloon.
Music Time!
One song we will sing this week is called "I'm a little airplane." The melody is just a scale. The first line is all one note, then you move up a step and sing the next line. For the second verse, we sing down the scale again. We will move with our bodies like our voices are moving, flying like airplanes all around the room!
I'm a Little Airplane
(pretend to drive your airplane around on the ground, moving it higher with each line that you sing...)
I'm a little airplane.
I taxi round and round.
I'm a little airplane.
Now, I leave the ground.
I'm a little airplane,
flying up so high!
I'm a little airplane.
Now, I'm in the sky!
(fly around the room pretending to travel to different places)
I'm a little airplane,
flying over trees.
I'm a little airplane,
flying on the breeze.
I'm a little airplane.
Hear my motor hummmm.
I'm a little airplane.
Down and down I come.
(pretend to land your airplane on the ground)
Transition W/F, Week of March 2, 2015
Sail Away with Transition!
We had a blast last week with the beginning of our Transportation unit! The children all participated in making predictions during our “hot air balloon” experiment. They each had a turn to select a “passenger” for our helium balloon and predict whether they thought the passenger would make the balloon float or sink! There are a few pictures and a video below from our fun activity!
This week, we will learn about transportation on water. We learn about ferry boats and sailboats. We will build sailboats out of classroom materials and sail them by making wind with our mouths! We will take a look at how to draw a sailboat using curved lines and straight lines or cut-out shapes. Finally, we will review the Bible story from our last Chapel, when Jesus calmed the storm. We never have to be afraid, because God is our helper, and he is powerful enough to stop a storm!
The children will review and explore other types of transportation in our classroom centers, like our snowy train tracks in the discovery table and our Airport in dramatic play!
Some of the vocabulary we will introduce and review includes transportation, boat, captain, dock, anchor, sail, motor, crew, lifejacket, ticket, float, cruise, airport, airplane, check-in, ticket, baggage claim, cockpit, and boarding pass.
This is a book we are reading throughout the Transportation unit. It is a lot of fun and quickly becomes a class favorite! http://youtu.be/cSw50Jw0H34
Transition W/F, Week of March 9, 2015
Hitting the Road!
So far, we have learned about types of transportation in the air and in the water! This week, we are back on dry land, talking about transportation that travels on the road. We will read about cars, trucks, constructions vehicles, emergency vehicles, and more! We will do an activity recreating a car by gluing different parts, like in the bookMy Carby Byron Barton. The students will have the chance to practice fine motor skills by "washing cars" with squeeze bottles, and they will build strength in the gym by completing an obstacle course on the scooter "cars!"
Some of the vocabulary we will introduce and review this week includes transportation, driver, car, road, steering wheel, brake, stop, go, truck, motorcycle, bike, van, trailer, passenger, seat belt, and fire truck.
Transition, Week of March 16, 2015
Next Stop: Trains!
We saved the best for last in our Transportation unit! This week, we will be learning all about trains. We will create our own creative versions of the MBTA map in the Monday class, posting the the maps around the room for exposure to real print. We will practice identifying shapes as we assemble them to create a larger picture of a train, move like trains in the gym, practicing matching the ticket color (red, orange, green, or blue) with the train we are getting on, and make train sculptures out of recycled materials. The children will also have the chance to sort modes of transportation based on where they travel: air, water, road, or tracks.
There will be opportunity to review previous transportation discussed with new classroom centers like our fire station in dramatic play and our construction trucks in the discovery table!
Some of the vocabulary we will introduce and review this week includes Transportation, train, conductor, engineer, railroad, wheel, brake, stop, go, track, station, subway, tunnel, and passenger.
Music Time!
Last week, we sang the familiar song "Wheels on the Bus." This week, the children will hear the song "Down By the Station" with two different versions as books in the classroom library. Here is a video of one version. The melody varies slightly in the different versions.
http://youtu.be/em1XkoFkBVU
Music, Month of March
We are all looking forward to March in hopes of warmer weather...no more mitten songs!
In our Toddler and Transition classes, we will use the musical snake which is a brightly colored band which helps us keep a steady beat to our songs. We also do large movement with it.
We will begin some of our spring songs such as "John the Rabbit" and "Little Bird Little Bird."
We will learn the dance Looby Loo and possibly add hula hoops for added fun and challenge ... put our hand IN the hoop and put our whole body IN the hoop and turn yourself about …
https://9d13437d7de14155f5cb-c488f6e2f3a25e89340a5b6907d61b01.ssl.cf1.rackcdn.com/ns2qmdhpt6/21%20Oh,%20John%20The%20Rabbit.mp3
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