Introducing... Mat Man!

We learned how to make Mat Man this week. Mat Man is from our Handwriting Without Tears curriculum. Mat Man helps the children develop body awareness, drawing and counting skills.
At ground, each child got a peice of Mat Man, then we listened to the Mat Man song which tells us that Mat Man as 1 head to think, 2 eyes to see, 1 nose to smell, 1 mouth to eat, 2 ears to hear, 1 body to hold what's inside (heart, tummy, lungs), 2 arms to reach, 2 hands to clap, 2 legs to stand, and 2 feet to walk.

A finished Mat Man

This student works on making Mat Man during centers.

Open House

On October 13th, 2011 we had our open house. For our open house we decided to make apple muffins. We used a recipe. The recipe told us the ingredients we needed, how much of the ingredients to put into the muffins and how long to cook the muffins. Some of our friends thought the muffins were going to explode, but after we watched them cook they decided that they just grew bigger! If you were unable to make it to open house, this is what you missed.

Some friends exploring the muffin mix before we mixed the muffins.

This family enjoys decorating a pumpkin at open house!

This child is helping pass out our muffins to other families!

Fall and Nature!

It's officially fall. The children have been noticing all the leaves that are on the ground. We've talked about where the leaves come from ("The trees!") and why they fall to the ground ("They might be dead.") It was also fun to rake the leaves and make leave angels!

A leaf angel!

It was all about nature this week. We went on a nature walk and gathered things like sticks, leaves, rocks, grass, acorns, dirt and grass. It was neat to see the different shapes, sizes and colors for each item we found. Then we painted, but instead of paintbrushes we used the items we found on our nature walk.

This student uses a rock as a stamp!

This child is using an acorn to make marks on his paper!

This child uses his hands to roll a pine cone onto his paper!