Sweet Pea's Hair Feather Alternative

This past summer, hair feathers were big!



When Sweet Pea asked for some of her own, and I told her no, she got creative.

 All on her own she came up with her own version of hair feathers using colorful yarn and little barrettes.  She also made some using bobby pins instead of barrettes so she could give them away to friends!

Just clip in and go!  She made me the pink and black one. :o)

Birds and the Letter B

Last week the theme was "Birds" and the letter B.  As you can see by the little snippet I'm showing you, we had a lot planned! 

Once again, we started the week off with the letter, number, and some other non-bird related activities.  One thing I had to do was find out where the kids were with their cutting ability.  I knew the 4 year old was able to cut on a curved line just fine, but I wasn't sure about Babydoll.  Turns out she can cut a straight line, a zig-zag, and a curved line without too much difficulty. 

Then on Tuesday we started talking about Birds.  We started with Bird vocabulary and body parts.  Did lots of make-believe which helped anchor those words into their memory (and it's fun!!),

We used a real bird feather to paint blue jays.  Perfect integration of the Birds theme, and the letter B.  We sang songs about birds, bird fingerplays, number puzzles, read books like The Little Red Hen, and Are You My Mother.  We made artwork with birdseed, used almost all our senses to examine and discuss about a real bird nest (the one sense we didn't use? taste!).  For lunch on Friday the kids helped me make egg salad sandwiches.  Throughout the week we kept going back to the letter B, word wall, B sound, and the letter A.

We also made a simple bird feeder out of an orange juice container.

Do you think the birds like LOTS of PULP birdseed?  Sure hope so!

Ants and the Letter A

I am really behind on blogging about preschool!  I've been stock piling pictures on my camera because I wasn't sure where my usb cord was, and I wasn't about to post about preschool without pictures.

Two weeks ago the theme was the letter A and Ants.  The first day of the week we just worked on the letter A, number 1, short A sound, and some other super cool stuff.  Then on Tuesday we got going with Ants.

We learned some ant vocabulary, ant body parts, the toddlers worked on learning their body parts. So far Little man has nose and feet down, is getting the hang of mouth, and my toddler daycare girl nose all her basics and was working on cheeks and lips.

This was the Letter A word wall.  I am not expecting my 3 and 4 year old to learn to read these words.  The point was for them to recognize the letter A in words, to understand that letters make up words, and that words have meaning (the pictures next to them, which they helped me match up).  Then the words stay up all week, we keep coming back to them, and they have the opportunity to possibly remember them by sight.

We made ants out of egg cartons, which helped them to remember how many legs ants have, and to compare that to us and other animals.  Look out kids, there's a giant brown ant about to eat your snack!  This day the kids also used their "mandibles" to pick up and eat their goldfish snack.  I wish I had a picture of that, it was pretty funny:o)

We made fingerprint ant pictures, painted a letter A, and made ants out of playdough. Read books like, The Ant Bully, and The Magic School Bus Gets Ants in its Pants.  We sang songs and learned fingerplays about ants.  One favorite activity was for Dramatic Play/Large Muscle.  We made our "colony" under the table, then went into the living room/playroom to find "food" which was a bucket of large legos.  We then carried our "food" with our "mandibles" all the way back to the colony.  We made ants on a log, and explored ants outside with magnifying glasses. 

We did a lot more that was unrelated to Ants as well.  The toddlers are starting to learn to count, and the preschoolers are fine-tuning their one-to-one correspondence during math, and getting the hang of those upper-teen numbers that are always tricky.

On an unrelated note, we pulled out some dress-up stuff, and Babydoll showed us some awesome ninja moves! :o)

Next up... the letter B and Birds.

Preschool at My House!

We officially started preschool during daycare last week!  While I enjoy taking a break in planning a curriculum during the summer, I'm always excited to get back into it in the fall.  New supplies, new ideas, and a fresh new school year!

