Our Halloween Party!

Goodness gracious! Time has certainly gotten away from me! I had such a great time talking with all of you at conferences last week (that time was way more beneficial than blogging anyway, in my opinion)! Thank you so much for being fantastic parents!

I wanted to share pictures of our Halloween party (before I forget to do that...), so this post will be dedicated to our Halloween fun!

We started the party by reading the story, The Little Old Lady Who Was Not Afraid of Anything. The kiddos loved it! They have asked me countless times since then to read it to them again. I love when that happens!

After our story, we had a special snack of Halloween cookies and Spooky Juice (green Hawaiian Punch and Sprite).

We went on our costume parade after snack. In the morning, we visited Helen in the office and Darla in the hallway. In the afternoon, we added Pastor Jordan to our list of stops.

When we got back into the classroom, we split into three groups to rotate through our Halloween stations. At one station, the kiddos listened to another Halloween story, I Know An Old Lady Who Swallowed A Bat.

The second station was the art station. The kiddos made "stained glass" pumpkins with contact paper and tissue paper. These are hanging in the classroom now, so feel free to stop by and check them out if you get the chance.

The last station was the cooking station. We made spider cookies with Oreos, licorice, and mini M&Ms.

By the time the day was over, I think we were all happy, full, and exhausted! It really was a great day!

Thank you to the parents (Jennifer and Robin) who spent some time with us during our party! I really appreciate your help! 

Our Week in Pictures

Here's a look at what we've been up to!

We....

 started polishing some rocks in our rock tumbler,

 practiced writing the word, "Rock,"

 painted rocks,

 listened to Lisa Ralls as she explained her rock and fossil collection,

 examined rocks and fossils with magnifying glasses,

 wrote questions for Lisa (each student had his/her own question), asked the questions, and wrote the answers,

and enjoyed our first field trip to Oakwood Park! (I didn't get any pictures of our actual rock activities during this field trip, which is a major bummer. We made a map of our route to the park and as we found rocks and added them to our bucket we marked the location on the map. When we arrived at the park, we talked about how those rocks got where they were. This helped us answer our question, "How do rocks get everywhere?")

I want to send out a huge thank you to Robin Charlson and Carrie Peterson for coming with us on our field trip yesterday! It helps so much to have a few extra adults while we are out of the classroom. 

We'll be continuing with our rock study next week. The kiddos seem to have learned so much with this study already, and I'm excited to see how much more they can learn. 

Have a fantastic weekend!

Manners, Manners, and More Manners (Plus Some Snapping!)

We survived our second week together! We had a truly fantastic time this week, too!

We’re still learning routines and procedures. These things take time, and I’m sure we’ll have plenty of practicing and reviewing ahead of us. The kids have been doing a great job so far though. We focused on circle time manners this week. We watched a super cute video called Can You Teach My Alligator Manners?. (You can find it here, if you are interested in watching it at home.) We stopped as we watched and talked about what the alligator was doing that wasn’t okay and how he could change.

After we finished the video, we played a fun game to practice our circle time manners. I asked a question and rolled a ball around the circle to give each child a turn to answer. The children knew it was their turn to answer the question when the ball was in their hands. While they waited, they practiced their circle time manners; they sat on their X’s, watched the person who was talking, and waited for their turn to talk. They had a blast with this game!

On Thursday, after practicing all week, we made a list of circle time manners. The kiddos came up with everything I had hoped they would think of. Our four big rules are: (1) Wait my turn to talk. (2) Sit on my bottom. (3) Raise my hand. (4) Sit still. We’ll read through these rules every day, and I am sure circle time will be a breeze very, very soon!

Another highlight from this week was our snap paintings on Thursday. I read about this art project on another preschool teacher’s blog and thought it sounded like a blast. I was right! Here’s what we did: 

I stretched rubber bands around a cookie sheet, slid a piece of paper under the rubber bands, covered the rubber bands in paint, and let the kids snap away. This was a great fine motor exercise. The biggest challenge for them was holding on to the pan with one hand and stretching the rubber band with the other hand. It took quite a bit of strength for them to do this. Of course, the fact that they were splattering  themselves (and me) with paint made it all worth it! I'm hoping to get these paintings hung up on our art wall this weekend. Please come take a look at them!

We’ve also started to jump into some more academic areas. We’ve matched letters, sorted shapes, and practiced writing our names. 

Next week, we’ll be focusing on friendship manners. I’m going to introduce my absolute favorite friendship technique – buckets! I’ll share more about this next week. I cannot wait to share this with your children!

