REMINDER

NO SCHOOL on Wednesday February 25th. It's an HISD 1/2 day, so I will see you all on Thursday! Have a great weekend!

Week 22 (Feb. 18, 19, 20)

Doing puzzles together is a great activity for team building and friendship. They have to work together or the puzzle will never be finished. We did lots of puzzles this week.

Super heroes and bad guys continues to be a favorite toy when I bring them out for free choice play. They are so creative and elaborate with their story lines, I love listening to them deciding who will be good or bad and what their jobs are and what things they need to do and say… Hawken usually takes on the role of script writer and tells everyone what to say. This won't always work in play, but these guys are all okay with it.

Fine motor activities are always dual purposed and they love to play while building their fine motor skill set. Lacing works perfectly for this. Logan whips through these activities and is always ready for more.

Another fine motor and visual scanning and sorting activity is this "Scramble" game. After the timer beat Ryan three times, he finally got them all in with 10 seconds to go! Woohoo!

The kids built train tracks everyday this week. Some covered the entire floor. It gave me some inspiration for a quick activity, and the kids drew their own tracks to help the train do all it's jobs before going in the shed at the end of the day. Then they drew their favorite train on the back, including writing the train's name.

We tried out some new (and a few old) patterning, sequencing, counting, and identifying numerals games - all math centered. These are some REALLY smart kids.

I bought some watercolor paper, which is supposed to make water color paintings more vibrant. We tried it out, and the kids LOVED their artwork. We made rainbows and they turned out so well.

Jeff is explaining that there are usually clouds when it rains and there are rainbows, so painting a rainbow without a cloud would be silly. Silly me, I forgot to tell the others about clouds before they painted… :)  Notice his two little clouds at the bottom edges of his rainbow.

Another highlight of the week was that Jeff turned 5! We celebrated at school by singing to him (lots of times), and asking him questions about his upcoming party during circle time. He loved all the special attention. Here he is picking out his birthday prizes.

Using some of the larger sized watercolor paper, I had each preschooler write their letters. Later on next week we will finish this activity and paint it too.

We celebrated Lunar New Year! We made paper lanterns and danced the dragon dance. While we waited for parents to pick-up, we watched a quick YouTube video of Disney's version of the dragon dance and tried it out ourselves. I should have filmed it, because it was adorable. One kid in front as the face and front legs, and one kid in the back as the body, back legs, and tail.

VIDEO

Our Valentine video is finally finished and posted. I sent the link from YouTube to your phones already, but now it's saved here too.  The bloopers are their favorite parts of the video. We watched it in class and the laughed SO loud. I love these boys.

Week 21 (Feb. 11, 12, 13)

Valentine's WEEK in preschool was very fun. We did lots of activities surrounding hearts and love. One table time activity was about estimation. First they all had guesses for how many candy hearts they could hold in one hand, then we tried it and recorded the results. Afterward, we talked about the differences and why we guessed lower or higher numbers than the results. It was fun to hear their reasons.

At snack, they ate heart shaped rice crispy treats and apple slices. Yum!

The preschoolers practiced their fine motor cutting skills while they cut out heart shapes to decorate the room. It was a tedious task, but everyone helped and the walls were COVERED! :)

We made a few sticker heart Valentine's for some of our favorite people at home. They got to choose which person they wanted to send them to.

Of course, there was still lots of playing. Always. Imaginext and wooden marble tracks and the plastic marble run were the favorites this week.

When (the day before) Valentine's Day came, the preschoolers brought the BEST Valentine boxes, ever.  They made them at home, so each were very different, and I LOVED each one! Good jobs guys!  You're SO creative!

Reading the labels and matching to the right boxes was a long process, but everyone was SUPER excited about it.

Once all the Valentines and prizes were delivered, each preschooler tore into their box like it was Christmas. Tasting the treats and oohing and aahing over each thing. They all said thank you for each note. It was so cute.

I even got a few Valentines. So sweet! Thanks!

After lunch the preschoolers picked out three cookies (2 were sent home and 1 was eaten). They loved each Valentine-y thing we did. They are very into celebrations!

To end the day, we listened to music on the iPad (and later on the TV when the iPad speakers weren't cutting it) and blew up balloons and danced and had quite a par-tay!

They were VERY excited to bring home extra cookies and treats. Happy Valentine's Day everyone!