Bananas in The Jungle!

Today we started the day using descriptive words.  We used magnifying glasses to explore some strange cardboard shapes.  The kids had to come up with many different words to talk about the shapes.  They were using good words like pointy and hard and sharp.

Ms. Michelle was here today and it was so beautiful outside!  Finger Fun was mixed in with the obstacle course today, so that everyone was busy and no one was waiting.  While one group used strings and beads to make long chains and patterns, the others took turns going through the course.  The course started with putting two pegs in the pegboard, then two clothespins on the sticks, then feeding the piggybank two coins, then using the tongs to match colored blocks and buckets.  The kids then had to use two large foam blocks to make a castle that everyone added to when it was their turn. The last step was to ride a hand motion scooter from the green cone to the red cone.  Lots of motor planning and processing in OT today!!

Today's book was Beautiful Bananas by Elizabeth Laird.  In the story Beatrice sets out for her grandfather's house, balancing a bunch of bananas on her head.  On her walk, the giraffe's tail accidentally sweeps the fruit into the river.  The giraffe apologizes and gives Beatrice a bunch of flowers instead, but those are ruined by a swarm of bees.  The bees give her a piece of honeycomb, which is spilled and replaced with mangos. Each animal encounter destroys one gift and provides another.  Her journey ends with the elephant handing her a new bunch of bananas for the grandfather.

After the book we made a chart all about fruits and the way that we eat them. Some fruits need peeling, like bananas, because we don't eat the outside skin.  Other fruits don't need peeling, we can eat the whole thing.  But, some fruits, like apples, you can eat either way depending on what you like.  We talked about some reasons that fruits have the skins that we don't eat.....and that the most important thing when eating fruit is to make sure and wash it first.  Whether you get it from the jungle or the grocery store, it all needs washing first!

Our art today was a good following directions activity with lots of pieces.  The kids made a monkey puppet.  They had to use the pieces they were given, match them to a model, and make their own monkey.  If you got the pieces in the wrong order or the wrong place, it didn't look so much like a monkey....but once they figured it out....with a little grown up help.....we had a whole class of monkeys!