Week 28 (May 4, 5, 6)

This week went FAST! There were lots of games played, lots of fun had, and lots of surprises to get ready for the moms. The kids tried out a few games using the people place markers they made a while ago. They love to play games using their own place marker that looks just like THEM!  This particular game focuses on simple addition,, one-to-one correspondence, phonemic awareness, letter sounds, and words.

The kids were very serious about decorating and writing their Mother's Day cards. These kids LOVE making surprises.

They also worked on a heart picture for the moms. It was a simple project, but they all turned out beautifully!

The video we made for the moms was really sweet, and very honest, and always silly. :) You can tell they love their mommas!

During free choice time, I got out some old favorites.  The kids play so nicely together (most of the time).

The preschoolers have also been working in their phonics workbooks. They are all doing really well with them!

On Friday, we took a walk to the neighborhood playground and released the butterflies. The whole walk over, the butterflies were flying around their little habitat very excitedly! I think they knew they were about to be set free!

We talked about the butterfly life cycle again and made predictions about what would happen as we opened the habitat up. The kids were right, and they all flew out and found flowers right away. It was pretty neat to see.

The kids tried helping the butterflies to find the good flowers after they left the habitat. It was really cool to see that the butterflies knew exactly what to do, even without help.

Then we got a chance to get a really close look at the casing from the chrysalides! Very interesting!

And of course, there was lots of running around the loop, and exercising, and playing on the play equipment and checking out the splash pad (although we didn't play IN the splash pad - unless the parents okayed it when they got there).

It was also teacher appreciation week this past week. Thank you for the sweet treats and generous gifts. I love teaching these kids, they are such FUN!

Week 27 (April 27, 28, 29)

Since all the caterpillars changed into chrysalides, I moved them into the larger butterfly habitat. They shook around lots and we knew they were getting ready to hatch. 

Then one by one they started hatching in the night or early morning (before anyone was awake to check on them) as butterflies over the weekend. They are all currently hatched and I'm excited for the preschoolers to see them all flying around inside their habitat!

I bought the preschoolers butterfly nets so we could go out and look more closely at some of the bugs that live here. They thought that was a pretty fun adventure and we repeated it the next day as well.

On one of the particularly nice days, we went to the neighborhood playground to play for a while.

Another day was spent outside drawing the lifecycle stages of butterflies with chalk.  Then they got into hopscotch, tic-tac-toe, and other fun things to play with chalk.

Leaf with eggs:

Caterpillar:

Chrysalis:

Butterfly:

I know the Book-It program is finished, but I couldn't help but buy this book for the preschoolers after all the interest they had in growing things!

We worked on a few math and literacy concepts; one-to-one correspondence, number recognition, sorting, phonemic awareness, letter recognition, and both simple and complex patterning. They are such smart kids!

After our bug hunting was finished, the preschoolers got a chance to draw what they had found (or what they had wished to find). We talked about insects vs. spiders and the number of legs and other things like that.

Another table time activity was completing the butterfly lifecycle. They love talking about this, especially since we have a real live example growing and changing before our very eyes!

Of course, there's still time to have fun and be silly in preschool.