Whale Day

Today we had a whale of a good time.

We started the day by reading these two books:

Baby Beluga, from Raffi's song.  The children loved this book.  After singing/reading it to them twice, I shared this youtube link with them.  They watched it six time before showing me mercy and letting us move on with the day.  Ha, ha, ha.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YjUYAom5i4c

Then we read one of my favorite children's picture books,

The Whale's Song by Dyan Sheldon and Gary Blythe is a beautifully lyrical story about a girl, her mother and the truth about whales.

We then watched this youtube link and talked about the different attributes of whales, they are big, they are bumpy, they are fast, they are grey.  I then turned the conversation to their voices.  We listened to these whales sing, then I turned on my iTunes to Whales in Nature and this played as the backdrop to our whale morning.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D6-spYtVWkw

Time to get hands on!

We started with some math.

These mats were so simple to make.  Simply cut circles in one shade of blue to glue to a piece of construction paper in a different shade of blue, then program them one-eight, or go as high or low as you wish.  I threw in some letter recognition by adding W's in the dead space, just to assure they make the connection to our letter of the week, throw in a bag or two of these,

and there you have it.

Whale counting mats.  The children really enjoyed couting their whales.

She's asking if she has three.  We counted, discovered she had four and talked about what needed to happen for her to have only three.  GREAT MATH!

Time to get artsy.

The children painted paper sack whales.  

He turned out to be pretty cute, I think.

Now it was time to get wet and wacky!

WHALES IN WATER.  What a wonderful sensory fun time.

I added foam Ww's just to assure the kids keep making the connection between the play and the learning.

Next we made some whale W's.  In advance, I glued a big blue W to the center of piece of construction paper, cut out and glued a head on one end and a tail on the other.  Then I dotted a lower and upper case Ww to the bottom corner.

As always we started our letter of the week art by writing out letter Ww.

Then we painted our whales' heads and tails, and even though I invited the children to paint over the big W neither chose to do so.

We glued on a wiggly eye and there you have it, a W whale.

What else does one serve for lunch on whale day except fish?  

And so I did.  Fish sticks, peas, apple slices, tator tots and just for fun, gold fish crackers.  We washed it all down with a big glass of milk.  

After lunch I turned on Sounds of Nature-Whales Song from my iTunes library and the children took a nap.

Of course we had whales and fruit juice for snack, how could we not?

We practiced writing out names and did a whale Ww writing sheet then we worked on our oral language skills by answering the question, "What would you do all day if you were a whale like Baby Beluga?"

The children glued a wiggle eye to the outside of their Whale's Tale book and I recorded their response inside.  Super cute stories.  My kidos are so creative.

What a wonderful whale day we had.

See you tomorrow,

Ms. P