The Very Hungry Caterpillar

This was our first week of preschool for the year, and this month I ignored my Funshine Express curriculum book and went with something with more flexibility since I also started a 12 week old baby last thursday.

This month we are reading various Eric Carle books and doing extension projects related to the books we read.

This week we focused on The Very Hungry Caterpillar among other books.  We are also working on the literary concepts of "Cover", "Title", and "Author".

Our first project was simple and adorable!

fingerprint caterpillars

The second project (different day) was to make Hungry Caterpillar hats!  This one was mostly a gluing project for these guys, we're not ready for cutting circles yet, they found it enough of a challenge to work the glue stick, and manage to line up and stick the eye parts down that were also sticking to their fingers!

 And of course we've been doing the calendar every day, figuring out the pattern and predicting the picture on that day's piece, watching the weather and recording it, and have been working on the letter A, number 1, and color Red though those haven't made it onto the board because -well - I have a 6 month old and a brand new 12 week old also in the house. :o)

This is only some of what we've been doing this week, and it's been fun!

Preschool Graduation Cap Tutorial

Izzy graduated from preschool, and that meant a pretty summer dress, cupcakes, a diploma, and of course a graduation cap!

I have made them before, but this time I did it better, thanks to a link on Pinterest and some tweeking!  Here's the link to the directions I went off of, but I wanted to show you how I did it in case you find yourself needing to make graduating caps for little ones.

Here's my little preschool graduate in her cap

 I bought black tagboard, and following the instructions I cut the following pieces: 1 10x10inch, 1 2x4, and 1 4x22.  Unless you know your graduate has a small head, you may want to make the long one longer than 22 inches so you can make the band bigger if needed.

 Measure around the child's head, leave some overlap, and trim if needed.  Fold along the length of the band a flap about one inch wide, and cut 8-10 triangle notches.

Take yarn, or whatever you want to use for your tassel, and cut strips 36 in, 24 in, and 4 in.  Don't worry if your measurements aren't exact, it wont matter.

 Wrap the 36 inch piece around the small rectangle, this will become the tassel part.

 Use the 24 inch piece to loop through the top of the tassel and tie a knot.

 Then just cut the bottom of the tassel loops (that are wrapped around the little rectangle) and trim to make them even lengths

 Use the 4 inch piece of yarn to wrap around the tassel about 3/4 inch down, tie a knot, and cut off the ends if they don't lie down nicely with the rest of the tassel.

 Pop a hole in the middle of the square with a scissors or whatever you have handy.

 I had to use some spit to get the ends of the tassel to stay together enough to get into that tiny hole in the hat.  Some type of threader would be recommended if you think you're about to chuck it across the room in frustration.  Don't chuck it!  I did it, you can too!  Then put a piece of tape over the underside of the hole to secure the tassel.

 Fold the band around, measured to fit your child's head, and staple closed.  I only did the 8 notches that the directions called for, I think it would have been nicer if I added a couple more.  Put glue on the rim of the band...

And glue the band onto the square top!  Let dry, and you're done!

Valentines For Tots

The Valentines Day art project the toddlers and Izzy did spanned over a few days to make.

First they painted pink on stiff white paper.  All the while we talked about the color pink, and painting, brush, and how paint is for paper - not for eating.

Then the next day we added red footprints to form a heart-ish shape.  There were lots of giggly tots and wiggly toes during that process!

The next day I helped them paint a heart around their footprints, hand-over-hand.  We talked about the color Red and the Heart shape, and how we paint nice and smooth!

Valentines Day Eve I hung them up on the door to welcome their parents (and us) in the morning!  They can give them to their Mom or Dad tomorrow after daycare!

Sensory Play is Important and Fun!

Although it can be really messy, sensory tables or bins are great for preschoolers and toddlers, and fun for older kids too!  Infants and young children learn by using all of their senses.  You put something in front of a baby and what will the baby do? They will put it in their mouth, see how it tastes, how it feels in their mouth and hands, smell it, shake it and see if it makes noise!

This is why most preschools and day cares will employ some sort of sensory table/bin/box or other forms of sensory play.  Sensory play can be found in sandboxes, pools and water buckets, walking barefoot in the grass, picking up snow with bare hands, crafts with ribbons, sand paper, pom poms, scented markers, cotton balls scented with essential oils or baking extracts, dry rice, bird seeds, pebbles or aquarium rocks, cooking, and when babies are involved - mouthing everything they can find!  Obviously keep your child's age in mind when you plan what you will use so your little one doesn't eat something or choke.  For little ones who still put everything in their mouth you can use edible things like finger painting with pudding, or playing with jello.  There are tons of other things to use as well, google Sensory Play or Sensory Table Ideas.

