Christmas Party

We had a great last week of preschool! While waiting for all the preschoolers to come, we played with puzzles, Planet Heroes, and princess toys.

 

 

Recently, Brynley had her fourth birthday!!!

It was fun to celebrate with her.

 

 

Our first activity was making stockings.

Miss Lauren gave everyone a paper stocking and we used yarn to sew the edges.

Then we glued cotton balls along the top.

The kids took these home with candy canes inside.

 

 

 

 

Next we played a guessing game.

We felt objects inside Santa hats and guessed what they were.

Then we would pull them out to see if we were right.

 

 

When we were done we made ornaments.

We put white paint on our fingers, then wrapped our fingers around the ornament.

Once the paint was dry, Miss Lauren decorated the fingers to look like snowmen.

 

 

Later, we practiced our rights and lefts by playing a game. Miss Lauren brought a present that had layers of tissue paper. Under each layer was a chocolate and a clue of where to pass the present (i.e. twice to the right). Everyone loved opening the layers.

 

 

 

 

Then we played "Pin the Parts On the Snowman." Using a Santa hat as a blind fold, we took turns placing the snowman pieces on the wall.

 

 

Finally, each child found a hidden present from Miss Lauren, and we took turns opening them.

 

 

 

Happy Holidays!!!

Let's Go To the Zoo

This week we played with Puzzles, Littlest Pet Shops, and Kid K'nex.

 

 

We learned about Z this week. In our Letter Bag there was a zig-zag, a zoo, and a jacket with a zipper. The kids brought great zoo Show-and-Tells, like wooden zoo animals and a plastic giraffe.

 

 

To start off, we made giraffes. Miss Lauren gave everyone an outline of a giraffe. We stamped spots on the giraffes by dipping the erasers on the ends of pencils in brown paint.

 

 

When we were done, we sorted animals. We set out all the letters we've learned, plus some new ones. The children took turns picking plastic animals. They put their animal on the letter it starts with.

All of the kids impressed me with their knowledge of the letters.

 

 

 

Next, we fed an elephant. Miss Lauren brought a cardboard elephant and everyone took turns throwing circus peanuts in its mouth.

 

 

Snack was lion crackers. We spread peanut butter on a ritz cracker and put pretzels around the cracker. We used peant butter to glue another cracker on top, and made eyes and a nose with chocolate chips.

 

 

Last of all was singing time. Miss Lauren brought a paper alligator. We pulled out the alligators teeth and sang the song written on it.

 



Things That Go

Playtime this week had to do with our theme, Things That Go. We played with trains, and we lowered one side of the table and used it as a ramp for the cars.

 

 

After Circle Time, we did Letter Bag and Show-and-Tell. In the Letter Bag were things starting with short A. We had lots of cool Show-and-Tells!

 

 

Our first activity was making road maps. The kids dipped cars in paint and ran them along their papers to make maps. They also drew buildings on their maps.

 

 

A big hit was the cardboard cars. The children glued headlights and licenseplates with their names on them to the boxes (Miss Lauren had already attached the wheels and steering wheels). We used our cars to play a game called "Stop... Go." One of the kids got a sign that had "stop" on one side, and "go" on the other. When the sign said "go," the other children "drove" their cars to the finish as fast as they could, but when the sign said "stop," the kids had to scoot back if they didn't stop. The first child to the end got to hold the sign in the next game.

 

 

Later we watched a "drive-in" movie. The kids got tickets to buy popcorn and fruit snacks and, they ate in their cars while we watched Mater and the Ghost Light.

 

Then we went outside and did a relay. The kids ran through a course of cones with their cars. When we were done, the children were good helpers with cleaning-up the cones.

 

 

 

 We talked about wheels, and Miss Lauren gave each child a picture of a semi-truck. After coloring the picture, Miss Lauren gave everyone chocolate creme cookies to use as the trucks' wheels.

We had singing time next. The kids took turns opening flaps on two pictures of airplanes, which had songs under them. The kids enjoyed singing!

Finally, we pretended to go on a train ride. The children were given tickets for the ride. We pretended to go up hills, through tunnels, and more.

We had a "wheelie" good time!



Beautiful Birds

This week during playtime the kids played with clay and plastic animals.

Our letter this week was short E. Some of the things in the Letter bag were a toy egg, an elf ornament, and an envelope. We had some Show-and-Tells that had to do with the bird theme, and some that started with E.

 

To start off, we talked about parts of an egg, and each child cracked an egg. We got to try some cooked egg too.

 

 

We had a special visitor this week, Miss Lauren's pet parakeet, Sunshine. Everyone took turns feeding him, petting him, and holding him.

 

 

Next we made "Happy 'Bird'-day" pop-ups cards. Each card had a pop-up bird beak with a yarn worm in it. The kids liked playing with the worms.

 

 

Afterwards, we pretended to be birds and built a pillow nest. The kids huddled up like eggs, and slowly hatched. Miss Lauren, the mother bird, gave everyone lots of different "bird" food, like seeds (chocolate chips), fruit, fish (Gold Fish), and more. If the baby birds wanted the food, they would open their mouth for Miss Lauren to drop food in. Finally Miss Lauren taught the baby birds to "fly." They flew around, but sometimes a bird would "fall," and Miss Lauren would have to help it up.

 

 

Miss Lauren brought out a pretend bird's nest, which we used for singing time. The kids picked out pieces of the nest, which had songs written on them, and we sang the songs on the papers.

 

 

Next we had pictures of birds in nests with numbers on them. The kids put the number of plastic eggs by the pictures as the number on them.

 

 

Then we made nests. We glued nest stuff on paper plates and placed an open plastic egg on top. Then we attached eyes and paper beaks to the eggs to make them into birds.

 

 

For our last activity we played a sound matching game. We took turns shaking plastic eggs with different things in it and tried to find the matches. When we were done, we made music with our eggs.

We're super "egg"-cited for another week of preschool!!!