Oops! I made a mistake! The tune to our fire fighter song isn't "Clementine"! It's the one that goes with "Hi, Ho, the Derry-O". The kids practiced today and just about have it memorized. While memorizing isn't really that important, we do work on sequencing, complete sentence structures, and conceptual knowledge when we repeat the song often!
Our 'buildings' that we made out of small boxes were dry and the kids put pictures of what each building is suppose to be on top. After matching the building with word on our floor mat, the kids got the cars and trucks out to play together.
Using shaving cream and paint (red, orange, and yellow), the kids made ''fire' on their individual mats. We took the opportunity to write letters in the shaving cream, especially the upper and lower case 'f'. Donning our fire hats, we took the 'fire mats' out to the playground, setting them against the fence. Before spraying their fires with their water squirters, the kids went up the playground ladder, slid down the slide, climbed over the dome and ran to the fire. This activity gave us so much to talk about during and after the squirting!
As we watched "Elmo's Neighborhood" about the fire fighters, I stopped the video at random points and took turns retelling what we saw or answering 'wh' questions.
We practiced tracing lines and shapes to get ready for our writing. The kids were told to get their red, orange and yellow markers out and draw a fire in their writing journal. They each drew their own kind of fire and it was great. Drawing upon all of our activities, each child had so much to dictate about the topic.
There's always a 'gem of the day' that I hear, but I usually don't write it down and forget it by blog time. I am going to earnestly try to write them down and share them with you. The 'gem' for the day came from Evan who told Suzanna, after she showed us the picture she drew, was, "Susanna, you are such a great artist!" More gems to come in other blogs.