Aloha! Welcome to Hawaii!

Our last day luau was so much fun! Between our special snack, a chance to play in water, and a decorated room, the children could hardly contain their excitement!

We started the whole thing off by boarding the plane and getting ready for take off. We fastened our seat belts and chewed some gum (so our ears wouldn't pop), and set off for Hawaii. While on the plane, we watched an in-flight movie, Mickey's Hawaiian Holiday.

When we arrived in Hawaii, we got our very own leis! Then we headed off to explore (interest areas). The kiddos made their own grass skirts, relaxed on the beach, made sand castles, and watched a volcano explode.

The next part was my favorite part of the whole day! Judy brought in a sprinkler for the kiddos to play in! They couldn't have been more excited! It was a little chilly (and sprinkling a little in the afternoon) so we weren't out for very long; it was long enough for them to enjoy the experience though!

After the sprinkler, we came back inside and enjoyed a tasty Hawaiian snack. We made kabobs with some traditional Hawaiian foods - pineapple, bananas, cherries, ham and cheese. Not only did this taste fantastic, but trying to get their food on their skewers was a great fine motor experience for them.

After snack, it was time to hop back on the plane and return to Lake Mills. We got some more gum for the flight, and enjoyed another in-flight movie. This one taught us to say the name of the state fish of Hawaii - the humuhumunukunukuapua'a.

We had a fabulous time in Hawaii! It was such a blast to share this with your children. Hopefully, they had as much fun as I did!

The End of a Fun Week

This week has been fun! I've been following the kids and their interests for the most part. In addition to huge amounts of time spent outside, we've been doing a few fun art projects.

One project we did was tissue paper stains. For this one, the kids sprayed paper with water. After it was thoroughly wet (some might even call it soaked....), they cut up pieces of tissue paper all over it. We let it dry for a day, and then took the tissue paper off. The tissue paper stained the white paper and left behind a collage of colored shapes. The process was a ton of fun for the kids! They were so excited to take the tissue paper off and see what was left behind.

Another project we did was shaving cream marbled paintings. I'll let Maddie and Hannah show you what we did!

 

We put stripes of paint on top of some smooth shaving cream.

 We put the paper on top of our painted shaving cream and rubbed the top to get the paint to stick.

Then we pulled it up and scraped off the extra shaving cream.

The end results are really cool! Here are a few:

This was a super, super messy art project. Every kiddo chose to do this one though, so I think that makes it a hit!

Have a fantastic weekend!

Rolling Out the Red Carpet

As I have mentioned in a few notes and in many conversations with you, we're rolling out the red carpet and becoming movie stars as we get ready for our graduation program!

I really, really wanted you all to see the children act out the stories we've been reading, but I know how impossible that would be if a large audience was present. (Let's face it - it's not very fair to ask a four year-old to get up in front of a large group of people and speak. I have a hard enough time doing that, and I'm much older than four years old.) I decided to turn our little plays into movies to get rid of the need for a live performance, and I'm really excited about this decision. We've been talking about movies and what making a movie involves. We've written scripts, talked about many different vocabulary words (like props, sets, and costumes), built sets, and practiced our roles.

The morning class is working on The Three Little Pig and the afternoon class is working on Little Red Riding Hood and Goldilocks and the Three Bears. We have been practicing and practicing, and I'm planning to film the movies on Wednesday and Thursday this week!

Here's a peak at some of the hard work the children have been doing:

 Making the set!

 Trying out costumes!

I wanted to make sure we had some live entertainment for graduation too, so we've been learning a few songs to sing for you! The kiddos are adorable with this music. I have the music on the iPads, so they often play it during Interest Areas. No matter what they are doing, they cannot stop themselves from singing along with it! It cracks me up! This video kind of shows how this happens. Listen carefully, and you can hear children singing along in different parts of the room!

I'm super excited to share everything with you at graduation! I'm so, so proud of all the hard work the kiddos have done this year, and I cannot believe we have reached the end already. It is definitely a reason to celebrate!

Just a reminder: Our graduation is on Tuesday, May 22 at 6:30. I'd like the kids to be in the classroom at 6:00, so we have a chance to run through a few things. They may wear nice, dressy clothes!

Oh! Please Take Me Fishing!

Last week, I noticed the kiddos were beginning to get restless with the bakery that was set up in Dramatic Play. I called a group meeting and asked them to help me decide what we should turn the area into next. I flipped through the pages of a book full of dramatic play ideas and they stopped when they found one they liked. They were all very excited about turning the center into a fishing spot!

