More Holiday fun

When school started Tuesday morning the first thing the kids wanted to do was find Freddy the Elf.  He wasn't in our circle time room.  We went on an elf hunt and found him upstairs in the narthex, under the big Christmas Tree.  He brought us a Look and Find book of Holiday Fun!  During reading time we got to look at it.  Now it's part of our classroom library.  We started working on making Christmas Trees using marble painting.  We put the trees in the bottom of a pan and put about 8 marbles in the pan with some paint.  The kids had fun rolling the marbles all around and decorating their tree!

Our finished Christmas trees.  We had a lot of fun making these!

Ellis brought in snack this week.  We had yogurt and fruit kabobs!  Yum! 

Such a cute idea. Fruit kabobs that look like The Grinch!!

The marble run is a favorite activity!

Playing The Candy Land gingerbread game...pull the candy cane and shapes come out.  Match them on your gingerbread boy or girl.

We celebrated Ellis birthday on Thursday.  Happy 4th birthday, Ellis!!

Thanks for another yummy treat...cupcakes with green frosting!!

 We heard several more holiday books...Clifford's Christmas, Merry christmas Mom and Dad, another version of The Gingerbread Man, and several more.  We also went upstairs to practice singing in the sanctuary for the first time! On Wednesday Freddy brought us red and white scented play dough.  Mrs. Claus made it for us...she heard we were doing so many good things she wanted to make us a special treat!  We used Christmas cookie cutters with the play dough. Thursday we went on a hunt to find gold and silver chocolate coins.  Each of us found one gold and one silver coin to take home with us.

Holiday Traditions

We've been learning about Holiday Traditions! We learned about Gingerbread Boys, candy canes, Christmas trees and Elves so far!  Freddy Sparkleberry joined our classroom for the month of December.  He surprised us when we came to school on Tuesday.  He brought in a book to share with us called The Elf on the Shelf.  Each night he goes back to visit Santa and tell him all the good things we've been doing at school.  Some of the things he has seen include: kids being kind to on another, including each other, singing well, sharing a toy, using inside voices, asking one another to be their friend, saying please and thank you, listening well, and trying their best at whatever they're doing!  When Freddy comes back to the classroom each morning he ends up in a different spot and the kids have fun looking for him!

Each child decided if they wanted to make a gingerbread girl or boy or bear!

Playing our hand bells during music class on pajama day!

Having hot chocolate on pajama day.  Freddy Sparkleberry brought it in to share with us!!

Freddy brought back candy canes from St.Nick to share with us!  He heard we were learning about the letter "J".  

We made beaded candy canes and turned them upside down to see the letter "J".

Tommy brought in snack this week.  Thanks Tommy!

Thanksgiving

We spent the last two weeks at preschool getting ready for Thanksgiving!  We learned about turkeys through watching videos, singing songs, reading books, reciting fingerplays, and making them with our hands!  We discussed how Thanksgiving is a time we celebrate all the things we love and one way we do that is to make special food and eat it with people we care about.  So...the best way for preschoolers to learn is through experiencing it...we did a lot of cooking and eating with our new friends....just like the pilgrims and native americans did!!  We also had lots of fun making Thanksgiving artwork!

We baked a pumpkin at school and used it to make pumpkin break.  

We painted our hands to make turkeys.  We wrote a class story about turkeys that we included at the bottom of our art work!

The kids helped mix and stir...we called it "friendship pumpkin break" because we all helped make it!

Our homemade pumpkin bread and butter.  the kids loved it so much we had it two days in a row for snack!!

Pumpkin bread tastes better with butter on it!  We made some using whipping cream and a jar.  We passed it around and shook very hard and eventually we had butter!

Our pumpkin bread before cooking...the kids loved putting in the chocolate chips!! 

We also had fun making cranberry sauce.  We loved watching and hearing the cranberries pop while they cooked!

We had fun corn painting.  We used indian corn, brushed different color paint on it and rolled it around...so much fun...messy too!

Our finished indian corn projects!

We always have fun using our classroom materials.  We loved making a giant floor puzzle and building towers with blocks.

Roman brought in snack...thanks Roman...yum!

Fall animals

This week we talked about animals getting ready for the colder weather.  We passed a ball around during circle time and each child told us something they knew about squirrels.  Some of the answers included, "Squirrels eat nuts.  They have furry tails.  I see them in my yard."  It might be fun to ask your child what they know about squirrels and see what they say! We watched several short videos on our class ipad about squirrels and learned that they collect nuts and berries to eat during the winter.  We  read The Very Busy Squirrel.  This is a pattern book so the kids quickly caught onto the pattern and helped me "read"it.  Learning patterns to stories and memorizing text is one of the first stages of reading...it's so exciting to see that all of the kids are doing this!!  We went outside and looked for squirrels while we were playing but didn't see any...but we all decided that we're going to keep looking!!   Other books we read this week included Ten Fat Turkeys and Bear Says Thanks. Something new we did was to hide cardboard turkeys around the room and the kids went on a turkey hunt to find them.  The catch was that they had to find the turkey that had the first letter of their name on it.  All of the kids did it!  They wanted to do this all week long!! Thursday was show and tell and we had lots of great things that started with T! 

