We love K-3!!

I forgot to include this wonderful group picture in my earlier Teddy Bear Picnic post, so I thought it deserved its own post.

 

We love our bears and we love K-3!

 

Aren't they adorable?!? We love our K-3 kiddos!

Teddy Bear Picnic

Today was our annual Teddy Bear Picnic, held to "celebrate" the letter B! The students all brought special bears from home, and we had a big time.

We gathered our bears into a circle and sang Teddy Bear, Teddy Bear. 

"Teddy Bear, Teddy Bear, turn around ..."

"Teddy Bear, Teddy Bear, touch the ground."

Mrs. Connie put together a wonderful treasure hunt, in which we searched for items starting with a B. The children are really making connections between the letters of the alphabet, the sounds they make, and words that start with a particular letter!

This butterfly was flying in a tree!

Our cuties happily found every item!

Here's a bumblebee that landed in a tree!

When we finished looking for B items, we sat down for a special B-filled snack. We enjoyed berries, bears (teddy grahams), bananas, and "bear juice" (chocolate milk).We even had blue plates and balloon napkins!

Finally, we went on our very own bear hunt! During our snack time, one of the students' bears "escaped" from the quilt on which they were staying. If you're familiar with the book "We're Going on a Bear Hunt" by Michael Rosen and Helen Oxenbury, ours was based on the same story: "We're going on a bear hunt; we're gonna catch a big one! With big green eyes, and a fuzzy little tail ..." They LOVE it!

Found him! He was hiding--where else?--in this "cave"!

After the bear hunt, we came back inside, where our wonderful homeroom mom had put together this cute keepsake bag, filled with goodies ... a plastic bear, special crayon, and a teddy bear picnic coloring page. 

What a fun day!

Sweet & silly

Here are some pictures of our kiddos being sweet ... and also a little silly!  First, the sweet:

And here's the silly ...



I am special!

All week we've been learning about the fact that God made us special and unique. We've been learning about the creation story while also pointing out each others' differences on the inside and out as a way of illustrating how great a creator is our God!

One of our favorite activities is to let the children look into their own mirrors and then draw what they see. You never know what kind of "art" you'll get with 3-year-olds, but this group took their work very seriously! They'd look studiously into their mirrors and then immediately draw a pair of eyes, then look again and draw a mouth--I think we're going to have a lot of talented artists!

After a little self-study, it was time to draw!

Earlier this week we traced our physical shapes onto large white paper. Today we cut each child's out and let them go to down decorating their bodies. Some were really into the unique format (or maybe it was just the fact that the gym floor was our venue--changing the scenery is always fun!), others not so much. But we think we ended up with a lot of nice--and unique!--paper dolls!

Some of our kiddos were so into this activity, they even volunteered to help their friends!

We even had one bright little lady practice drawing her letter of the week: A. We are always learning in K-3!

Remember, no school on Monday! Happy Labor Day to our precious families!

Favorite crafts

Here are some of our favorite craft projects so far this year ...

Inspired by the book "If You Take a Mouse to School."

First-day handprint puzzle--a hit with parents!

We LOVE this one!