We decided we'd need some water, some fish, and a few fishing poles, and we got busy working. First we made the river.

Then we made some fish! Here's Maddie carefully tracing our template fish:

The afternoon class helped make some trees to make the center look like a real fishing spot.

Once all of the scenery was complete, the kiddos went fishing! They've been having a blast with this!

Watch Autumn as she tries to catch a fish!

I added a few camping supplies, too, like a pretend fire, a roasting stick, and some marshmallows and hot dogs. Mrs. Twedt was super, super generous and got us a very nice tent to add to the center too! (Thank her for all of her support whenever you see her. She is truly a blessing to all of us!) Now, it's a full-on outdoor center. It's so fun!

Eli and Ellie camp through the "night" snug as a bug in our new tent!

Color Wheels and Donkeys

Holy Moly! I went a whole week without posting - sorry about that! I was busy, busy, busy getting registration stuff around for next year. By the way, if you have a child who will be preschool-age next year, I sent a registration packet home with your current preschooler. I'm also sending one home with the current three year-olds. If I missed someone, please let me know!

Last week, we worked on color mixing and the color wheels. The art center was a mess! It is cool to see the kiddos mixing their own colors though. At the beginning of the year, they mixed colors just to mix them - it was all a sensory experience for them. Now, they mix colors to create a desired color. For example, I had one friend who wanted to use green paint, but we were out of green paint. I guided her to use the color wheel to decide which two colors make green and to mix it herself. She did just that, and made a delightful shade of green! That's the type of learning preschool is designed for!

Here's what the last week of our color study looked like:

Another fun thing we did last week was begin our Easter study during faith time. We started by learning about Palm Sunday. We made our own palms and acted the story out. The kiddos had so much fun pretending to be the people of Jerusalem, Jesus, and, of course, the donkey. Easter is my favorite holiday to celebrate with preschoolers. There is so much to talk about, and I've planned a ton of fun activities too!

This week, we are starting a study of eggs. We began by exploring how strong eggs are. (I, of course, forgot to take pictures of this...) I started by asking the kiddos what would happen if I squeezed an egg. They all thought that it would break for sure. So, I squeezed an egg and the kiddos squeezed the egg and it didn't break! Turns out eggs are much stronger than we thought.

We also watched an online story that talked about different kinds of eggs. We'll be watching this throughout the week and I'm sure the children will pick up something new each time.

Happy Grams, Listening, and a Whole Lot More!

I don't normally blog on Mondays, but today was just a great day! I need to share it with you.

So, as some of you know, last week was tough. I'm not sure what the source of the behaviors were, but the kiddos just had a hard time listening and staying in control of their bodies. I talked with some people who work at the elementary school, and the situation was similar over there. It was just one of those weeks. I decided to spend this week reviewing expectations and rules. I also decided to add in a few new positive reinforcements to help inspire the children to have a good week.

One of those new reinforcements is a Happy Gram. My hope is to send home one Happy Gram with each child every week. On the Happy Gram, I will write about a good moment the child had in school that day. This good moment could be anything from good behavior to mastering a new academic skill to simply having a great time doing an activity. I award the Happy Grams at the end of the day, and all of the children cheer for them! Today was a huge success with this! The children were motivated to work so well with each other, and they were really great listeners. I was super proud of them all!

We also reviewed what listening looks like today. I showed the kiddos an online story called, Henry B. Wigglebottom Learns to Listen, (you can find it here) and we talked about the troubles Henry got into when he didn't listen and how much better his life was when he did listen. We talked about how to tell if someone is listening, and how we can do that in the classroom. I am already noticing a difference in how the children are listening, and I'm sure that by the end of the week the kiddos will all be super listeners!

We're starting to explore color this week. I'm not sure if we'll do a full study on color, but I've been noticing the children drawing a lot of rainbows in their journals so I figured I'll see what kind of interest there is. To start the exploration, I added some colorful rice to the sand table and started a sticky easel in the art center. Here's what the exploration looked like:

 The easel is covered in a piece of contact paper, which makes it easy to stick things to it.

 I cut some strips of construction paper and the kiddos stuck them to the easel in whatever design they wanted.

There was all kinds of measuring and counting going on in this center all afternoon! It was also a great chance for them to practice sharing and working together.

I've got more color activities planned for the rest of the week, and we'll see where they take us.

Our first sign of spring visited us today too:

He visited us a couple of times throughout the day, and the kiddos were very excited to see him! I was too! Bring on the spring!