Made in God's image

During our "All About Me" unit, one of the most important things we're learning is that we are made in God's image, by His very hand, and that He loves us no matter what! Today we took a good look at just what that means! Each child received a mirror, and we used these to look at ourselves and record our findings.

Just how did God make us? He made half of us with brown eyes and half with blue. He made some of us tall and some short, some with dark hair, some with light, and some in between! 

Next, we drew pictures of what we saw when we looked in the mirrors. Given that some of the children are just learning to use crayons and pencils, we were pretty impressed with some of their drawings!

We also counted body parts as an introduction to numbers. 

Yesterday we worked on one of Mrs. Connie's and Mrs. LeeAnne's favorite projects - our "My name is ..." craft. We help the children pick out a favorite item that begins with the same letter (or sound) as their first name. 

We love these so much that they will hang in our room all year long!

Earlier in the week, we made mouse puppets to accompany our story "If You Take a Mouse to School."

We finished this mini-unit with a shape school craft. The children were able to identify many of the shapes as we worked!

Here are some scenes from this week's free play - some of the children are beginning to interact with each other more, as opposed to parallel play, where they simply play alongside each other. 

We love our K3 friends!

Monday Funday

What a fun day we had today!! We read the book "Chrysanthemum," by Kevin Henkes, which is all about learning to love the name you've been given. We talked about our own names, then we did a super shimmery name craft!

Look for these name signs to be displayed on one of our classroom doors very soon!

We also had a special furry visitor today. Cubby, the new K4 classroom pet, stopped by for a visit. 

The children loved seeing this long-haired hamster - it was hard for them to contain their excitement! 

We look forward to visiting Cubby throughout the year!

Kissing hands and furry friends

This week, our K3 kiddos continue to adjust to routine and structure within a school setting. To help with this, we read "The Kissing Hand," in which Chester Raccoon learns of a special way to keep Mommy's love close to him while he's at school. 

Mrs. Connie bought these special treats to go along with our story. 

Today, everyone brought special friends from home while we read "Wemberly Worried." We played a game where we introduced ourselves and our stuffed friends, and the children loved it!

Of course, there was also plenty of free play -

Sometimes a girl just needs to cook! :)

New friends

What a great first week we've had in K3! Most of our time so far has been spent learning each other's names, singing songs, telling stories, and getting used to the structure of a school day. It is so sweet seeing the children making friends already!

Mrs. Connie singing the "Alligator" song. 

Since today was too rainy to play outside, we made up our own indoor recess. Our students enjoyed playing games of bean bag toss and jumping on this mini-trampoline. 

Each child got a chance to jump, and we counted the number of jumps. 

We continued Friday's discussion of feelings and played with the happy/sad masks we made ...

... and Mrs. Connie read the book "When I'm Angry."

It was a great day!

We're almost ready ...

We had a great time meeting our new families (and reuniting with some old friends) at last week's Back-to-School Bash. We can't wait to get to know our precious K3 students even better as school begins next week!