Last year I taught using the Fireflies curriculum from Funshine Express.  In past years I have used Mother Goose Time, Carols Affordable Curriculum, and made my own based on the many early childhood books and websites I have in my arsenal.  Funshine Express and Mother Goose Time are both really great curriculum, but Funshine express is just a bit less expensive - and since I don't charge my daycare parents for preschool... every dollar counts!

My goal is to save a couple years worth of curriculum guides, supplies, and materials so I will be able to stop ordering them but keep on teaching them on a two or three year rotating schedule.  Every month I make copies of the worksheets and parent hand-outs, save all of the supplies and teaching guides, and one day I'll only have to plan the corresponding crafts, and make the typical adjustments based on developmental levels of the children (this is the part that takes the most time anyway)... the rest will be done.  I'll probably be able to do that after this school year!

This is our weather chart.  Every day someone gets to be the weather-watcher and it is their job to report what the weather is that day (or at least at that particular moment).  They then get to choose the correct weather picture and stick it on the chart for that day.

This is our calendar.  Everyday someone else gets to be the Calendar Helper.  We all say the days-of-the-week song, and today's date, and the calendar helper puts the date picture on the calendar.  It is also a pattern, so they get to practice recognizing patterns and predicting the next item every day as well!  The calendar and weather chart are from last years supplies, we'll be getting a new set later this month with October's order!

This week we start focusing on the alphabet with the letter A, but last week we were concentrating on rhyming.  We've been reading lots of poems, books that rhyme, playing concentration with flashcards that have rhyming pictures, rhyming word worksheets, and naming off words that rhyme throughout the day.  The whole point is to help them train their ears to pay attention to the sounds in words, to build phonemic awareness, which is vital in learning how to read. One of the poems we read is pictured above, and they almost have the whole thing memorized now because they like it so much.  To extend the activity we found and circled the words that rhymed with different colored crayons.  For example, we circled the words "go" and "so" with a blue crayon, and "bite" and "right" with a green crayon.  Then we made a craft which gave us the chance to practice tracing numbers 1-5, counting, color recognition, and gluing skills.

This week we are starting the letter A and Ants theme, I'm hoping to tell you about it next Monday!

Mother's Day Crafts and More

In daycare last week the theme was May Flowers and Gardens, and of course Mom.  We made butterfly crafts, flower crafts, talked about gardening, seeds, started growing some carrot seeds (which we have been unable to get in an actual garden yet since it's been so dang cold!), played new math games and math enrichment sheets, sang a lot of "Baby Bumblebee", and so much more!!  I really want to get better at taking pictures of the kids art work and enrichments to show you!

Last week we made our Mother's Day gifts!  The kids decorated cute metal buckets with ribbons, filled them with rice or birdseed, and then made cute purple flower bouquets out of construction paper or cardstock, and stuck ladybug stickers to them!  The preschool kids are little so their flowers are very freeform.  They worked so hard on them and I was so proud of their work!

And these are my Mother's Day presents!  Babydoll and Sweet Pea made me flower bouquet crafts, and then while SP was away on her very first sleep-over with one of my daycare kids, her very sweet mom helped Sweet Pea pick out a bouquet of gerber daisies for me!  The lilacs border 3 sides of our property, and I love having cut lilacs in the house while they're still blooming!

Another thing I had the kids fill out was a worksheet about their mom.  I have included a link to google documents so you can steal it and use it next year.  There's a space for them to draw a picture of mom, and then questions about mom that they dictate their answers to you, or fill out on their own depending on skill level.  Beware, it can be a really sweet project to receive... but also a little embarrassing.... just beware :o)

Mom worksheet
I'm having some google docs problems so if the link isn't working please let me know so I can try to fix that!

I'm going to leave you today with a couple pictures!  Like I said before, SP went on her first sleep over! she talked of little else in the week leading up to it and was so excited!  She wanted to bring some toys with her, which is why she has an extra bag.  She had a great time and came home extremely tired!  It took a couple days for her to get back to normal again, but I think it was worth it!

And here's Babydoll dressed up as a "Sailor-bot" (I have no idea!)

