The letter "L" and lions! ROAR!!!

Painting, crafts and more while learning about L and Lions!
We spent lots of outside and inside arts and crafts creating time this week.  We played with many different types of sensory materials while discovering the letter "L" and learning all about LIONS!  Monday we sent home some simple little lions we glued with triangle ears, a circle face and rectangle whiskers.  We discussed these shapes as we glued and placed the brown and black colors papers onto their orange or yellow backgrounds.  We also painted  scenes from what we viewed Youtube of lions  ROARING!
We ROARED quietly and LOUD just like a lion and we stomped and  walked just like lions do.  

We utilized our LOVE for playdough and  compared and contrasted the footprints  of our plastic tigers, lions and giraffes  while mushing, smashing, cutting  and molding our play dough.  
We also crafted our lion  puppets and learned about lions' manes and that the male (boy) lions have  manes but the female lions (girls) do not.  We viewed and discussed the  differences watching this Youtube clip.

We also  compared and contrasted the animal  footprints with paint of different
colors.  We noticed that the giraffes  feet were very small compared to the
lions, even though the giraffes were tall  and the lions are shorter.

Our sweet friend as also visiting while we learned and played and the children thought the WORLD of her.  She loved being a big helper and feeling like the  oldest and biggest.  She is a twin and the youngest of five children.  I met  her family when they were in search for childcare when their oldest daughter,  now 18 and going off to college, was only a fresh faced two year old!  I raised  their children for some time until they transferred with their careers to  another state.  Through the closeness of our relationship that developed while  providing care for their children grew, we  managed to maintain close contact  regardless of where life lead.  Now, here we all are in Overland Park together!   Its WONDERFUL!!!

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These heavily maned lions had LOTS of glue squeezed and painted all over the yellow and brown yarn to hold them together. Their safari friends were a little lesson in social/emotional skills...naming how we feel and putting the face to the feeling...

During our letter learning times we cut out the letter, glued it...drew it in the sand, made it with leaves and sticks and their favorite were the "lovely letter L's!"  Children LOVE glitter and we also sent home our clothes pin lovely "L's" on Friday for you to practice finding letter "L" words and clipping the letter to the item.  This is wonderful fine motor skill, language and phonics practice at home with YOU :)!

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We have also had TONS of mealtime fun this week.  Since we seem to be on a turkey bacon kick, its makes a perfect opportunity to make all things into faces.  We have been talking about how we feel.  How we think our little faces on our plates feel and what we can do to help our friends if they are sad, mad, angry or frustrated!  These are big emotions for little bodies and minds to figure out and we continue to sing our "S.T.A.R." song and Welcome songs daily to help us transition from our home family to our school family times.

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Does A Kangaroo Have a Mother Too? By Eric Carle was our favorite book last week as it too talks about lions.  We will continue to read it another week, as well as, our class favorites.

Big Emotions and Little BABES!

Many of you have expressed concerns about temper tantrums and being concerned about what to do and asking if, even the really, really big ones are "normal."   

The term "normal" is really very loose.  It suggests that a child that is laid back and may not be prone to tantrums in the same manner as a child that is more sensitive is somehow more "normal."  All children go through developmental stages of testing boundaries, authority and autonomy.  This is typical.  The expression of frustration, anger, and stress is also typical. 

I jokingly refer to toddlers as "cave-babies!"  In my many years working with toddlers I have (again very tongue in cheek) determined that our job as parents of young children is to help them learn "human :))"  They will kick, scream, cry, throw things, bite, hit and shove.  We can help them by modeling "human" and NOT doing the same even in the midst of an emotional wild-wild west!

I have embedded the link to the first in the series of Conscious Discipline for your review.  These videos are 30 minutes in length but have a WEALTH of information for all of us to soak in.  I have watched these over and over again and just can't get enough.  I will post one a week for us to review and I will provide a synopsis of each one the following week for those that did not get to watch. 

Have a GREAT evening and next week we will be talking about the letter "M", monkey, mouse and moose!