Number Octopi

We had another yummy small group :)
The children had to look at a number on the octopi's tentacle, add glue, and then Cheerio's for suction cups based on that number. Not every tentacle was able to get it's suction cups, but the number recognition, and rote counting happened the entire time!

Letter Hunters

Taking a multi-sensory approach to learning is one of the many things I do on a daily basis in my room. When learning, or practicing recognizing the letters each child has their own book, and the magic of dot paint :) Find a letter-give it a dot!

Coconut trees

Turning into the cutest coconut tree's out there :)

Look! There's the Octopus Class up the coconut tree!

This week is Chicka, Chicka, Boom, Boom week :) We will be reading the story, retelling with our own coconut tree, turning into coconut trees, learning the letters that start our name, watching the book on DVD, and today we worked in our journals to write our names on the coconut tree :)

Mat Man

Kate the OT that services my classroom introduced the Octopus Class to her friend Mat Man. Mat man works on body awareness, body parts, and how to draw a person. They got to explore how to build mat man, what the parts of the body do, and then drew a self portrait in their journals.

We sang each body part that we added to Mat Man (tune of: Jolly good fellow):
"Mat man has 2 eyes, 2 eyes, 2 eyes
Mat man has 2 eyes....
so that he can .....see!"

Pete the cat, and our addition and subtraction buttons

We have been reading lots of Pete the Cat books; I love my white shoes, and 4 groovy buttons. Both are classics :)
This week for small group we took our love for Pete and extending that into our first experience with addition and subtraction, as well as practice with counting to 10, and subitizing (recognizing dot patterns on die).
The children had to roll the die, put that number of buttons onto their shirts, and continue until all the buttons were on the shirt. Then for the challenge, roll to remove. Addition and subtraction at it's most basic form!
Before the end of the game, they have to count how many buttons they had on their shirts. To extend that even further for some children we counted how many MORE buttons we had than Pete.
Math professionals!