Brooke brought in the snack this week.  Thanks Brooklyn!!

Our Wednesday group.  We went on a fall nature walk.  We saw several flocks of geese flying overhead in the "V" shape. We saw apples in an apple tree, we noticed a lot of pretty colors on the trees, we felt the wind on our faces and watched as it blew down a lot of the leaves.  Finn found seed pods in a tree and then we all found one on the ground to take home with us!  We looked for squirrels again, but still didn't find any.  Maybe the kids will see them at home!

At art center this week we turned the letter "t" into a turkey!

We added "airplane island" to our activity time.  The kids had fun building with blocks and flying airplanes!

Playing with the trucks is a favorite activity!

Our finished turkeys.  We have magnificent artists in our class!!

Leaves and Halloween

Making our leaf men with the leaves we collected.

This week we read Going on a Leaf Hunt and Leaf Man. Even though it was misting on Tuesday we were still able to get out for a short leaf hunt. We collected lots of leaves, dried them off inside and turned them into leaf men!!

Our Leaf Men

We added magna tiles and wooden blocks with spiders and webbing to our block area.

We  had fun hearing stories about Halloween, learning the poem 5 Little Pumpkins,and playing the circle game Spooky Loo.

Thursday was our Costume Party.  The kids were so excited!!  

Such festive treats!  The kids frosted and decorated pumpkin cookies too!

Wow!!!

Before we ate our treats, we went on a parade around the church.  We love visiting all the people who work at the church and they even gave us treats!!

Listening to directions before going to our Halloween Centers.

We had tattoos, pumpkin stickers, 

bowling, 

ring toss,

Can you get the ring on the witches hat? 

and crafts!

Happy Halloween!! 

Thank you parents for putting on such a wonderful party!

Pumpkins and Apples

Autumn is a preschoolers wonderland!! We've been talking about all the changes that are taking place outside right now.  Apples are on trees, pumpkins are in fields, and leaves are changing colors.  In addition seeds and nuts are falling to the ground! To celebrate the season we took a trip to a pumpkin farm.  To prepare for the trip we read about The Big Read Barn, The Little People's Farm, and Spot Counts to Ten (Spot visits a farm and counts all the farm animals!) We also read about how pumpkins grow.  We had barns, farm animals, and tractors set out for pretend play and we painted mini white pumpkins during art.  By the time the kids left on Wednesday they were so excited for the upcoming trip!

We learned about pumpkins in the shed before we went out to explore the fields!

We went through a giant corn maze and then we ran through a maze made out of hay bales!!

Time to see the animals...turkeys, 

chicks that were 1 day old, 

On to the tractor for a hay ride out to the pumpkin patch!

We had so much fun looking for our pumpkins!!

What a great looking bunch!!

After we found our pumpkin we had fun playing in a box filled with feed corn....

and riding on toys surrounded by hay bales!

When we came back to school on Tuesday it was time to talk about apples!  We heard a great story about a"The Little Red House With No Windows and No Doors and A Star Inside".  Ask your kids what the house was....I bet all of them know the answer!!  (An apple!!)  We cut an apple in half and found the star.  Then we used paint and made apple prints.  We cut the prints into the shape of an apple and glued them down.

Our apple masterpieces!!

Tuesday was our first "lunch bunch".  We brought lunches to school and stayed for an extra two hours.  We had more time to play, make a project, and go outside!  

Tommy brought in snacks for us this week. They were so yummy!  Thanks Tommy!


Thursday we heard Ten Apples Up On Top by Dr. Seuss.  Then it was time to make applesauce!  

Before we cooked the apples we added cinnamon, sugar and a little water. 

 Everyone had a turn using our apple peeler, corer, slicer to prepare the apples.  

We all giggled at how long the apple skin was when it came off.  Most of us thought it looked like a snake!!

Boy did our classroom smell good while our apples were cooking!  Our finished product.  We had applesauce with cheesy crackers for our snack!

The weather was great this week!  We played outside each day.  Gigi loved making giraffes because her name starts with a G!!

Using stencils and foam letter stickers to create art in the morning is always a hit!  It's such a fantastic way to develop the kids fine motor skills, as well as work on writing their names, identifying letters, developing creativity, independent thinking and imagination!  Not to mention the vocabulary development that takes place as we chat while we work!  

The Little Critters cottage, school and grocery store are another hit with the kids, as well as the kinetic sand!