Last week in preschool #10 - L is for Leaves!!

This week was all about leaves and the letter L! We read some L stories (somehow I only took a picture of one!)

 We went on a leaf hunt, then sorted our leaves by color, then by size.  Then, some leaf rubbings, of course!!

 Then we glued our favorite leaves on our letter L's.

 We made L's with our snack - pretzels and cheese.

 We pulled out objects from our mystery bag and sorted them by things that start with L and things that don't. (Our L objects - ladybug, lipstick, lamp, lion, ladybug, leaf, lettuce, lamb)

 Did more practice with the more and less because they were having a hard time mastering it.  I LOVE when I can teach to mastery!!

 We played an action game where they would have to choose a leaf, then do the action it said until the music stopped.

 Glued falling leaves on our trees.

 painted leaf headbands

 colored L pages

 Day 2 we had licorice for a snack (I couldn't resist!!)

 We enjoyed the beautiful weather by playing hopscotch and around the world (and practiced our number recognition).

Last week in preschool #9 -A is for Apples!

I'm a little behind on my posts, so here's a catch up! 

We made A's out of pipe cleaners.  Then we hid them around the room and practiced using positional words to describe where it was (under the couch, on the table, inside the book).

 I got to the library too late to get all the apple books I wanted, so I settled for some others.

 We did lacing cards with the letter A!

 Painted apple trees.

 Ate apples and animal crackers.

 Played "find the apple"

Practiced making A's with craft sticks

Read about Ants

After we read this book, we pretended to make applesauce.

Colored pictures of apples

Played with apples in the water. They had so much fun with this - especially when I showed them how to bob...

For math we read a story about More and less, then we practiced identifying which bowl had more pom poms.

Last week in preschool #8

Yup, it's been a month since I've updated about preschool.  We had to take a break from preschool when I came down with appendicitis.  It wasn't fun and I would much rather have been doing preschool!! I'm feeling better now and we are back into preschool mode!
Last week(ish) in preschool we did weather and the letter W.  I've been focusing more on the theme and all the activities center mostly around the theme.  Maybe when I run out of themes I'll focus on letters more than themes.  But I kind of like the theme centered activities-  really learning a lot about a certain topic.

We colored a w page

 Read some weather books (Storm is Coming became one of Ellie's favorites and she read it every night until we had to return it to the library).

 We had Goldfish (because they swim in Water) and nilla Wafers and Water for our snacks.

 We colored umbrellas and glued "raindrops" to them.

 We had a snowball fight - with cotton balls.  One of the favorite activities!!

 We dressed up in cold weather clothing and danced around.

 Colored another W page.

 Read "Little Cloud" by Eric Carle and made our clouds fluffy with cotton balls (which may or may not have been recycled from the snowball fight).

 Our weather dress up clothes - tried them on and talked about what kind of clothes we wear in different weather.

 Made kites (I cut out a kite shape from printer paper and tied a ribbon on the end) and flew them in the Wind (thanks to the box fan!)

 Also investigated things that the wind will blow away - they can't be too heavy, we found out!

 Did some W rubbings - toothpicks, straws, and sandpaper.

 More books

 More books

We also made Windsocks (which I have no picture).  They were toilet paper rolls with ribbon tied on the bottom.  They were a huge pain and I did a bunch of work and none of the kids really liked them.  In case you were thinking about doing the same thing....
Next week.....Apples and the letter A!!!

This week in preschool #7

Preschool with friends started this week! We did some awesome activities, centered around farms and the letter P.  We sang "5 little ducks" and watched a Curious George about going to the farm.  We danced to Old McDonald and Perfect Piggies (Sandra Boynton).  We used our ribbon dancers and some maracas during music time.

 We made pig puppets.

 We practiced one to one correspondence by counting balls in an egg carton.

 We read some awesome pig/farm books and acted like farm animals.

 We sorted items by things that start with /p/ and things that don't (can you spot the things that start with /p/?)

 We had popcorn and pudding one day and animal crackers the next.

 We painted pigs with "mud" (well, 2 of them painted their pigs).

We played games with the pool noodle - learning about over and under.  And sang "1, 2 buckle my shoe".  Between getting ready for this preschool and the total lack of sleep I get at night, I kind of slacked off on the non school days.  Hopefully kids will start sleeping at night and I can start functioning during the day for more one on one preschool time!

This week in preschool #6

We played a memory game.  I put out some of her toys (and yes, Spiderman, dinosaurs, and tools are my DAUGHTER's toys) and then she would close her eyes and I would hide one.  She had to guess what was missing.  She was pretty good at it! 

 We found some leaves outside and I showed her how to do leaf rubbings (and coins too).

 We practiced the fine motor skill of cutting.  After a while, she switched to her left hand, because the right hand was "very tired from all this work." But she loved it!!

 We practiced counting things by placing them one at a time in an egg carton.

We painted.

Then I got the idea to let her paint over her letters.  She has a hard time with the marker, but the paintbrush seemed to be a lot easier.  

She painted and painted and painted, right until dinner time

And I tried not to stress when her paints ended up like this. 

 She dipped the brush in the paint, then the water, then on the paper.  It drove me crazy, but she insisted that she liked it that way.  And, after all, I did buy the paints for her.  Since I'm trying some more process art (freestyle, vs trying to copy something), I decided to let her do it her way.  No matter how hard I had to bite my tongue.  

This week we started preschool with 3 other kids and it's going great - lots of new activities to share!!