While they were doing that I talked to them about days of the week and showed them a "Today is..." chart I had put together (thank you Dollar Tree) with a "Today's weather is..." section and we talked about those good ol' days of the week and made sure we picked the right weather slip to show today's weather.
Another little poster I had in kit for them was Our Class Rules. I had thought of 4 simple, kind of all-encompassing rules. They got to pick their order and glue them down together. Our Class Rules are, in the order chosen by our kids, 1) Listen to the teacher, 2) Be kind to others, 3) Try my best!, and 4) Be a good helper.
(I thought they were good and simple for our 4-year-olds.)
After we cleaned up our Playdough, we had Circle time. (We even remembered to have an opening prayer this time!) We started talking about rain, as part of our Weather theme this month. We talked about the sounds that rain makes and made our own rain sounds with our bodies, but not our mouths! We tippy-tippy tapped our fingers for the beginning drizzle, clapped as it was raining harder, slapped our knees for a strong downpour and stomped our feet and gave loud claps for the thunder and lightning. Then as the storm ended we did it all in reverse. THEY LOVED IT. (I think that was the favorite of the day in fact.) So we did it three times.
Then we settled down to read a book about the rain. After that we could focus at the table and play with some cotton ball clouds and cups of water to talk about how clouds get heavy with water and then the water "rains" out of them. After a while we set the clouds down and used some shaving cream to float some clouds on our water. The kids each picked a color of food coloring to rain down inside our cups. Then the kids stirred their cups with a Popsicle stick and we saw that our clear water was full of little bits of "mist" - their clouds had come down!
After cleanup, we dried our hands (and the table, and A's shirt!) and did our project - a Days of the Week match-up Game! First we all sorted out 7 clothespins (pre-marked, written in the colors of the rainbow) with the 7 days of the week. We sang a little song to help us make sure all of our friends had one of each and helped each other get them in the right order. (This next part makes me so happy - have you ever noticed how there are 7 days in the week and 7 colors in the rainbow. So each day had it's own color!!) That actually helped the kids make sure they had all of their days and I had written the colors on the back so they can use it as a rainbow color wheel game later if they want to. Then they sorted out their pieces of paper, one for everybody, and we glued them down with glue sticks.
Our snack was some mini bagel rainbows that the kids all got to spread with cream cheese, all by themselves! Then they decorated them with a rainbow of Fruit Loops. Those who finished sooner and cleaned up their places went to read books from the library about rain, the weather, and the next subject for the day, our bodies!
After everyone was done, we had a few wiggles songs from my favorite kids singer, Joe Scruggs. We played The Turn Around Game and There's a Wiggle in My Toe. And had a lot of fun feeling our bodies move in different ways. We were ready to read a book about our bodies after that. And with our new knowledge, we had good ideas of things to draw during our next activity, tracing our bodies!
And by the end of that, it was time for lunch!
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