April Fun in the 3's

Good afternoon 3’s families,

This morning we had our Pete the Cat Pizza Party! Our room was transformed into a rainbow of colors and smiles. We had fun playing a game at circle time, making our fruit pizzas and listening to music while we ate our snack. It was a rainy day, but we had a blast indoors anyway. After our snack, we had some time to do some dancing since we couldn’t go outside for recess. It was a GREAT day!

This week at CIRCLE TIME,

· We read Pete the Cat and the Perfect Pizza Party, by James Dean and Kimberly Dean. In this story, Pete the Cat and his friends have a Perfect Pizza Party. Each friend likes something different on their pizza: cheese, pepperoni, pickles, pistachios, papayas, pretzels and popcorn! We talked about what toppings the children liked on their pizza too. The consensus was that no one wanted pickles on their pizza!

· We danced during music and movement.

· We played a new shape identification game. We put cards up on the easel with shoes on them. Each shoe had a different shape on it. I hid a little paper cut-out of Pete the Cat behind the shoes and the children had to guess behind which shoe he was hiding. Each child took a turn chanting, “Pete the Cat, where are you? Are you hiding behind the “circle” shoe?” They did a great job! Ask your child behind which shape Pete was hiding!

What’s new in CENTERS this week?

Art: The children made pizza collages. They used glue bottles to glue on cheese (yellow yarn), pepperonis (red pom poms), and paper pretzels, popcorn, pickles and papayas. They also used dot markers to decorate chef’s hats and colored Pete the Cat Pizza coloring pages.

Easel- New center! Now that the children have learned how to use and take care of painting and other art materials, we have opened up our easel in the classroom. This week, there were pictures of flowers to paint with paintbrushes and to color using crayon rocks.

Discovery Bins: Sorting and classification practice this week with grown-up and baby animal puzzles.

Yellow Bins: Counting, patterning and sorting with colored pegs and foam pegboards. We encouraged the children to make “AB” patterns on the boards (red, blue, red, blue). They caught on quickly!

Green Bins: They are still loving the giant waffle blocks. The children started building roads, ramps and farm fences, so we added some cars and animals to this center.

Red Bins: We added an Animal Hospital playset to this center along with little people and vehicles. We even found some superhero little people in our toy closet- those were a BIG hit!

It’s hard to believe that next week is April break. We look forward to welcoming the students back on Thursday, April 29th!

Your teachers,

Brenda Daday & Christina Renoni

P.S. Lots of pictures to share this week, make sure to check out the attachment!