Merry Christmas!

Next week is Michelle's turn to do pre-school and due to her bed rest we will not be having pre-school next week. I figured that with the primary activity, Ellis program, and the ward party all next week that it was going to be a crazy week anyway. So enjoy the early Christmas break and hope you all have a Merry Christmas!! We will start again on January 4th at Beverly's house.

Shalean

Letter R

We had so much fun with the letter R this week! On Monday, we had a Reindeer and Rudolf day. We read Rudolf the Red Nosed Reindeer, and sang the song, jumping up with every R word! Our snack was Rudolf cupcakes.

The noses were Red hots, and they were "spicy"!

Fun chocolate faces!

We did the Rudolf hokey pokey, and shook our fluffy tails!

We also listened to a Reindeer Rhyming poem, and the kids had to guess which color nose to put on by listening to the word it rhymed with.


Monday was fun, but we missed the boys!

On Wednseday, we talked about Rainbows and colors. We also made a Jesus craft, which had nothing to do with R, I just wanted to do it!

We talked about how colors mix to make new colors with ice cubes. This was really exciting!

We then did a science experiment with milk, food coloring and dish soap. The kids really paid attention during the ice cube experiment because they could tell me what to colors combined to make the new ones!

Then we had Rainbow jello for a snack.

This was a really fun week and I enjoyed all of your kiddos so much. They are growing up and learning so much this year!

Letter Nn

Monday was our first field trip. We dashed over to the mall and sat on St. NICK's lap. They played at the indoor playground and I thought got all of their energy out until we headed back to our house and found that wasn't the case! I think it did the opposite...they were hyper! We practiced writing the letter Nn and then glued cotton balls onto St. NICK's beard and hat while they ate candy canes. We ended the day with some Christmas stories.

Wednesday was a little more productive. We focused on being NURSES and we wrapped up each other's broken arms and legs. We also took each other's temperature and gave shots. What great nurses we have! We talked about that an animal doctor is called a veternarian and we brought in the rabbit to practice our skills on him as we wrapped up his paw. The kids thought this was awesome to have permission to pester an animal:) (I think he just loved having attention). We practiced washing our hands while singing the abc's and we did exercises to stay healthy.

We worked on a worksheet with things that start with the letter Nn. We talked about "an apple a day keeps the doctor/nurse away" and we had apples for our snack. During snack time we went around the table and tried to rhyme with each other. They are starting to get the idea of rhyming:) After snack we had fun playing alphabet bingo. We ended our day with some winter stories!

Thanksgiving

We had a fun time focusing on Thanksgiving with the letter T last week. We talked about the first Thanksgiving and the Pilgrims and Indians. Then we made a thankful turkey. It was so much fun to see what the kids were thankful for. We read some books and sang some Thanksgiving and turkey songs. The kids practiced writing their letter T's and they wrote something they were going to be eating at Thanksgiving dinner. We had a snack and played pin the feathers on the turkey. Then we weaved a pumpkin. We were too busy for recess, but had fun with all of the games and activities. We missed Caleb and Ava and hope they got feeling better before Thanksgiving day.

Heads Up for Monday Pre-school!!

Hey everyone! I thought it would be fun to have our first field trip of the year. On Monday everyone is to meet at my house at 12:30 and we will caravan to the mall to see St. NICHOLAS (Letter N)! We will get pictures of the kiddos (bring your camera) with St. Nick and then let them play at the playground right next to him. We will leave about 1:30 and come back to my house and we will have a snack, stories, and a craft. Kids can be picked up at the normal time of 2:30. If you are unable to take your child to the mall, please let me know and I will be happy to pick them up! We did this last year and the kids LOVED it! Have a Happy Thanksgiving everyone!!

Thanks!
Shalean

Preschool H and K

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Yes, I am updating my last 2 preschools (I've been having computer issues). For letter H, we had lots of fun with our Halloween party. It was fun to see what everyone dressed as! We had a hard time breaking the pinata, but the kids liked it. We made spiders with our hands and played bingo. I know this is sad, but I don't remember what else we did. I must be getting old or something.


