'R' FOR RAINBOW...

Today was my first time teaching and it was so awesome to see how smart these kids are.  We started with circle time which they are all pros at by now.  I added the Samoan alphabet into the mix 'O Le Pi Tautau' which I put to the ABC tune.  They were familiar with the tune so they sang right along trying their best to say the letter and the associated word.  We worked on name recognition using the wonderful name tags Pam made for us.  Ku'ulei recognized her name right away as well as Alema's name which I thought was pretty cool.  Alema, Malachi and mostly everyone recognized their name as well. I had them each stare at their name tag in their hands while repeating their name.  We tried it again and they recognized their names a lot quicker.  They all did great. 

We then introduced the letter of the day 'R' which was hiding under the felt bear.  We talked about our theme 'R' for Rainbows.  I had them stand in line according to the colors they were wearing to form a beautiful rainbow which I was able to take a snap shot of.  I had an alphabet book which helped us to find things that began with the letter R.  They were quite restless and hungry so we went straight to snack time which consisted of Raisins which only had a few takers, as well as Rice crispy squares and crackers.  They were hungry and satisfied after their little snack.  We then went over our R worksheets as we learned how to write both an upper case R and a lower case r.  We then went to our science part of the day which I was so excited for...making a rainbow indoor.  How cool is that?!  Well, it would have been cool if it actually worked..ha ha.  It worked in the morning but the sun moved in an hour and a half so the angle was all wrong.  They were so excited to see the rainbow I felt bad so here's what you do, maybe you can try it at home for them.  You take a jar of water or a glass and you put it in your window sill.  As the sun shines down on it a beautiful rainbow will appear on the floor which you can then put poster paper down for them to color.  Hopefully it will work for you:)

We then had our art project where we took the 3 primary colors...red, yellow, and blue...and produce secondary colors....orange, green and purple....by mixing them together.  They were so amazed as I mixed the colors together.  Then we got messy.  We used our hands to make handprints with each color to form a rainbow on poster paper.  As much as they loved getting messy, they were excited to wash their hands after as well.  We ended the day by reading a book about rainbows so all in all it was an eventful 2 hours.  We're excited for Thursday and just another reminder to bring something SILVER to share for show and tell as that is our color of the day!