Red Week

The second week in the color unit, we focused on the color red. Red was an easy addition to our shells because the Hermit Crab is red in the story. We did note that the hermit crabs we have in the classroom are purple, orange and red. They are called purple pinchers because their larger claw is a purplish color.
For this activity, we painted one hand of each students and pressed it onto a paper. I saw many different of how to make a crab and this one made the most sense. For the creation of these crab shells, I am trying to expose the students to many different types of textures and materials.

This week we also read The Grouchy Ladybug by Eric Carle and made a set of ladybugs wings for each student. We had a fire drill this day that took away the time that they would have had to do some dramatic play, pairing up and acting out the first and last scene of this story. I would have kept them to do that activity the next day but they all really wanted to take the wings home. We did have a chance to talk about the symmetry of ladybug wings and they all did a great job make the wings look "the same" on both sides.

Our big math sorting activity this week was with m&m's. Instead of making a bar graph like the goldfish activity. I drew out colored circles for each m&m color and the students sorted them accordingly. Once they were sorted, they had to count each group of m&m's. I would write them on the paper then the students would have use their finger tips to make a dot for each m&m. This was the tricky part for them. They really had to follow directions or they would have mixed colors accidentally. They did a really good job. I am fortunate that I have a small number of students and a teaching assistant so my students get a lot of one on one attention.