The Kissing Hand

the Kissing Hand

by Audrey Penn

This is a sweet story about a little raccoon named Chester.  Chester is about to start his first night of school and is nervous about leaving his mom.  He wants to stay home and play with mom, and his toys, his friends, his swing, and his books.  "Please may I stay home with you?" he asks his mom.

Awww, who could say no to that face!

Chesters mom explains that sometimes we have to do things we don't want to do, and that he will love school once he starts.  She tells him how he'll make new friends, play with new toys, read new books, and swing on new swings.

His mom tells him a secret that she learned from her mother, it's the kissing hand.  "The Kissing Hand?" asked Chester.  "What's that?"

Mrs. Raccoon took Chester's left hand and spread open his tiny fingers into a fan.  Leaning forward, she kissed Chester right in the middle of his palm.  Chester felt his mother's kiss rush from his hand, up his arm, and into this heart.  Even his silky, black mask tingled with a special warmth.

 "Now," she told Chester, "whenever you feel lonely and need a little loving from home, just press your hand to your cheek and think, 'Mommy loves you' And that very kiss will jump to your face and fill you with toasty warm thoughts."

Now Chester knew his mother's love would go with him wherever he went.

That night, Chester stood in front of his school and looked thoughtful.  Suddenly, he turned to his mother and grinned.  "Give me your hand," he told her.

Chester took his mother's hand in his own and unfolded her large, familiar fingers into a fan.  Next, he leaned forward and kissed the center of her hand.

"Now you have a Kissing Hand, too," he told her.  And with a gentle "Good-bye" and "I love you", Chester turned and danced away.

When Mrs. Raccoon pressed her hand to her cheek she felt Chester's kiss fill her heart with special words.

"Chester loves you," it sang.  "Chester loves you."

I love this book for little ones who have a hard time seperating from mom.  We did a little craft to go with the book, or a literacy extention activity.  First they traced their hand on cardstock paper.

And cut them out, Babydoll had a little help with the cutting here as she was concerned about cutting off the fingers.

Next they stuck kiss stickers on the hand.  I thought it would be fun for Babydoll and the 1-year-old to put lipstick kisses on it, but there was no way I was putting lipstick on the boy who was also doing this project!!  So I found some Valentines day stickers.

Here's Babydoll authenticating her kissing hand by planting a wet one on her cut-out :o)

Then if you want, which we did, put more Valentines Day stickers on it.  Finally attach a crafts stick with tape to the back, and you're done!

A Couple of the Kids' Latest Crafts

   It's about time I put up some craft photos!  Last week's theme was about winter and we made snowflakes out of paper, glue, and silver or blue glitter.  Babydoll chose blue.  First I gave them a square piece of white printer paper and helped them fold it into gradually smaller triangles.  Next they cut little triangles out of the sides of the folded paper being careful not to cut completely down any one side, and cut off the tips of the three triangle points.  Babydoll hadn't made one since a year ago so she was completely delighted when she unfolded her paper and found herself looking at a giant snowflake!  After opening up their paper and delighting in what a few randomly placed snips could do, it was time to bling it up!  They took a bottle of glue (with the top only half open) and put glue wherever they wanted on the snowflake.  BD tends to want to make big puddles of glue when you hand her a glue bottle, so I helped her with the glue.  For some reason I only have a glitter container with holes in the top for sprinkling for the multicolored glitter, so I poured their chosen glitter color in a small cup, left their snowflake on the big piece of paper they were working with it on, and let them sprinkle the glitter by hand.  This is, sadly, the only step in the process I got pictures of.

I took lots of pictures of this step

See the faded Big Bird tattoo on her arm? Her aunty Allie took her to see Elmo and Grover at a bank in our town, she got prizes!

And the finished products...

Babydoll's is on the left, Sweet Pea in the middle, and one of my daycare kids made the one on the right.

This week is about people in other parts of the world, today the focus was on Japan.  During art time they made Carp Kites.    Proud Momma moment, this was BD's best cutting so far!!

Babydoll started coloring her carp, but was in a hurry to glue on her streamers so she quit. 

After making their "kites" they had a blast flying them around the house!