Happy Valentines Day

Here are the girls making hearts with their hands, everyone making "V" for Valentines, and the boys being buddies. What a fun morning!

Preschool Schedule for May 2009

May

Field Trip Idea: GreenSpring Gardens
Hidden Oaks Nature Center

Becca T.:

Tues. 5^th : George Frederic Handel: conducting & composing music

Thurs. 7^th : Honoring your parents (Mother’s Day is May 10^th)—make special present for Mom

Andrea:

Tues. 12^th : Outer space & astronauts: planets, solar system

Rebecca R.:

Thurs. 14^th: Jungles: where in the world are they? Jungle animals

Fri. 15th: FIELD TRIP: Greenspring Gardens (Alex)

Alex:

Tues. 19^th : Manners: the basics of manners and being respectful

Lara:

Thurs. 21^st : Life cycle of butterfly

Becca T.:

Tues. 26^th : Bugs: the basic parts, have magnifying glasses for everyone, different kinds

Jana:

Thurs. 28^th : Sports/Exercise/Olympics: Have fun learning about why exercising is so good for our bodies, play games, run races, obstacle course, etc.

Tuesday June 2^nd: Graduation Day (evening or during preschool time)

Lara: Booklets and certificates

Jana: Food assignments and planning

Rebecca R.: host

Alex: Activities

Preschool Schedule for April 2009

April
Field Trip Ideas: Frying Pan Park
Eakin Park (pond)

April 7^th and 9^th: NO SCHOOL (Spring Break)

Rebecca R.:

Tues. 14^th : Tadpoles/Frogs: learn about their process of change

Thurs. 16^th: All about Color: Using paint, play dough, colored water, etc. experiment with color mixing

Fri. 17th: FIELD TRIP: Frying Pan Park (Lara)

Lara:

Tues. 21^st : Rainbows: Make rainbows with prisms, mirrors, etc.

Thurs. 23^rd : Leaves: take nature walk, look at the differences and similarities in the leaves, make leaf book, leaf rubbings, collection

Andrea:

Tues. 28^th : All about Farms & farmers, Food: where does our food come from? Working hard. Little Red Hen—use hand wheat grinder and grind wheat and bake some bread (Lara has hand grinder)

Thurs. 30^th : Volcanoes: all about volcanoes, make your own volcano to explode

Gratitude Party

What a great time the kids had thinking of all of the blessings in their lives and all the things they are thankful for! They thought of things they were thankful for and put them on our big gratitude tree.

[sorry I forgot to take a picture, so here's the picture from the Oriental Trading Company where I got it]

Then we spent some time doing our own little gratitude trees that each of the children took home.

Eden W., Adam, Coco, and Benjamin working on their gratitude trees

Our gratitude trees!

I was amazed at how thoughtful each child was as they thought of all the blessings from our Heavenly Father. The children really had a wonderful time!

Families and Thanksgiving

On Tuesday this week we learned all about families. We talked about physical traits we inherit from our parents, the special names we're given, and the wonderful blessings that families are.

Everyone especially liked looking at the pictures of their parents when they were kids!

Martha
Snack time on Tuesday with the alphabet crackers from Trader Joes!

Logan

Emi had to take extra letters, since her name was so short!

Ellie couldn't contain her hunger long enough for me to help the kids flip their names around (so they'd face the camera) and then snap her picture. Of course, she still wanted her picture taken!

Coco immediately recognized the advantages of spelling out her full name, rather than her much shorter nickname.

There was a vowel shortage in our bucket, thus we had to resort to creative measures to finish the job!

More creative vowel formations.

Adam wanted nothing to do with me flipping his letters around for the camera. He liked them just the way they were and let everyone know!

On Thursday we learned all about Thanksgiving! We talked about being thankful for our blessings and cut out our own cornucopias and put together a count your blessing puzzle. Then we told the story of the pilgrims while the kids held up cute little puppets. Then it was snack time...how shocked and disappointed they were with the five frozen corn kernels I gave them, which was an entire day's ration for the pilgrims during that first horrible winter in America. Of course then we had some popcorn, and they were a lot happier with that snack!

And the major distractions of the week...Lucy (a gerbil)...

..and Fui (they're actually both girl gerbils, but Spencer and Adam got to name one and Cami and Emma the other and I have to say that the boys are in denial that she's girl as well) !

It was another fun week at preschool!

Fire Safety at Coco's House

We had so much fun learning about fire safety at Coco's house. We learned what to do if there is a fire, about calling 911, stop, drop, and roll, and many other important safety rules!

The fire fighters were so nice and even brought the truck to her house.

LOGAN

ADAM

COCO

EDEN E.

EDEN W.

EMI

MARTHA

Thank you to the fire department for making learning about fire safety so exciting!

Halloween Preschool Ideas

Of course the most fun part of preschool was getting all dressed up in their costumes. We played a couple of games, decorated some cupcakes, then made this cute pumpkin door hanger.

The teacher had all of the face pieces cut out and the pumpkins strung together with ribbon, then the kids glued on the faces. Older children might be able to cut out their own face pieces if you wanted to give them more opportunity to be creative.

Hope everyone had a fun Halloween!

Thanks for the wonderful job you do teaching these sweet children.