I is for inchworm

So, we  learned about the letter "i." But first we did the pledge of allegiance. That is my favorite part. The kiddos have to figure out which hand is their right hand, which one is their left hand, and then they put it on their heart or their bellies. You know...somewhere in the general vicinity of heart location. Totally cute.

Then we tried cutting inchworms with lower case and upper case i's, so we could match them. It turned into a big paper carnage without any matching at all.

We went outside and gathered little crab-apples and stuff that fell from the neighbor's yard. Also some tomatoes from the vines. Then we counted them with Everett. Because, he likes counting.  He really wanted to give his mom a little apple. I think he did.

We also sang some songs, and did some preschool yoga. They were good at downward dogs. Cutest little dogs ever. (R.J. did not want to try the yoga. Not at all, no matter how much he likes dogs, he did not want to do a yoga dog).

Day 2: Lines and Weather

During circle time we emphasized what the weather was like today. The children all decided it was sunny and windy. We read a story without words about the weather. It had pictures and I described the details in the pictures. The children were super attentive and loved the part about the wind. In the picture people, hats, trees, paper, etc. were being blown all over and all the children thought that was neat.

To learn about lines we first had a demonstration on the white board about what a line was. Everyone wanted to draw a line on the whiteboard :) Then we used our fine motor skills and practiced cutting lines, that I before hand, had drawn on each child's paper. I encouraged them to draw more lines and cut them all out. Some had difficulty using the scissors so it was a great time to teach them how to hold and use scissors, as well.

We then did a craft about the weather. Each child looked up in the sky and told me what they thought they saw in a cloud. We got a lot of creative answers and then they made what they thought they saw out of cotton balls to represent the cloud. It was really cute. This is what they each thought they saw.

Everett: Train

RJ: Circle

Kaylee: Heart

Jared: Cow

Max: Dinosaur

They then enjoyed their weather inspired snack. They had popcorn to represent clouds and it was buttered popcorn, the butter to represent the sun. They all loved it and had fun playing with the toothpick, cloud and sun, that were in it :-) The toothpick representing the line.

After that they each made a wind streamer. They adorned them with tissue paper (all colors of the rainbow), glitter glue, sequins, you name it! Then they practiced their large motor skills by putting our windy day to the test and running with their wind streamers in the wind!

Loved seeing their HAPPY faces this morning!!!

Om nom nom

Kaylee proving that we did indeed have sunshine today :) And Everett intently looking at his cloud.

Day 1: E is for ELEPHANT

Today we learned about the letter E. We started off with circle time. Everyone was super excited to help with the weather! Dino the Dinosaur started off reading our book "Green Eggs and Ham". Eggs start with the letter E I told them. And all of them agreed that they did not want to eat green eggs and ham from Sam... We then read a book titled "Are you ticklish?". Every child loved tickling all of the animals in the book and laughed and laughed as they did!

We went on and used our fine motor skills to use elbow macaroni to trace our letter e. The kids did a great job! Everett and RJ were very particular and took the longest on this activity, making sure they put them just right while munching on a few noodles along the way ;-) . Isaac, Kaylee, and Jared were super speedy and done in no time! Those that finished quickly moved onto the other worksheet that had pictures of words that start with E like Elephant, Eskimo, and Egg. They colored and traced on that worksheet. 

After that everyone enjoyed their Elephant sandwiches with peanuts! Peanuts are an elephant's favorite snack, right? :-) Even baby Michael wanted in on these Elephant sandwiches, luckily I had an extra. 

Once snack was over we used our large motor skills and went on an elephant treasure hunt. We all used our arms as a trunk and made elephant sounds to try and find where the elephant's treasure may be. We looked in rooms all over the house and then made our way outside. Once outside we turned the corner and found the elephant treasure! Can you guess what it was? PEANUTS!!!! The kids had a great time stomping on the peanuts with their big elephant feet!

RJ wanted to enjoy his elephant treat... literally!

Everett was such a good elephant :)

Jared even had two trunks on his elephant!

Isaac's trunk was really long and went over his head ;)

Kaylee was such a cute elephant!