Gearing Up For a Trip to the Grocery Store - Prep Day

We had a fun week prepping for our field trip to the store. To start with talking about babies. Can babies walk? Can babies talk? Can babies run around and throw balls? No. They are too small.

Then I showed a baby picture of Max and asked "Did you know Max used to be my baby?" Then I asked "Did you know you used to be babies? But now you are growing bigger and bigger."

Then we sang the song "Once there was a snowman" but with different words. 

"Once I was a baby, baby, baby

Once I was a baby Small, small, small.

Now I'm growing bigger, bigger, bigger

Now I'm growing bigger - Tall, Tall, TALL!"

After a few times of doing this, we all stood up and practiced doing things babies can't do. We can stand up. We can walk. We can talk. We can stomp our feet and move around. Why can we do all these things? Because we are getting bigger. And how do we grow bigger? By eating good goods, going to bed, brushing our teeth, and keeping clean.

We read a few books. One about Bones and how it's important to take care of our bones by eating plenty of foods and milk with calcium. We talked about brushing our teeth. We talked about muscles and eating healthy - and talked about how vegetables & fruits give us vitamins to help our bodies, proteins like beans, meats, & nuts help us be strong, and wholesome grains help give us energy and good health.

Then we talked about where we go to get food. Sometimes we plant gardens, which is wonderful. And sometimes we have to go to the store. Everett let us borrow his play food/store items. The kids enjoyed paying for the food with money and ringing up the various food items. We also talked about healthy food choices and the kids were challenged to come up with healthy food options. (We will have to work on this some more, haha. They kept giving me birthday cupcakes. I told them that was fine since it was my 'birthday', but we probably shouldn't eat them for breakfast everyday, right?)

We had a healthy snack trying to hit the main healthy choices. Fruits/Veggies, Whole Wheat toast, Nuts for Protein, and Milk for Calcium.

And of course, we had the teething babies who kept us busy. :)

Letter T: Day One

Today we learned about the letter T. After making T's on chalkboards we tried to build a tall tower with blocks. Sharing blocks was hard but we managed to get some tall towers built.

Before snacks we read The Goodnight Train, then ate teddy grahams and made T's with pretzel sticks.

After snacks we practiced cutting green paper, then made trees with our green pieces. RJ put all his pieces at the bottom saying all the leaves fell off the tree.

Valentine's Party!

On Thursday I thought it would be fun to have a cute preschool Valentine's Party. The kids arrived and we had a quick introduction to preschool, reviewed our letter of the week and the heart shape, talked about valentine's day, and then jumped right in to a fun valentine's craft - Valentine's Bags!

My original hope was they would make these bags first thing, the paint would dry, and then at the very end when they exchanged the valentine's they would be able to take them home. I think in my head I was thinking it would dry like ink (like stamps) but paint and preschoolers I should have realized never work that way. Haha. So they did a craft, but none of them were done by the end of class & we had to use other generic bags instead. Sorry.

Since we were learning the heart shape I made homemade heart stamps for them to use out of toilet paper rolls. The kids got to choose whatever paint color they wanted, and could stamp their bags to make them fun.

The craft got over quickly so we let the kids play downstairs while we cleaned off the table and set it up with food. Then we had some yummy goodies, some more free play time & then it was time to exchange the Valentine's! Too much fun!

Jenni is the ever-ready awesome photographer so she has all the good pictures that she will hopefully share on here when she gets around to it. :)

Hearts and Valentines!

On Tuesday we had a blast learning about the letter V!

We reviewed the ABCs and had a blast learning about the letter V this week. Oh buddy, were they good. I would write out a letter and they would tell me if it was the right letter or not. They were really good at spotting the letter when I wrote it down! We also had fun learning that the letter V sounds like vuh vuh voooom.

Then we put it into practice and traced and practiced writing the letter V. They had a lot of fun on the chalkboards last time so I whipped those out for them and they wrote the letter v pretty great.

We also learned that VALENTINE starts with the letter V, as does loVe. So we practiced saying that, and learning that Valentine's day is a fun day to remember those we love and to do nice things for them.

After that we learned about the heart shape. I had cut out some hearts and we learned what it looks like and that it symbolizes LOVE. Then we practiced counting for fun. I had written out the numbers 1 - 10 and the kids all had to find the number, raise their hand so I could check, and if they were right then they got to color in the number circle (or circle it if you were Mr. Everett). I think this was a fun activity because it kept the older boys' attention (there are still a few numbers they needed help with) and the little boys were learning new things too!

Then we made a fun art project to give to our mommies letting them know we sure loVVVVVVe them to pieces. The kids practiced cutting and glueing and did an amazing job! We were sad that a few of the boys were having a rough time & ended up not participating most of the time. Hopefully next time they will have a better day. :(

Thanks again Amber for helping out.