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We had so much fun celebrating Flag Day today!
After calendar, weather, and circle time, the children and I looked at a picture of the United States flag. We talked a little about its features- its red, white, and blue color and the shapes of its stars and stripes. I set out a set of felt cut outs so that the children could build a replica of the flag. At first, we worked on it together. We talked about which way the stripes should go, where the blue rectangle should go, and how we should place the stars.
It was lots of fun counting out the stripes and all fifty stars!
Placing fifty stars neatly was really tough, but the children did the best they could.
At snacktime, we looked out the window at the drizzle coming down and saw a rabbit nibbling the clover in the back yard. Our bunny friend stayed quite a while, and we were able to observe it well. We noticed that rabbit's big ears moved all around when it was listening, and that it was eating plants. One child noted that rabbit had big back legs and tiny little front legs. We looked for the rabbit's tail but couldn't see it.
Suddenly we noticed some movement further on in the field and saw a doe eating leaves from a bush. She was more difficult to observe because she was so far away, but we could see that she was eating plants and that she had a short tail that she could wiggle to keep bugs away.
Since our Flag Day outdoor scavenger hunt wouldn't be as much fun in the rain, we decided to postpone it, so after snack, we worked on puzzles. Puzzles are great for building so many skills- they are fantastic for fine motor skills, spatial reasoning, strategic thinking, pattern recognition, and logical thinking.
First, we tried a very unique freeform puzzle made of animal shapes. The children named all the animals as we pieced the puzzle together.
Next, we worked on a traditional jigsaw puzzle. We talked about separating edge pieces, organizing them by colors and textures or pictures and joining those first...
...then separating the remaining pieces by color, texture, or recognizable picture.
After the puppy puzzle, we pieced together a set of three puzzles featuring cartoon characters and a set of puzzle pieces that featured Curious George. The Curious George puzzle was a great jumping off point for a discussion about emotions because each face had a different emotional expression. We used the completed George sets to do a little storytelling about why George was feeling the emotion pictured.
Our last big undertaking for the day was working on how to tie a knot. The children used felt strips in patriotic colors to make a fuzzy wreath to decorate the room. We worked on crossing the strips, sliding the top strip under and throug the hole the bottom strip created when lifted, and then pulling the two ends in opposite directions to tighten the knot. Knot tying is an important life skill and comes in handy!
Later in the day we read a poem about June from A Child's Calendar by John Updike. We talked about things we like to do outdoors in June when the weather is nice.
See you tomorrow!