Rootin' Tootin' Wild West!

Yee haw! We had a rootin' tootin' week learning all about the wild west. This time of year is so fun to educate our children on the life that many of our ancestors lived taming this land before modern conveniences. We talked all about horses and how valuable they are, how big they are, how they were measured by hands, how heavy their head are (12 pounds!) and how they don't see the way we do. First off though we had to learn how to keep our horses in the right spot by tying up our "horses". The children are doing great at tying and I anticipate many of them are ready to learn to tie their shoes. We also discussed the important job of being a cowboy/cowgirl and even got to practice being sheriffs and keeping the outlaws outta town. I'm so excited to take my kids to the rodeo now- yippee kai aye!

Boston tying up his horse.
We learned how flies really like horses and so after singing "Shoo Fly Don't Bother Me" we got out the fly swatter and played in the bubbles.
Kooper making his stick horse.
Kyler happily creating with his orange crayon.
Porsche tossing bean bags into the cowboy hats.
My handsome cowboy!
Avah coloring by number her cowgirl.

Another handsome cowboy.
Gideon and Charlie retelling the story of "Cowgirl Rosie". Giving them a chance to tell the story after you have done so is very helpful with their comprehension.
Yet another handsome cowboy out on the range.
And a whole group of handsome cowboys and beautiful cowgirls (and one boy I claim as mine being the cow)

Valentine's Day!

What a lovely Valentine's Day we had at Preschool. The children celebrated the holiday in such a friendly, fun way. We spent a lot of time talking about what it means to be a good friend and how we can help each other out.

Kooper working hard matching heart letters.

Kyler matching heart numbers.

Charlie counting out hearts.

Singing, singing, all the day!

Playing balloon games during music time.

What great friends they have all become.

The fun valentine exchange. I loved how excited they were to give their valentines vs. receive them.

Playing buddy games

Silly Avah.

Not sure how well this will work, but I took this video from my archaic camera. These kids are the best!

Germy Wormy

Germy Wormy came to preschool this week and taught the kids all about keeping our bodies healthy. We learned why we should wash our hands after I surreptitiously put glitter on my hands and we all gave each other high fives- wow the germs (aka glitter) traveled quickly. We discussed coughing into our elbows, sneezing into tissues and wiping our noses on tissues (not sleeves and hands). They quickly caught on that germs are not for sharing. It was fun to use soap (that germs hate) and tell all those germs bye bye.

Building super duper high peg towers...

then counting them all up. Together we built one that touched the ceiling and gave us the opportunity to count very high.

Ready to ride around the lake! They were such good friends and traded off riding apparatuses at each stop.

Drawing pictures of germs. These turned out sooo cute and they had such imaginative stories to tell along with their pictures.

Kyler turned his wiki stick into a magnifying glass- so clever.

Porsche turned hers into the letter P, then she quickly realized it could also pass for a flag and waved it about.

Happy 5th Birthday Porsche!!

We took yellow teeth and brushed them clean with some white paint and toothpaste. Hopefully they'll brush their own teeth at home just as good. A few local dentists were more than happy to donate some toothbrushes and associated dental products to the kids- hope you are enjoying using them!

What's the Weather?

The weather actually was perfect for our weather week. The rainy weather gave us a great opportunity to talk about clouds, wind and rain. It deter us from learning more about shadows, but we'll do that another time when the sun shines relentlessly. We even had a thunderstorm at preschool and those kids made the loudest thunder ever! We also had a great time learning about the great weather prognosticator the groundhog.

They worked together to get this huge floor puzzled done quickly.

Learning how it rains and making it rain in the classroom. We learned how the three properties of water work together in our environment. I didn't get any pictures, but we learned about air and wind as well with some fun science experiments.

Creating weather wheels.

More fun watercolor weather wheels.

It rained in the classroom- it rained all the letters in their names. They were so quick to find their letters and put them together to spell their names.

Building letters with Popsicle sticks.

After letters, it was time for some free style building.

Counting to seventy!!

More counting.

Porsche and her cute groundhog puppet popping in and out of his burrow.

Matching shadows. This is a wonderful pre-reading visual discrimination activity.