For the letter K we learned about what Kindergarten will be like. Monday we practiced our rhyming. We played a game where they rolled a ball back and forth. Whoever got the ball had to rhythm with the word the first person gave them. We also worked on following exact instructions. They struggled with this more than I thought they would. They really tried to use whatever color they wanted. We had Kool-Aid and Kisses for snacks. On Wednesday we celebrated Ava's birthday. I hope she had a good time. We worked on our syllables. It took them a minute to figure it out. They were doing well once we got going. We made kittens and read "The three little kittens who lost their mittens". We had show and tell with K objects. I was suprised that some of the girls did not want to go up front and talk. They took some coaxing and I had to whisper in a few ears what to say, but they all survived. We had cupcakes for Ava's birthday. We really missed the boys this week! I hope they get feeling better. I learned it's good to have a few boys around!

J is for Jungle, Jam, and Jump

I hope the kids enjoyed learning about the letter "J" as much as I did. Here's the recap of what we did during the week of November 9th and 11th 2009.

Monday we learned about Jungles. I learned that a jungle is often called a tropical rain forest and that panthers are actually black jaguars. We started the day reading all kinds of books about the jungle and jungle animals. There were some pretty amazing photos of snakes, iguanas, monkeys, and big cats. Hopefully no one has had nightmares! We read a few books and shared our favorite pictures.
The kids were super anxious to get to the table. (I had everything set up...anticipation.) We made our black jaguars. They had a great time cutting circles. I was pleasantly surprised to not have to cut a single circle, although I did trace a few extras for those who got a bit scissor happy. :) I hope everyone saw these; they turned out quite cute and I didn't get any pictures.

After our jaguar craft and writing our letter "J" page we played in the sand a bit for recess. We came in for snacks. We made funny Jungle creatures with bananas, chocolate covered sunflower seeds, pretzels,marshmallows, and chineese noodles. I had each child pose with their snack.

Emily's creature looked very personable; with marshmallow ears and hair.

Ava definitely spent the most time creating. Cute poky-pretzel creature.

Riley didn't want to make a creature.
Not sure if she doesn't like bananas or if she ate it separately.
Perhaps mixing foods isn't in her book of things to do.

Caleb showed a ton of personality during this food craft.
The white eyes didn't show up well.

Not sure what Carter's creation was here.
Does it ever feel like you are giving less attention your kid @ preschool?
I did ask Carter to do better at staying with me and he DID!

Linzie also had a poky-pretzel character.
It was fun to watch her create and enjoy it!

Claire also enjoys crafting with food.
Creating and eating is tops on everyone's list.

While everyone ate, I read the kids an African Jungle Folktale, "Why Mosquitoes Buzz in Peoples Ears." This sequence story tells how one animals behavior is misinterpreted which causes a chain of events and kills a baby owl. Then we colored and cut out animals of our own to make our own sequence stories. I was impressed with the story telling ability of our kids.

Wednesday we spent nearly one hour reading books and learning how to sound out and recognize about 8 sight words. We made the same sentence every time and just changed the final word. They read "I can...see, look, run, play, jump, go, help. Again, everyone was super excited to get to the table. For our snack we had home made bread with Jam and Jelly. First we tasted all 5 kinds on a small sample piece to find our favorites. I was impressed that everyone tried every kind (except Linzie...she knew blackberry raspberry was her fav. :)) The results:

Blackberry Raspberry Jam - Claire, Linzie, Caleb, and Riley
Strawberry Jam - Carter and Emily
Grape Jelly - Ava

Then we ate to our hearts content and made the following graph:

# of slices eaten 1 2 3 4 5
Riley
Claire
Ava
Carter
Caleb
Emily
Linzie

They were BIG talkers. Almost everyone said they could eat 10 slices.
I think Linzie, Ava, and Caleb ate the best lunch prior to coming to preschool. :)

Then we went outside to jump rope. They were very skeptical until I showed them we would jump on the ground and not turn it in the air. We each took a turn on the rope.

Then a few of us played a bit of Limbo. Emily knows the limbo song well!

And we practiced the high jump. There were some good jumpers.

Lots of fun had with a rope!

And we found a dead mouse in the grass. I picked it up with a leaf and everyone gathered around. Great lesson on not touching. Caleb wanted to just pet his fur.

The worksheets were a bit ambicious I realize. I learned that the kids did not know the difference between words and letters! So we had a short lesson that groups of letters make words. And then...after helping them write numbers on jelly bean math, it dawned on me that I could have had them just draw the number of jelly beans for the answer. Duh!

I sure enjoyed everyone this week. It's super fun to be so hands-on involved with Carter and his friends. Remember, Preschool at Jen's (or as Carter would say, Claire's!) next week.