Snow!

It was fantastic to get snow over the weekend so we could spend Monday talking about snow.  First, we made a snowman on Starfall.com. 

 We have been learning about syllables and practiced our "Robot Speak" with different words.  Hold your hand to your chin.  Say a word in a monotone robot voice (over exaggerate the opening and closing of your mouth).  Count how many times you open your mouth for a single word.  That is how many syllables are in that word!

 We made snowflakes out of silver pipe cleaners and beads.  They should have come home and you can decorate with them or bead and re-bead them for fine-motor skills practice.

 Making the letter F art from the Amazing Action Alphabet.

 Cutting out snowflakes from coffee filters.

 Throwing our "Snowflakes" into the air and trying to keep them up by blowing on them.

 We are continuing our work on graphing.  I introduce the idea of graphing by talking about each shape/object likes to wear "hats".  Each "hat" has to match the object.  Then we count the number of "hats". You can't count the face!

 At the end of the day we got all bundled up and went outside with our kid sized spray bottles filled with water and food coloring to spray paint the snow.  It was lots of fun!

 Preschool B has been introduced to the first 40 Dolch pre-primer sight words.  We'll spend the next few weeks reviewing them before we head into the first 40 Fry sight words in January (the first 40 not counting the repeats from the Dolch list).

 We've been working with 3D shapes in math and it has been improving our cutting skills along the way.  I've used the 3D printables from all of my winter type themes and each day they get to pick out the shape they want to make.  I don't feel like kids get enough experience with 3D shapes in their flat form and building them into their 3D shape.  We've had a lot of fun with this and will be moving on to playing with coins and money next Monday.

 They like to throw the shapes like dice and see how they land.

 Writing time!

Gingerbread Friends - Tot School Thursday

I'm really pleased with how our gingerbread crayons turned out.  We broke up all the crayons that were donated (thank you!) into gingerbread silicone molds, heated them in the oven, added a few drops of ginger and cinnamon oil, and let them cool.  Have leave a delightful scent and captured the attention of the whole group this morning for much longer than I would have ever expected.

 The crayons even made fantastic blocks!

 They also worked well as toys to retell the Gingerbread Man story.

 Having a healthy snack before eating our own gingerbread men.

 The gingerbread scented finger painting wasn't very well received today.  Lil'GalA had this reaction:

 and Lil'GalB poked a tad and then pushed her paper away.  Lil'ManD also poked a bit but decided if the girls didn't like it he didn't either, plus he really wanted his hands washed :)

 Playing with the lacing cards from the Gingerbread Friends Tot Pack.

 Everyone looked at their own book while I read "Gingerbread Mouse."

 We had a lot of fun with play-dough today as well.  We also played with rice, read more stories and played on the Starfall.com app on the iPad!  It was a very busy gingerbread day!

Wednesday Preschool - Gingerbread

Our gingerbread friends theme lasted for four classes (3 days) in our house.  We have gingerbreaded everything!  Preschool A started with gingerbread play-dough on Wednesday morning.

 We also colored with gingerbread scented and shaped crayons.

 We also enjoyed playing with the Starfall.com Gingerbread app on the iPad.

 Can you guess what we're doing?

 "Run and run as fast as you can!  You can't catch me, I'm the gingerbread man!" - I believe they were all running from me :)  Which has now made me a "Monster" to my boys since then - and they run away at random times when they decide we're playing the gingerbread man game again.  It's so fun.

 And back to the sofa for some more fun with the iPad.

 We read "The Gingerbread Mouse" as a whole group.  We are working on being responsible for turning our own pages to be on the same page as the group.  It's great when everyone has their own book and can practice turning one page at a time, the right direction, and staying with the group.  They were so excited to read this story.  Everyone was able to take their book home to keep.  Please enjoy them!

 We then got to make gingerbread men just like in the story.

 And a gingerbread house was on the menu as well.

 Nom..nom..nom!

 We all drew gingerbread men after a little conversation about the shape of a gingerbread man.  A circle for the head.  And half ovals for the arms and legs. 

 After the drawing was done we were ready to paint our gingerbread men with scented home made paint.  They smell super yummy!

 We cycled back to our opening activities as we were nearing the end of our day and there was oodles to be cleaned up!

 Preschool B also enjoyed a gingerbread themed afternoon.  We explored the play-dough and were able to use some of the kid's kitchen tools that weren't able to come out before.

 We painted with that slimy paint and then cut out our paper into a gingerbread man shape.

 We spent a lot of time fine tuning our cutting skills by cutting out these gingerbread treat boxes, laminating them, and cutting them out again.  They turned out super cute!

 We also made lots of gingerbread cookies.  (EMan woke up from nap just in time!)

 Enjoying a healthy snack before having cookies.  VB got to have nap time at our house and joined us for the last little bit of preschool B as well.