Looking for Leprechauns

This week we celebrated St. Patrick's Day!!!! Everyone wore green.

After we read our book, we learned that gold is worth money. Then we did an activity on money.

We learned money names, and we compared appearances. The children glued a penny on a piggy bank picture, they loved coloring their banks!!!

The children went into the other room and made shamrock rolls. They rolled bread dough into 3 balls and a small snake. These made cute shamrock rolls!

When the children came back upstairs, they found leprechaun foot prints which led to an empty bag and a note from the leprechaun. The note said to return the gold to the leprechaun's bag without touching it, and the leprechaun would leave a reward for us. The note also said we could play with the gold once all of it was in the bag. It was fun to hear the different ideas of how we could return the gold without touching it. We ended up using pinchers. The children loved identifying the letters on the gold (it was part of the game)!!!!!

By the time we collected all the gold, snack was ready. Everyone hurried into the kitchen for their snack, but when Miss Cindy pulled it out of the oven...

IT WAS GREEN!!!!!!!

The children were amazed! At first they thought we food colored it, but after awhile everyone was convinced the leprechaun did it. And when Miss Lauren poured the water, it was green too!!! The children were certain this was the leprechauns reward for finding his gold.

After snack we played the gold game. There were 14 pieces of gold. 10 of them spelt LUCKY twice. 2 of them had shamrocks on them. The last 2 were blank. We each took a turn picking a piece, if it was a letter, we marked it off, if it was a shamrock, we marked off whatever letter we wanted, if it was a blank, nothing happened. We kept playing until someone finished spelling LUCKY.

We finished this week by making good luck rocks. We used sequins, googly eyes, and glitter glue. Very cute!!!

Happy St. Pattrick's Day!!!

The Tortoise and the Hare

Slow and steady wins the race, wasn't always the case, at preschool. After reading The Tortoise and the Hare, we did lots of different races. We hopped, we wore a turtle shell and crawled, and we did a wheelbarrow race. The children had a blast breaking through our finish line!!!

Later, we split up. The children with Miss Cindy played a turtle matching game. A number on one card, and dots on the other. (e.g. 4 on one card and 4 dots on the other equals a match)

The children with Miss Lauren made tissue paper collages on paper plates. These were turned into turtles. When we were done, we swapped.

Snack this week was Turtle Shell Tortillas. We put a small tortilla shell on the grill, sprinkled it with cheese, top it with another tortilla shell for a yummy snack!!!

Hold on everyone! We played a reading game that was so much fun!!! Everyone held the sheet, Miss Cindy called out a child's name, we raised the sheet high in the air, and the person called on dove under the sheet. Under the sheet there were paper carrots. The child would grab a carrot and crawl out. They would identify the letter on the carrot, and the game would continue.

Finally we made marshmallow bunnies. A snip at the top for ears, and... Voila!!! A bunny head. All the children had to do was draw a face on it, using food coloring and toothpicks.

The children had a great time running around!!!! See you next week!!!

The Shoemaker and the Elves

This week we read The Shoemaker and the Elves. We practiced buttoning, tying, and we had lots of fun dressing up. Our first game was similar to musical chairs. They would go around the chairs while the music was playing, when it stopped they sat in a chair marked with a letter. There were buckets full of dress ups, these were marked with the same letters as the chairs. The children would look at the letter on their chair, find the matching bucket, and put on something from the bucket. We got all sorts of costumes!!!

After we dressing up, we split into groups. The children with Miss Cindy played file folder games to practice rhyming and matcing letters and sounds...

And the children with Miss Lauren practiced tying their own felt shoes!!! These shoes were a big hit!!!

This week our snack was hiding from us!!! Miss Lauren had some clues that led us to our snack, elf cookies!!! We also ate some snacks that one of the moms brought. Thank you!!!

A bit later, we made elf hats. The children decorated their elf hats, we stapled them, and they glued a couple cotton balls on top. Cute and simple!!!

What a good looking group of elves! Thank you for your support!!!

There was an Old Lady Who Swallowed a Fly

The book of the week was There was an Old Lady Who Swallowed a Fly. Before we started, the children played with clay.

After Circle Time, we divided into groups. The children who went with Miss Cindy played a fly swatting game. Miss Cindy told them a letter or word, and they had to swat the fly with the letter(s) on it.

The other children made a craft with Miss Lauren. They took a picture of a mouth, and used a tooth brush to paint teeth in it. They took magazines and cut out different objects and glued them into the mouth. On the top of the page they glued a strip of paper that said "There was a big mouth that swallowed a..." It made a very fun craft!!!

For snack we made Apple Smiles!!! They took an apple slice with a piece cut out of it, and they spread cream cheese or peanut butter in it. For teeth they put in mini marshmallows. Everyone loved these!!!!!

Again we divided into groups. The children with Miss Cindy talked about taking care of their teeth. Then they played a counting game about cavities.

The children with Miss Lauren practiced sequencing while playing a beanbag toss. Each of the beanbags had a picture of the different creatures the Old Lady swallowed. We took turns throwing them in her mouth in the right order.

See you next week!!!

'Twas the Night Before Valentine's Day

Our book this week was about a school's Valentine's Day party, so, of course, we had a party too! Before we began the children played with Bendaroos, they loved them!!! For our first activity we did the limbo. We played music and had the children go under the "Cupid's arrow" in different ways. Everyone had fun!

We divided into 2 groups for our next activities. A few of the children made "Hogs and Kisses" valentines with Miss Lauren...

And the other children did a reading lesson with Miss Cindy. Then we swapped.

This week for snack we made peanut butter and jam/honey sandwiches, and we used a cookie cutter to shape them into hearts.

Later we took pre-made rice krispy treats, and we wrapped them in foil. We added a slip of paper for a very cute "Hershey Kiss!"

Finally, we played Battle Ship using candy hearts. It was a good challenge for the children, even if they could see the other grid. Their favorite part was eating each other's candy hearts.

It's been great teaching your children!!!

Ten Grouchy Groundhogs

This semester every week is based on a book. Since Groundhog Day just happened, our book was Ten Grouchy Groundhogs.
Our first activity was a reading game. We reviewed the letters S, M, A, and T. In our game the child would choose one of the letters. They would put on our "special hat" and search through our "groundhog burrow" for the letter they chose.

After everyone had a few turns, we played a math game using groundhogs we made while the other children were in the burrow. We drew a number card and "fed" our groundhogs the number of pom-poms on the card. The children would touch their nose when they thought they had the right answer, and we counted together to see if they were correct.Our snack this week was a big hit!! We took hot dogs and cut them into pieces. We took crescent roll dough and wrapped the hot dog in it. The result was supposed to look like a groundhog peeking out of it's burrow, but either way the children loved it.

The final activity was making shadow puppets. We made monkeys and alligators, so the children could act out the rhyme "5 Little Monkeys." We loved "monkeying around" with your children!!!