Dental Health Week and the Letter T

We are having a fun week so far learning aobut how to keep our teeth healthy and about the letter T. In fact we have been having so much fun, this is the first chance I get to sit down and share what we have been doing this week.

 

New things happening and Mondays's Eco-Healthy Tip!

We have so many new things going on here at Pettengill Academy! On Friday we are having our first Eco-Healthy Cleaning Workshop. Check out our facebook event for more information. We continue our Dental health unit and next week we do an author student on Dr. Seuss! Pettengill Academy has also joined the 5-2-1-0 program and we will include a lot more information in the future on this!

Now onto our Eco-healthy tip:

Instead of using commercial powders, sprinkle your rugs with baking soda. Baking soda is a natural deodorizer and is safe to use with pets and children.

Eco-Healthy Ways to do your Laundry

I haven't done an Eco-Healthy tip in awhile so today seems like a good day to do one. I make my own laundry detergent for both cost and to help reduce the amount of chemicals that end up on my families clothes. However there are some other ways to help  reduce the chemical exposure in our laundry.

1. Use 1/4-1/2 cup of vinegar to your wash as a fabric softner.

2. Throw wool balls or an old wool sweater to eliminate static and improve dryre efficiency.

3.  Use hydrogen peroxide instead of bleach to whiten oyur clothes.

4. To remove stains use hydrogen perixide, baking soda lemon juice or corn starch.

Here are a list of chemicals that are in laundry detergents and what they diseases they are linked to:

Alkyl phenol ethoxylates (APEs)       Reproductive Harm

Monoethanolamine (MEA)                 Occupational Asthma

Phthalates                                             Reduced fertility, Increase risk of breast cancer,  
                                                               Increased allergy systoms and asthma in children

Synthetic musks: galaxolide and tonalide      Hormone disruption, increase risk of breast cancer

Conversation Heart Activity 4

Today we worked on introducing graphing. We made a picture graph with out Conversation hearts to see which color had more. E did very well placing the hearts with using the color words (color coded of course) instead of the heart picture. After she had put a few on, we talked about which color had more or less (we used the words biggest and smallest). It was a little above her head but it was an introduction. After our short discussion, she I allowed her to place the hearts as she please. E is very linear with her thinking and filled in the rows one by one to the top!

Conversation Heart Activity 3

Yesterday, I introduced touch math to the kiddos. This is a strategy being used in schools to help count numbers verses using fingers to count. This was a great way to show what numbers represent and also allowed the children to work on one to one correspondence. I did sit with E at the beginning of the activity to count with her when she put the hearts on the circle. However, after a couple of minutes, I left her to work. I noticed that as she was placing the hearts on the numbers, she was counting them out!

 "Reading" her chapter book out loud!

Conversation Heart Day 2

Yesterday I did not get a chance to sit down until I went to bed so you will most likely get two blog post today unless I have another active day!

Yesterday, we worked on patterns with our conversation hearts. This was E's introduction to patterns so there definitely was not mastery but it was a great way to explore the concept! I had printed out a bunch of sheets from http://www.prekinders.com/2011/02/candy-heart-patterns/. There was 8 pages starting with a basic AB pattern to ABC to AABB to AAB. Since this was an introduction we started with one of the AB patterns. She did good matching the colors that were there but had a hard time picturing the continuation of the pattern. To help her I colored in the remaining of the hearts in one of the rows which was well for a little while. However, when I tried to show her how to do the patterns, E grabbed a crayon and told me "I just want to color." So we colored the hearts instead!

Conversation Heart Activities!

This week I have planned an activity everyday that has the children using conversation hearts since this Thursday is Valentine's day. It gives the children something different to manipulate and sparks their interest since it is something new to them.

Today I put out a dish of conversation hearts and a mat with six different colored hearts. I did not give them any instruction but allowed them to explore. It was great to watch, when E sat down she automatically started sorting the hearts by color which was the objective of the activity. She loved the activity and stayed interested for 30 minutes. Some of the strategies she came up with were finding one heart for each of the big ones. Then she started filling in all one color at a time. Again this was done on her own with no teacher direction. I did sit down with her towards the end and we worked on naming our colors and some one to one correspondence counting.

We also made "V" vase as

our letter activity of the day!

Snow Painting Hearts

We painted yesterday with snow paint. It is 1 part shaving cream and 1 part glue. The kids painted a red sheet of paper (color of the month) and then when they were dried I cut them out into hearts to help decorate for Valentine's Day. The kids loved painting with the different texture and was a great sensory activity for them!

 

 

 Little "A" squishing the shaving cream...try to figure out what it was.

 

"I love you to Pieces" Art

We are focusing on Valentine's Day as our theme the next two weeks (the rest of the month will be dental hygiene). Today we did a collage style art using scrap paper. I had my 8 month old and 14 month try it. It was a little difficult for them but they tried hard!

 The object was to glue the pieces into the heart but we are working on fostering independence and creativity, I did not correct but allowed the children to glue the pieces as they pleased.

Valentine "V"

This week we are learning about the letter V so we made Valentine Vs. We made a heart stamp using a recycled toilet paper roll and used red and pink paints (colors of the month) to stamp our V's.

Weekend Fun!

I normally only post daycare activities but this weekend we made Super Hero Masks and Capes to do imaginary play with. Saturday afternoon we headed to the store to buy supplies.

Plastic Masks
Stick on gems
Paint Pen
Fabric
Felt
Glue

I am not one to sew, so I cut the top rounded then cut a oval so we could tie the capes easily.

 I glued what E wanted onto the back for her.

 She decorated with butterfly gems that were self-stick.

 Sawyer's Football themed superhero

"Super E" to save the day!

 

This was one of the best projects we have done yet! The kids loved it!