Weather - Wednesday Preschool

What a fun day to talk about weather.  The snow if finally melting and it's getting a little bit warmer outside.  I'm hoping that spring is finally here!

 We started the day coloring paper that would eventually become our own kites.

 Then we headed outside to try and fly our kites.  As it turns out, the snow wasn't quite melted enough so running in the grass area was rather difficult.  I hope everyone brings their kites Friday to our Field Trip Friday so we can see how they fly when we can really run.

 We headed downstairs to work on our reading activity.  I put a secret word up on the board and when you knew what it was you were supposed to act it out.  The secret word was "hop".  How fun!

 Remember the mud art we didn't get to do on Monday because of the cold and snow?  Well, insert that activity here:

 W the worm wiggled through some watery mud. (Amazing Action Alphabet Activity Page)

 Today we learned about quarters.  When I told them that a quarter was worth 25 cents the majority of the eyeballs in the classroom became the size of silver dollars - WOW! 25 cents!  It was so exciting to them that they got to keep their very own quarter!

 We've now finished "Mary had a Little Lamb" on the piano.  Even if your child hasn't mastered this song they are making great gains in learning the basics of playing the piano, the rhythms in music, and that music is fun.  Woot woot!

 Afternoon preschool started off with some playtime.  It was requested that we first play our card game (I can never remember the name of it...).  It involves quick thinking to match one of 4 attributes on the card that's on the top of one of the piles in the middle.

 We also practiced our sight words with "Zingo Sight Words".

 Writing time was focused on writing a list.  We talked about different types of lists that we could write: our favorite colors, people in our family, what to buy at the grocery store, etc.

 Art time was so much fun in tot school yesterday that we decided to repeat the activity with preschool B.  Mix glue and shaving cream for a fantastic sensory art time.

 Boy, what a mess!  It's so much fun, but super messy!

Weather - Tot School Tuesday

What a fun day of school!  I apologize that everyone came home so dirty.  We sure enjoyed our time together though!

 We started our day off by coloring with markers.  Each child had a 6x18 piece of paper that would eventually turn into a windsock.

 I had yellow and pink streamers to choose from and each child picked their own color.

 Here is where all the fun got started and Miss Amanda forgot to put paint smocks on everyone.  It wasn't too messy, but the shaving cream did get on clothes.  We mixed white liquid glue with shaving cream to paint clouds.  When it dries the glue holds the air bubbles in the shaving cream and it is a soft and slightly squishy finished project.

 Our sensory bin was blue rice with a felt sun, large white pompom clouds, little blue pompom raindrops, and pipe cleaner lightning bolts. They had a lot of fun with it!

 We are continuing to practice sitting on a green mat while I read stories.  It's completely optional at this point, and a good introduction to a routine that we'll be following in preschool in the fall with the older kids that are moving up.

 Doing the ASL for "Sun" as we're talking about different types of weather.

 We got to play with play-dough in three different colors.  Yellow for the sun, blue for rain or sky, and white for clouds.

 SH found out that the play-dough would stick to her head, and the trend caught on...

 We turned on the fan at the end of the day for everyone to fly their windsocks and they thought it was the most excellent thing in the whole world! The giggles and laughter were just contagious.  It was so much fun!

Monday Preschool - Wind

What a fantastic day of school!  I love talking about the wind with preschoolers.  They get such a kick out of it. We started the day off tracing our names at the tables and then we met at the rug to work on our reading skills.  I read a few books about wind to them and then we practiced the 4 things that good readers do.
We look with our eyes.
We point with our fingers.

We make the letter sounds with our mouth.
We listen to the word with our ears.
Great reading!

The letter of the week is W and the w book from the Amazing Action Alphabet always makes the kids laugh.  Be sure to pull it out of your child's backpack and read it with them.

 For art we were supposed to do a mud art project, but due to the snow we had to pass on it for today.  Instead we pulled out our journals and drew and wrote whatever we wanted.

 Next came our science time.  We pulled out a couple of fans and everyone got a feather to play with.  They had so much fun chasing their feathers around in our homemade wind :)

 We're continuing our unit on coins and today we talked about dimes.

 Preschool B is now working on R controlled vowels. This week we're talking about R controlled A.  Words like "car" sound like /k/-/letter name R/ instead of /c/ /a/ /r/ (like trying to say cat and throwing an /r/ sound on the end).

 Picking through the boxes of reading books to find one they like.

 We've been working on counting to 100 by 1's and 10's.  We've moved on to representing quantities with numerals.  We've been talking about all the patterns in the 100 chart and now we're putting those thoughts into practice by writing the missing numbers in the 100 chart.

 At the end of the day a little game of "Circus" broke out as we showed off tricks and set up chairs for the audience :).  It was a lot of fun.

Animals in Spring - Preschool Wednesday

We had a lot of fun learning about animals in Spring today in preschool.  We've been working on puzzles all year long and are starting to get into bigger puzzles (24+ pieces).  Be sure to play with puzzles at home to foster critical thinking skills. 

 We also got to play with the spring eggs and try to match them and put them together (and of course take them apart!).

 The kitty and the tiger.

 Everyone got a copy of Mouse's First Spring.  We practiced reading it together as a group.  We worked on staying on the same page, pointing to the words, and saying the words that we already know how to read (or had memorized by the end of the story).

 The tiger and the lion.

 Art was seriously adventurous today...

 We each picked a flower color and were supposed to match the decorations of our flower to the color of the paper we picked.  Some of us got it, some just had fun making a collage.  At a minimum, we all had super fun.

 What happens when you give a bottle of glue to a 4 year old?  He decides to glue his hair and then needs to give himself a bath in the sink.  Silly boys :)

 Today we moved onto nickels.  They are silver colored and worth 5 cents.

 In afternoon preschool we continued with our Easter book.

 We sorted some pictures, worked on the short e sound and started learning about sentences.  Please start pointing out capitals at the beginning of a sentence (we colored them green to signal "go") and punctuation at the end of sentences (we colored them red to signal "stop").

 Then we drew a picture of our favorite part of the story.

 We had free art with all the supplies from the morning class, and once again...a large mess ensued.

 Thank goodness they were willing to clean it up in the end! :)