Earth Day

It was so fun to discuss the earth as it is such a complete part of our everyday life.  The children really seemed to relate to the science experiments and the circle time discussions on our earth.  I hope you've heard the phrase, "Reduce, Reuse, Recycle" in your home since then.  

This children created obstacle course was truly unique and kept them all completely engaged and working together for our entire outdoor time period.

Racing through it was just as fun as putting it all together. 

Our art project was to reuse or recycle items to create works of art.
Boston is using those extremely important critical thinking skills to figure his project out.

Porsche hard at work creating.

Gideon and his one-of-a kid creation.

They play so well together and have really learned to share, take turns and be kind.

Working on puzzles to start the day.

Boston put that pencil behind his ear so he could be just like his daddy!

Creating our own earths.

Or a lion (it's all good!)

Birds Of A Feather

 I can so tell it the end of the year is coming because it's taking me longer to blog about our preschool days and I haven't been taking very many pictures.  I often find myself so involved in what we are doing I forget to snap a picture of it.  I did remember to take a picture of our class visitor- a baby bird that Kooper and Avah found.  They were so thoughtful to bring it so all the preschoolers could meet him/her? It was a
great introduction to our fabulous bird week.  We spent a lot of time talking about the birds around us, listening for their various calls and watching for them out our windows.  Whenever we are outside now I can count on one of them pointing out birds to the class or telling everyone to quiet down so they can hear the birds.  I've had to brush up a bit on my bird identifying skills as they seem to notice ones I haven't!

Meeting the baby bird

Cute as can be!

Kooper trying to keep the feathers flying.  This required intense concentration and lots of breath!

Painting their bird houses

The whole class working on creating a bird hatching out of an egg.

These creations then became prime additions to playtime.

Avah working on stringing cereal for her bird feeder.

We just love this silly boy!

Beep Beep

Cars and boats- what could be more fun than learning about these forms of transportation. We talked a lot about safety around cars (never ever get in one by yourself in the heat and don't play behind them, etc). They checked out all the components of my truck and loved going for a ride (backing out of the garage) so that we could investigate under the hood. What a curious group!

Porsche making sure her cars get to the right numbered garage.

More counting cars.

I put these kids to work washing all the preschool "cars".

What a happy helper!

Rhythm stick fun. After warming up a bit we were actually all able to stay on the same beat. This is wonderful activity for practicing patterns.

Driving cars through paint to create masterpieces.

I just love their creativity! The car parking structure become so much more than that during playtime.

Charlie figuring out which shapes used together can make a picture of things that go.

Will it sink or float? This fun science experiment gave the children a chance to immediately test their hypothesis and they turned out to be quite accurate in their predictions.

Making boats. With numerous building supplies I knew there would be variances in their boats but I had no idea how completely different they would be.

I didn't get a picture of us trying to race our boats made out of ice or the boys fishing for letters or them singing "The Wheels on the Bus" or the many other things we did during this wonderful week of preschool.

Happy Easter!

We had a hippity hoppity time this week celebration Easter. We learned all about bunnies, eggs and the true meaning of the holiday- the resurrection of Christ.

Matching uppercase to lowercase eggs then putting in the corresponding letter spot.

How far can they jump? Far!

Class Cuties!

Bunnies, bunnies, everywhere. They had so much fun creating these cute works of art then entertained me with a brief puppet show.

Jellybean counting then using those jellybeans to play a fun game where they got to eat a few.

Don't eat the Peep game.

Hunting Easter eggs (after the jellybeans from our previous activities these eggs were empty!)

Charlie showing off the empty basket of eggs he had just hidden.

Kooper was content to just go fishing.

Charlie assisting in making our snack-resurrection rolls.

After baking, the insides were empty (the marshmallow melted out).

Coloring Easter eggs and hands and arms...

Hope you all have a Happy Easter!

Community Helpers

There are so many helpers in our communities, it's difficult for me to decide which ones to focus on. Perhaps it's because my grandfather was a mailman, or maybe it's the daily walk Gideon and I take to check the mail, whatever the reason I think mail carriers are great and I wanted the children to learn more about them. We also learned about doctors who work really hard to keep our bodies healthy. We counted band aids (most of which ended up on me and the animals during playtime), listened to our heart beating, talked about keeping our bodies strong and healthy and shared some doctor stories. It was a wonderful week as usual with your amazing children filling my home with plenty of giggles and lots of questions about the world. I am so grateful for each of them!!

Delivering the mail by matching the numbers on the letters to the mailboxes. Such a fun way to help them recognize numbers and number patterns.

Kyler writing his letter to his mom and dad.

Off we go to the mailbox!

Super cuties!

Mailing those letters to you. (I hope you got them by now).

Playtime!

With lots of boxes and envelopes, the preschool room became a post office during playtime. I've never received so many packages before!

Kyler teaching everyone about the calendar.

Painting with medicine droppers- super messy but a great opportunity to teach them about color theory a bit. It is also really good for their fine motor muscles (the muscles that help them grip a pencil and write)

Finishing the week with journal time- x marks the spot on their treasure maps.