February Week 1

Tuesday: Today we started our new unit on honesty and hard work.  We read the Empty Pot by Demi, one of my top ten favorite kids books.  Here is a synopsis of the book from amazon. 

A long time ago in China there was a boy named Ping who loved flowers. Anything he planted burst into bloom. The Emperor loved flowers too. When it was time to choose an heir, he gave a flower seed to each child in the kingdom. "Whoever can show me their best in a year's time," he proclaimed, "shall succeed me to the throne!" Ping plants his seed and tends it every day. But month after month passes, and nothing grows. When spring comes, Ping must go to the Emperor with nothing but an empty pot. Demi's exquisite art and beautifully simple text show how Ping's embarrassing failure is turned triumphant in this satisfying tale of honesty rewarded.

We painted empty pots while we talked about honesty.  I also told a story with lots of fibs for each child.  Everyone took a turn holding more and more blocks with every lie until there were too many to hold!  We also did the letter L and a sorting activity.

Thursday: Letter of the day was the M.  We played a game where the kids collected hearts with letters A-M scattered down the hall and put them in order.  We also worked on our super secret valentine's surprise.

Friday: Math Stations

After our normal circle time routine we did stations.  We did a heart matching game with upper and lower case letters.  We also did a math heart game where the kids rolled a dice and colored in the matching heart. We had several other puzzle and team work stations.  It was a fun friday!

 We read these two books and then talked about lies too heavy to hold.  I told a story about each of the kids where they decided told lies, and then with each lie I gave them a can to hold until they all came spilling down.  The kids really enjoyed hearing the funny stories and talking about what they should do instead.