 I recently filled our small sensory bin with red and white beans.  It was a huge hit!  I provided measuring cups, small cups to scoop with and into, spoons, kitchen set toys, and little ladles.

 They were able to practice scooping, pouring and transfer skills.  They learned what happened when they filled a larger dish with beans and then tried to pour the contents into a smaller dish, and why that happened.

 They made patterns and pictures with the beans, they counted beans, they made hand prints in the bin with the beans, and ran them through their hands and fingers.  On day two of the bean bin we put the whole bin in the fridge for a couple hours and played with them cold for a new experience!

Sure I spent a lot of my time scooping beans back into the play area and bin, but the extra clean up is well worth the learning experience they had!

Recap

Snapshots of what we've been up to lately:

Sticker math

Practicing printing with shaving cream

Color mixing project

Trip to the dentist

Playing with trees

SP joined Girl Scouts

and got her math badge!

Went to the Renaissance Festival (that'll get it's own post)

And dressing up brothers.

End of the School Year

Last week was our last week of preschool for the school year, which ment my 5-year-old daycare boy graduated!  I made him a graduation hat, diploma, gave him a nice poem to hang on to, he said he's going to tape it up on his wall where his dog won't scratch it.  Cute kid.  We also had celebration cupcakes for the end of a successful school year.... which were of course a huge hit!

I'm very proud of their accomplishments this year.  Babydoll has another year before kindergarten and she already knows the names of every letter, and the sounds of all but 2 letters (U and Y are tricky)!!  Next year she'll be working on learning lowercase letters and blending letter sounds to start reading simple words!

We also did a flower petal project using roses that Spencer recently gave me.  They were getting wilty so instead of throwing them away we played with them.



Sorry there's no finished product picture, but you get the idea :o)

Ocean Adventure

Last week and the week before we went on an ocean adventure, learning about fish, salt water, whales, dolphins, sharks, crabs, sea stars, where the oceans are, and more!  Here's a very small sampling of what we did for those two weeks.

We went "fishing" for our snack one day.  We dipped pretzel sticks in strawberry cream cheese, bating our fishing pole.

 Then used our fishing poles to catch some fish!

 We learned that sometimes we had to gobble them up quickly or they could fall off!

Ship portholes

the toddlers' crabs

Preschoolers' crabs, currently keeping watch from the top of the tv.

Sea Star home

Jelly fish (these were really cool)

Current theme is Spring Sparkles, and I'm loving all the new springy supplies!!

The American Dream and Angry Birds

I've got stuff to blog about.  Really I do. I just don't have the mental energy to do it.  Too many sick kids, Babydoll broke out in a rash - allergic reaction to Amoxicilin from her ear infection, cleaning, sanitizing, I just don't have it in me to put together a decent post.  So I apologize, but here are a couple unrelated events:

Last week's theme was The American Dream.  On one of the days we talked about the constitution. Not in depth because they are four years old, but we talked about how when our country first started out they wanted to make a set of rules to follow.  Then we made our own costitution.  The first one is daycare boy's, the second one is Babydoll's.  BD didn't want to color hers, but they both came up with the rules.  I suggested the honesty one since we were talking about how George Washington and Abraham Lincoln were known for their honesty.

 Babydoll dressed in her homemade Lincoln gear.

And on a completely unrelated note, babydoll playing Angry Birds on Spencer's new phone with her new teddy bear.  She's quite good at that game!

"Rainbow Stew"

Last week we made Rainbow Stew.  First my preschoolers cut up the "ingredients" at the table, then they put them into the pot, and took them to the kitchen set to stir and cook. 

The preschoolers practiced their cutting skills, trying to make each piece about the same size cutting them from strips of construction paper.  The toddlers worked on color names.  We all counted the strips of each color.  And they had fun role-playing with real kitchen tools and brightly colored "stew ingredients"!

After a couple minutes of cooking and stirring, my daycare boy took some down to the floor to dish up into bowls

 

He patted it down "Because Rainbow Stew is flat"

Of course Little Man loved the activity too!

Rainbow Stew is bound to spill on the floor, but no worries, they just picked it up and put it back in the pot.

And then served it to me.

They may need some food safety training before they ever work at a restaurant.

I'm also pretty sure thumb-sucking while preparing a meal for other people is also frowned upon.