Easter with Preschoolers!

Goodness gracious! It has been far too long since I posted. I'm sorry about that! I've been working on preparing for conferences. Thanks so much for being patient with me.

Since it has been such a long time, I'm working on a series of scheduled posts to update you on the things we've been up to. I'm hoping to have a post a day for the next couple of days to get you all caught up!

Tonight, I want to focus on the faith-based part of the last couple of days. As I mentioned, Easter is my favorite holiday to celebrate with preschoolers. We've had some of the best conversations about Jesus' death and resurrection the last few weeks! I broke the story of Jesus' death and resurrection into short chunks based on the children's bible I use and we read a different story every other day. This helped me explain everything to the kids in a way that they understood it.

We also had a chance to do a couple of different activities to help them understand the story. My favorite activity was building a tomb for Jesus after reading about His death. We collected rocks from the playground and used them to build a tomb (which was a great vocabulary term!). After building the tomb, we drew a picture of Jesus and laid him in the tomb and placed a big rock in front of the opening. The next day, after reading about Jesus' friends discovering He had come back to life, we checked our tombs to discover that Jesus had risen from our tombs as well! The kiddos were so excited to find the tombs empty! I wish I had videotaped their expressions. It was precious!

Checking our tombs:

The kiddos seemed to truly understand this. Today, as we were up in the sanctuary practicing for Sunday, one of the children asked about the candle at the front. I told them how the candle symbolizes that Jesus is with us. The child wanted to know if it is always lit, and I explained how it is often put out on Good Friday because that's when we celebrate Jesus' death. The child then said, "Oh. So do they light it again on Easter since that's when Jesus came back to life?" It makes my heart happy to know the children understand the story of Easter!

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.