Rainbows and Leprechauns in the OC! - Teacher Christine

Wow, did we have a fun-filled week in the Older Class. This week was super charged with the magic of rainbows, pots of gold, leprechauns, and to end the week, a treasure hunt! 

On Monday, we made rainbows on clouds using strips of paper in all the colors of the rainbow. The kids worked to identify the order of the colors and then taped or stapled their rainbows to the cloud. Then they glued cotton balls to the ends of the rainbow.

Our second activity on Monday was a sorting and graphing game with Lucky Charms cereal. The kids were given a scoop of cereal and they sorted out the different marshmallows. Then, they graphed them by shape. As you can imagine, there was a little bit of taste testing as well. :)

On Wednesday the kids collaborated on a fantastic set of leprechaun traps! They were so creative with all of the materials and had a blast working together to try and trap those sneaky leprechauns.

We also painted rocks gold and added glitter to entice the leprechauns into the traps!

Friday was the culmination of a very exciting week. The leprechauns visited the classroom very early on Friday morning and left gold glitter all over the classroom as well as little green footprints. But the most exciting part of it all was a clue to start the kids off on a treasure hunt all over the building. 

The kids followed a series of clues all through the building.

They found a pot of gold at the very end and each child got to pick out a few treasures!

The kids had a great time on Friday predicting how many gems they would need to make their pot of treasure sink. We charted out each child's prediction and then the actual number. They had lots of fun counting out gems and sinking the treasure. The results are posted in the hallway. Check it out!

It's Panda time! Three of our friends took Panda on some amazing adventures this past week. Panda got to ride a horse, go to swimming lessons, ride in a cool cart at Home Depot and have some pretty awesome sleepovers.

We added black beans to our texture table this week and the kids loved the way it looked with our castle. This has definitely been a popular toy to play with! 

We had so much sensory fun at the play dough station.

The kids always enjoy some quiet time with a puzzle or two.

They enjoyed our Little People Zoo so much that we kept it out for another week of fun.

The kids are getting so creative at the writing station. This week, some of them made the their own books with stamps.

The kids love playing with alphabots!

Building and knocking down castles was one of their favorite activities this week.

Here is a look at your kids playing around the room!

At circle time, we had fun singing, dancing, and making music with the rhythm sticks.

We enjoyed reading several books about leprechauns including one about how to make a good leprechaun trap. 

Hieronymus Bets and His Unusual Pets is a new favorite.

Another fun book we discovered this week was There Was an Old Lady Who Swallowed a Clover.

We read them a poem left by the leprechauns that guided them on their Friday treasure hunt.

We practiced letter recognition and sounds and made some consonant-vowel-consonant "-at" words. 

The kids had a lot of fun reviewing their sink/float predictions together!

On Friday we made our weekly trip to the library for a special story time.

It sure feels like spring outside! Everyone enjoyed the sunshine and warmer weather at recess.

Next week we start exploring space!

See you tomorrow!
Christine and Meghan