March Preschool

I've been busy with so many other things, I have really neglected this blog.  Luckily I take pictures of some of the stuff we do in preschool, which helps me to remember it!! Let's see what I can remember from last month! 

M is for Mouse (Dr Seuss week)

We celebrated Dr Seuss's birthday (March 2) with learning about the letter m - some things we found that start with m-

 I thought it would be fun to have the kids pull objects out of a bag and then we could say words that rhyme (after reading Green Eggs and Ham of course!).  They pulled out mouse.  I tried to encourage some rhyming. They all looked at me like I was nuts then my own daughter told me "this is boring and I hate it." Maybe next time!

 We practiced our cutting skills and made green eggs and ham out of foam sheets.

 We also played a fun stick game outside where we counted how many sticks we could find in my yard, then tried to find the biggest, smallest, etc.

 We threw the ball at x's and o's on the fence.

 We read some books and wrote down the opposites that we found in those books.

 More Dr Seuss books!

 We made hats like the Cat in the Hat.  I tried to get them to do a pattern, but they wanted to be more free spirited.  Whatever.

 We played opposite memory.

 D is for Dinosaur
 We painted letter Ds with dots.

 Threw the ball at letters and numbers on the fence.

 Hid from the dinosaurs.

 Practiced our own writing/scribbled on the fence.

 Played dinosaur spinner/graphing (from 2 teaching mommies)

 I found these dinosaur hats at the dollar store back in August and knew we'd study dinosaurs so I could use these hats.  We danced to a dinosaur song by Sandra Boynton.  They had a blast!!

 Some things that start with D-

 We tried stations again.  They do ok with these, but by the last rotation, they are tired and ready to be done.
(All printables from 2 teaching mommies)
Dinosaur letter match turned out to be a little too tough.  I need to stick with the puzzle cards until they are better at identifying lowercase letters.

 Dino size sort

 This is one of the favorite ones - dinosaur spelling.  I use letter beads and they have to match the letters to the word and then put it on a pipe cleaner.

 Dinosaur patterns - some kids do good with these, some really struggle.  But I think it's good practice!

 Stations in action!

 Then we looked at animals that hatch from eggs and animals that don't.  They really enjoyed this, so we did it again the next preschool day and I changed some of the animals a bit.

N is for Nose (5 senses)
 We learned all about our senses!

 Found things that started with n.  I have to confess that I actually put a toy knife in the bag and totally didn't think about it not starting with "n" until the kids pulled it out.  I was just so focused on finding "n" things I didn't think through very clearly- oops!

 We used our senses to explore these touch and feel books.

 We listened to the sound instruments make.

 We went on a walk and collected things we like to look at (most of which consisted of handfuls of dirt).

 We made a book about our senses  - things to touch, pictures of things to taste...

 .....drawings to see

 and sprinkled some spices on glue to make a smelling page.  We also spent time smelling spices and voting which ones we liked and didn't like.  They had a blast with that!!

February Preschool!

G is for Groundhog

I gave the kids a break from stations, and we did a few activities together to celebrate Groundhog's day! First was matching names to the groundhog (from 2teachingmommies.com)

 We read some cute books and learned about shadows (Go to Sleep, Groundhog had the Groundhog waking up too early and saw some holidays he doesn't normally see, so we put those holiday pictures in order after we read the story)

 One of the moms made these cute groundhog cupcakes!

 We went outside because I was going to trace their shadows on the driveway, but the kids just wanted to run and play. So we played letter hopscotch instead. (Yes, I love living where it is warm enough to go out and play on Groundhog's day!)

We read more about Groundhogs (and actually watched the real groundhog on TV - the kids loved him!)

 Some writing practice (also from 2teachingmommies)

 Of course, we had to make shadow puppets.

 We also played Groundhog, AWAKE! Which was bascially everyone would lay down and hibernate until the "it" child would shout, AWAKE then they would wake up and go look for their shadow.  It was a hit! Then I put different objects in front of the light, and they had to guess what it was, by only looking at the shadow.  It was really fun! We also searched for things that were green or growing when we went on our letter G walk.

V is for Valentine! 
We pulled food out of our letter V bag, looking for Vegetables.

 Lot's of Valentine stories...

 Did some counting/number recognition with hearts (draw a number, then count out that many hearts)

 We read a cute story about Valentine Mice and I wanted them to make heart mice.

 The finished products were a little more free spirited.

 We learned about Volcanoes

 Practiced writing our letters in rice

 We love stick pretzels for a snack because they can be used to make letters! We made lots of V's and a few letter I's.

 We decorated Valentine bags to put our valentine's in.

 I used my foam stickers and some foam blocks I scored at the Target Dollar spot in August to make stampers.

and we made "dino-mite" valentines by stamping hearts to make the plates on a stegosaurus. 

 Snack on Valentine's was red Jell-o, pretzels and juice.  I meant to make Jello Jiggler hearts, but realized too late that I didn't have enough Jell-o for that.  It was not worth the late night trip to the store.

 In preparation for our field trip to the fire station, we learned about fire safety.  We learned how to stop, drop, and roll, practiced crawling under smoke if there was a fire in our house, and learned how to call 911 in an emergency.
For the craft, I had them color a fire as big as they could.

Then we used the play phone to call 911 and the firemen showed up and sprayed the fire with water. 

 We read some books about fire engines and practiced what to say when we call 911.

 R is for Red
We did a mini unit on Fairy tales (not a lot of pictures of this one because I lost my camera for a few days...)
We read a few fairy tale books...

 Started a little red hen craft (took way longer than I thought, so we'll finish next week)

 Read the three little pigs, then used our cutting skills to retell the story.

 (1st house of straw, 2nd house of sticks, 3rd house of bricks)

 We also looked for things that were round or red.  We read the Billy Goats Gruff and built bridges for the Billy Goats to go over.  We read the ugly duckling and practiced speaking nicely to each other.  We drew cars and practiced rolling, running, racing, jumping rope, and other R verbs.

I is for ice
We learned about ice.  I colored water with food coloring and then froze it into mini ice cubes and let them paint with them.  Fun but very messy!

 We tried making the letter I with sticks

 We built igloos out of blocks. 

 That's all the pictures of "I that I have, and I honestly can't remember what else we did! I've got to be better at updating this blog!

P is for Polar animals! 

We learned about polar bears and how they need fur to keep them warm. They can't be Purple...

 They have to be white!

 We looked for things that started with P

 We read about polar animals

 Practiced writing the letter P

 Played polar animal graphing (from 2teachingmommies)

 Ate popcorn and glued it on the letter P (which, by the way, didn't work and all the popcorn fell off as soon as the paper was moved.  Oh well, they had fun!)

 Made a penguin out of hearts.

 We also played "polar bear or penguin" and I'd shout out one of the animals and they'd have to walk around like that animal.  And that's all I remember.  I'll try to be better about updating weekly so I can remember things better!