Bodies, Doctors, and Germs

This morning we learned about bodies, doctors, and germs.  I started the day by reading a great book called, "Germs Make Me Sick".  I read the book while the kids were coloring K the kangaroo since it's a longer book.  You might not be able to tell, but in the picture just below the kids are kicking their feet to fight germs, just like K the kangaroo kicks /k/ /k/ /k/.

 After finishing the story.  I prentended to sneeze into my hand (after secretly putting glitter in my hands) and then I touched and shook hands with everyone.  It was great to watch their faces as they discovered that they were being covered in fake germs!

 Of course, that prompts a "Washing Your Hands" lesson.  Where everyone scribs and sings the ABC's.  We sing the ABC song while washing our hands because soap needs about 20 seconds to reach its germ fighting time, and the ABC's take just about that long to sing.

 We learned our new K book today about Kim the Doctor (or doc).  I'm so impressed with the kids focus on the letters and sounding out the words.  We tap the letters to give us something physical to do while reading.  So when reading the word 'Kim' they touch their pointer finger and thumb to sound out the K, their middle finger and thumb for the I, and their ring finger and thumb for the M, and then blend them together to make the word.

 The biggest new vocabulary word from today was limp.

 Once we figured it out we had to practice limping around the room.

 We used paper plates to draw on some faces and glue on a tissue and a hand to remind us to alway use a tissue - no nose picking please :)

 Math today was superb!  We started focusing on classifying groups of objects according to attributes.  So first I dumped out the silverware tray.  What do they all have in common?  They are all used to eat.  Next I added a paintbrush and we talked about why it didn't "fit" with the others.

 We did the same activity with a doctor set and a tool set.

 Then I introduced the attribute blocks.  I challenged each of the kids to make their own tricky challenge for me to figure out which item doesn't belong.  This was harder with the blocks since they could be sorted by size, shape or color (they didn't discover thickness today).

 We continued our study on how music has a beat by tapping our rhythem sticks to the songs of the Amazing Action Alphabet.