Snowflakes, snowflakes, and more snowflakes!

On Friday we spent most of the time painting our beautiful snowflakes. We covered one side, then let them dry while we read a Christmas story. We talked about the letter "X" and about xylophones and other words that have "x" in them. Then we went back to painting, turning our snowflakes over and working on the other side. Zane had taken his paint shirt off while we read our story and since everyone else had left theirs on, I forgot to remind him to put his back on until he had paint all over the front of his shirt! Sorry! Our snowflakes turned out great even though they were a bit more work than I thought they would be with the kids.

"Twas the Night Before Christmas"

On Wednesday we worked on our snowflakes again until we ran out of craft sticks (I should have counted out how many we were going to need!) Then we read Twas the Night Before Christmas. All the kids we're vying for the best position to see the pictures and were quite excited about Santa! Then we rolled out dough to make crackers (like Wheat Thins) and cut out Christmas shapes and had snacks in the last few minutes of school.

Christmas Music

This week our themes were Christmas and music. So we combined the two and sang some of the kids' favorite Christmas music (almost everyone's favorite was Jingle Bells). Our shape for the week was a hexagon, so after discussing what a hexagon is, we started working on our snowflake craft by making the hexagon base with craft sticks. The kids were very excited to work with their own bottles of glue and a few craft sticks got completely slathered in glue!

While the glue dried we learned how to play a lap harp and the kids each took a turn playing Jingle Bells on it. Everyone did a great job playing and I think they were all very pleased that they could play it and actually make it sound like Jingle Bells.

Rain, Rain Go Away

Wednesday we started off the day with a fun circle time discussion! Our topic was RAIN, another type of weather. I asked the kids to give me some examples of patters, each child gave me funny patterns using colors, food, body parts, clothing, and names. Then we talked about weather patterns. Our favorite pattern is dark clouds, rain, sunshine, rainbow. One book we read had a fun moving thermometer. I asked what kind of clothing they should wear if their mothers said it was 30 degrees outside, many said swimsuits. We learned about the weather temperature starting with freezing to really hot like 100 degrees. It was fun! Phillip tried to read us a book. He did a good job sitting and holding the book.
We practiced writing the letter W/w with fingerpaint on a little table. That was messy and ever so fun! After a while the kids played bloody hands. That was even more exciting. We made fun little weather wheels for the kids to take home. Some of the kids made sun or cloud suncatchers with old CD's and construction paper.

For snack we ate yummy dirt cups with worms. Ewwwww!

W is for Weather; Star Shape

Monday for preschool we had a great time learning about the letter W. We practiced making the W shape with pipe cleaners. W says, wah! Some W words are: water, wave, weird, what, why, and weather. Since our theme is about weather we talked about the weather and what it means. The kids learned about wind and pressure systems that make the air compress and move. We made hypotheses about what wind could or could not move. Then we experimented using straws and various objects. The wind could move a feather, string, cotton balls; it cannot move rocks, toy cars, clothes pins, or buttons. I read a fun book entitled "What Can the Wind Move?" A silly story about a wind that borrowed items from a town and later returned them. Using straws the kids blew paint over some dark blue paper to make a snow storm.

We focused some on the star shape. The kids made a star with their fingers. Each child also laid on the ground and looked up through our fingers to see the shape. We learned how to make star shapes using lines. Our snack included star shaped cheese, meat, and bread.

Our last little project was to make wax paper and crayon stars but that activity flopped big time. The kids had a hard time shaving off the wax crayons with pencil sharpeners. It was a good idea but too time consuming. We are so glad the Lily came to visit us! All the kids really missed Ella too. Stay tuned for the next installment.

Friday Fish Day

Today was all about underwater

During circle time we talked about creatures that live under water - sharks, whales, orcas, lantern fish, octopus, fish, clams, alligators, jellyfish, crabs and a platypus.  

We learned about different underwater habitats including large oceans (which are salty), lakes (which are smaller and not salty - except some lakes like the Great Salt Lake) and rivers and ponds.  

We looked at some different types of seashells and talked about underwater creatures that have homes attached to their bodies - like crabs, clams, and the turtles who live in the city park pond 

(and the turtle Zane saw, who was unfortunately run over by a car).

Let's see your best fish face!

We used our water bottles to make our own tiny oceans.  

It was fun to measure our own sand and pour it into our bottles using a funnel.

We learned that fish living together in a group are called a school, 

and we enjoyed eating a school of fish for snack.

By the end of Joy School, we needed to get out some energy (perhaps due to the Swedish fish and jello?).  So we pretended to be sea creatures, which for some reason involved a lot of screaming :)  

Zane and Will were sharks who chased the others, who were fish 

(except Amelia who was a mermaid in distress)!

The letter 'U'

Today we learned about the letter U.

U sounds like... uh, ooo, and you.

We thought of words that start with U... umberella, ukulele, up, under, underwater and 

umillief (Amelia's contribution - I am not sure if I spelled it correctly!)

And practiced writing big and little letter U's in the air and on our chalkboards.

After learning about ukuleles, we each took turns playing a song on the ukulele 

(while others danced if they wanted to).

I am still trying to get "Get Your Sparkle On" out of my head!

We decorated boxes that we used to make our own ukuleles.

We traced letter U's with underwater creatures (goldfish and whales) and then ate them for snack.

 

We practiced writing letter U's using whatever colors we wanted :)

and played our ukuleles... what a day!

Green Green Green!

Back to Joy School after a long holiday!  

At circle time we all shared what we did (and ate) for Thanksgiving...

rainbow jello was the crowd favorite! 

Everyone identified one green animal and was responsible to take care of that animal during circle time.

We talked about each animal and we all made green animal sounds!

 

We had a green animal parade, led by Bryn and her tiny green frog.

 

We read Green Eggs and Ham... 

 And ate some for snack...

Who likes green eggs and ham?

Who does not?

(Will clarified that he likes green ham, but not green eggs)

We finished by creating some green works of art...