Week 25 (March 11, 12, 13)

Since we were going to miss the first day of Spring (March 20th) and St. Patrick's Day (March 17th), we had to do our spring and Leprechaun-y activities a bit early. We made leprechaun traps to try and trick some leprechauns into leaving their gold at the bottom of our pipe cleaner rainbows, and it WORKED! The kids checked several times each day and were really happy to see some gold covered candies in their traps at the end of the day on Friday.

Filled up, waiting to be discovered!

I added a few silly leprechaun hats to the dress up area and it was fun to see how they thought a leprechaun might act.

During table time, we talked about a few community helpers and other jobs that people have. We talked about what they want to be when they grow up, and a lot of the answers have changed from the beginning of the year.  These will be puppets for an activity coming up next month.

Teamwork discovering differences in the pictures. Some were very subtle, others were more obvious, but they liked working together to find them all.

Quiet reading time has become noisier now that everyone is READING! The boys are all reading now, at various levels, and I am SO impressed with them!

We revisited Flarp! for a very sensory table time activity. They sure love this sticky stuff!

Even though our backyard and playground were a soggy muddy mess all week, we went for a nature walk in the front to hunt for clovers! They're good luck you know! So we found a perfect clover and preserved it in tape to bring home and keep for good luck.

This simple art activity turned out to be more fun than I thought it might be. These kids are so creative and love expressing themselves in this capacity.

Some randoms from play time. They have the BEST time playing and letting their personalities show.

They worked on their fine motor skills with this pompom and tweezer activity.  Super simple, but the more work they do like this, the stronger those little hand muscles get and the easier it is for them to do writing activities and improve their penmanship.

Since we were inside for recess, I made a silly shark and jellyfish game for them, which they loved. I love it when my off-the-top-of-my-head-ideas work out better than expected.

They went across the ocean in teams (one with eyes closed and the other guiding the way) and individually (jumping, walking, going backward) and as a big group. These preschoolers make everything fun!

And all the preschoolers left with some Lucky Charms chapstick. I couldn't help myself. It was too fun not to get. Happy St. Patrick's Day! Happy 1st Day of Spring! Happy Spring Break! I'll see you all on Wednesday, March 25th!

Week 24 (March 4, 5, 6)

The only time I allow sleeping in preschool is when we are playing "Sleeping Bunnies" which goes along to a song. Ask your preschooler, they probably know it by heart now. We played 15 rounds of it this week alone.

The "hop like a bunny, hop hop hop" part is really hard to capture in a picture. But they sure love it.

Their paintings were finished and framed this week. The paper was 12 by 12 so I wasn't sure I would find a good frame for it, but as it turns out, a record is about that size too, so there were several to choose from. I think they turned out SO well. What talented little artists!

We played a game called "Puzzle Trouble", where I mixed up the pieces to a few puzzles and had them work on teams of two to sort them out.

It was a HOT day on Wednesday, and then blustery cold and rainy the next day. So I'm glad the kids had so much outside time the first day...

Our inside recess game was actually a math game. They started on the starting line and waited to hear the math problem. Sometimes I encouraged them to use their fingers to help them, other times they could do it in their heads. When they figured out the answer, they would run to the right area. I had additional pieces of tape on the floor with a number on each one.  These kids are SO smart! They did individual problems too, but it was more fun to run around together!

We did a fine motor sorting game for table time. I gave them each a couple different small spoons to try out. They problem solved and talked and figured out which one they liked the best, and then sorted the stones into the different categories. We also talked about most and least, and more and less, and other math words like that.

Playing doctor was a hit this week for everyone, and they played so nicely! I love when they want to be helpers! They are so naturally kind.

More playing and having fun and being KIDS!

Thanks everyone for bringing in your Book-It calendars! You are all getting to be such good readers! Remember, you can read or look at pictures alone, or you can read with a friend or family. March is our last month for Book-It, so make sure you're  doing your reading!

All the Valentine stuff was on sale at the grocery store and I found a few fun things for the kids to do. These were actually meant to be valentines, but the preschoolers loved doing it just for fun.

Working hard on some academic games. Matching numbers with groups, and matching upper and lower case letters.

This week was Dr. Seuss's birthday, so we read lots of Dr. Seuss books and also decorated our own Cat in the Hat hats. This was an activity that I got from the Children's Museum. They have such cute activities there, I had to bring it back for these guys.

We have also been reading a few books about plants and seeds and flowers and Spring in general. The first day of Spring is during Spring Break, and it's feeling like Spring already anyway. The Carrot Seed was their favorite book on the topic so far. After reading it, I showed them their basil plants! They planted these a while back, but they hadn't seen them in a while. Very exciting! These went home on Friday and will need to be repotted soon, and please water them each day!

Yoga has been a fun thing to do at the end of the day. Warrior 1, 2, and 3 are favorites, as well as this slight modification… Kids doing yoga is so fun.