Circles and Round Things

We began our morning by signing in with a sticker on our evergreen tree [after playtime, of course]. Then we went out side to see what today's weather was like. It was mostly cloudy, but the sun was working hard to shine through. When we came back in we went through our weather plates and chose the proper one to represent today's weather.

Then we reviewed our theme of stars from last week and sang "Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star" and took a last look at the stars on the ceiling.

Next we moved right into the reading of our first book If You Give a Pig a Pancake by Laura Numeroff . Two of the children knew the book quite well and could tell what was going to happen next.

 Everyone enjoyed the story, even though we thought the pig was messy and didn't use good manners all the time. When we came to the part where the pig decides to dance we stopped and used our Action Box so we could do some movement as well.

After we finished reading the book we talked about the shape of a pancake. The children all knew it was a circle so I showed them the circle drawn on the chalkboard and the word "circle" inside it. We then went to the craft table to do some circle paintings by dipping styrofoam cups into a thin puddle of paint on a paper plate.

Didn't these turn out cute? And don't you like our "smiling" faces as we posed with our artwork?

Then we sat back down to talk about "round". First I had a squishy ball to demonstrate round and we talked about how it's different from a circle which is flat. The children were able to name many things that is round and then we looked through half of the book, Round is a Pancake by Joan Sullivan Baranski, and found lots more items in the pictures that were round or circular than what the story mentioned. If the children want to read all of that book they will need to check it out at the library as we stopped in the middle and went to the craft table to make a paper plate circle collage.

The collages were made by following directions. I had a bag with red, blue and yellow circles in it and lots of punched circles of these colors in different sizes spread on the table. I also had punched out different patterned circles and had them on the end of the table. If I drew a colored circle out of my bag the children had to chose one of that color in the size of their choice and glue it onto their plate. If I drew out a white circle they could go to the end of the table and chose a patterned circle and glue it on.

The plates soon became full enough that the circles had to overlap. The collages turned out very cute also and will make some nice wall art at home.

We ended our morning by eating some "round treats" [donut holes], taking home our artwork, and a couple "homework" sheets: one to trace circles and color them in red on a tree and the other to cut out circles and make a teddy bear head.

The children were very cooperative and worked hard as usual.

Next week we will have a monkey theme for Story Hour. On Thursday, November 6th Story Hour will be cancelled so Mitzi may attend the Wisconsin Library Association's annual conference to learn some new things!