December Preschool

We started December learning about bears and how they hibernate.  Our letter was B! 

Some books we read.  The Very Cranky Bear is a favorite in our house!

 B snack - Teddy Grahams and blackberries!

 You can learn about B and not play with balloons.  We read this cute story before doing some balloon dancing.

 Somehow that's all the pictures I took of the bear unit.  I know we did a Bear hunt, we searched for things that were big, then brown, then blue.  We pretended to be bears and hibernated.  Then I'd say, "It's Spring!!" and we'd wake up and look for something to eat! We also learned "the bear went over the mountain".

The next 2 weeks were spent on Christmas.  The first week was Santa Christmas.  Having been an elementary school teacher, I have a few Christmas favorites.

We made cute Santas out of triangles (which I have no pictures of).  We played Santa and the Children.  3 would go to sleep and 1 "Santa" would bring them each a present, then go and hide.  Then the children would wake up to see what they got for Christmas.  It was really fun.  

I thought it might be fun to have them draw their letters in flour.  2 outright refused to do it.  The other 2 told me in no uncertain terms they did not want anything to do with the letters.  So they just played in the flour and pretended it was snow.  Whatever works!! (Can you believe I have 4 preschoolers and not a single one of them likes to get their hands messy?  No fingerpainting for us! 

Week 2 we did "Jesus Christmas" and I tried to involve the Savior in our Christmas activities.
After reading my college bud's blog, I copied her idea and did stations.  The kids loved them!! I need to be better about the timing though. Some activities took way less time then I thought they would and so we ended up having everyone wait for someone to be done before we could switch.
The stations were: ordering sheep biggest to smallest

 Matching

 Counting stars (this took the longest)

 And tracing shapes, which I didn't get a picture of.

We also practiced our fine motor skills by learning to cut.  I gave them some scissors and scrap paper.

 We read some good Christ-centered Christmas books.

 We kept learning "Must Be Santa" to sing for our mommies at the Christmas party. (Ok, not Jesus related, but it took us two weeks to learn the song!)

 More cutting practice.

 We talked about what the symbols of Christmas mean.  Angels, candy canes, stars, lights, bells, presents, trees, wreaths.

 We did a nativity puppet show (and then performed it for mommies at the party)

 We colored candy canes and I let the kids wrap them themselves.  I tried to get the kids to do a pattern on the candy canes, but they all just colored it however they wanted.  Whatever!

 At the party we ate reindeer sandwiches.

 and made paper plate Santas.  I thought the popcorn beard was a great idea.  This picture shows the most popcorn that got glued on. The rest got eaten.  And some beards (like my own child's) were nonexistent.  The great thing about preschool is I don't care if they don't do it just "right"! No test scores, report cards, SST meetings, etc that I have to account for all the work the child did or didn't do.  Not gluing on a popcorn beard is the least of my worries!!

I'm sure there was more, but that's all can remember!  Now I'm all caught up and hopefully I can keep up week to week when it's easier to remember what we've done! 

November Preschool

I am so far behind, let's see if I can catch up in 2 posts!!

In November, we talked about transportation and the letter G (for "go"... I was saving "T" for Thanksgiving!)
We read this cute rebus story.  And one certain little student, who loves trains, got more and more excited every time we repeated the rhyme.  It was adorable watching his little face light up more every time we repeated it!!

 Other things that start with G - grapes, goat, goose, groundhog

 We read lots of transportation books- including several pages of a Richard Scarry book- all kinds of boats, trucks, cars, planes.  I love Richard Scarry!!

 We played transportation memory

 We did patterns in math with lacing blocks.

 We also talked about the letter T for Thanksgiving.  We reached in our letter bag and found things that start with T.  Can you spot them?

 (T Rex, Tiger, Tractor, Table, Train, Truck, Tree)
We also sang Wheels on the Bus, and pretended to drive different modes of transportation.  Then we pretended to drive a bus and talked about the things we saw. We also sorted cars, trains, planes, boats, and trucks by the number of wheels they had.
 At our Thanksgiving party, we had yummy snacks

 (pumpkin muffin turkey)

 And turkey cake pops, courtesy of one of the moms - I could never bake something that cute!!

 We read some great T books!

 We reached our hand in the letter bag to look for letters that were in TURKEY.  Then we matched the right letters to the word.

 We glued feathers on our foam turkeys

 We practiced reading rhythms.  (This picture should be rotated - x for stomp, dot for clap).

 We learned about the letter O and opposites

 I tried having them draw with their left and and then with their right.  They ended up just wanting to trace their hands.  That works too.

 We played opposite memory.

 We had opposite snacks (soft and chewy, hard and crunchy)

 I introduced calendar time.  I guess I should have been doing this all along.  But we learned a song about the days of the week and the months of the year.

 We read some opposite books.  "The Opposite" was one of the class favorites.

 We practiced one to one correspondence by counting different objects in the egg carton.  I wrote the numbers in the cup to help with number recognition too.  This day we only counted to 7, so I put a sticker on the number 7 so they knew when to stop.

 We learned about seasons and the letter S. Read some great books.

 Put stars on the letter S.

 Read about things that start with S.

We also pretended to be snakes and talked about how snakes move around the ground.  We sorted clothes into what season they would be worn (raincoat, light jacket, scarf, swimsuit, gloves, etc).  We decorated a tree with how it would look during each season.
And that was all of November that I can remember!! Now on to December!

This week in preschool #12 and 13

The letter C and colors

We read about Catterpillars...

 And of course had colored Goldfish as a snack

 We experimented with food dye and water to see what happens when the colors mix.

 We sorted M&M's by color and then counted to see which had the most.

 We learned about camouflage.   The flash kind of ruined this whale's camouflage, but he was the hardest one to find.

 A camouflage dino...

 We found somethings that start with  C

 We made caterpillars....

 We ate cookies and carrots.

 We caught butterflies with this fun game.

 And read a cute story about Scat the Cat that changes his colors (I remember having my mom teach me this story)

 We colored with markers, then sprayed the paper with water to see what happened.

 We tye dyed baby wipes with Kool Aid (which actually didn't work very well.  I guess I should have read the directions instead of just guessing).

For H and  Halloween, we read lots of fun books! (The Little Old Lady was one that we acted out!)

 We learned about our Hands.

 We made jack-o-lanterns with different shapes.

We played with Mr. Potato head and added things that started with H.  We found hair, hat, and hands!

 We played with hats (dance with a hat then when the song is over, choose a new hat).  3 year olds are pretty easy on games! :)

 For our halloween party we had yummy (and healthy!) treats.

 Hey, every party needs some sugar!

At the party acted out the Little Old Lady book for the moms, made a bat craft (which I guess I forgot to take a picture of) and played a version of hot potato.  When the music stopped, whoever was holding the pumpkin had to make a silly face.  Too fun!