Halloween Party

What fun costumes!
So cute, Teri

The bunny storyteller. :)

I love the way the baby is looking at you.

Thanksgiving Party

Our Preschool day was a success. Even Jessica came and visited today, (although she already made an Indian headband and vest at school, yesterday)

We learned a little about why we celebrate Thanksgiving and about Native Americans. We made our costumes and then watched the video "Go My Son" by BYU's Living Legends.
Had a little drumming Pow Wow. At this point I had lost some of them but earlier we did some beat practice and they did great.

The appetizer for our Thanksgiving Feast. (Disclaimer: when my husband, Cesar, looked at it he said, "too much mayonaise" when he tasted it he said, "too salty" So it wasn't authentic.:)) Tasted good to me! :)

Tempera Paint!

Hey Ladies, I recently bought tempera paint when it was on sale at Michael's. I have red, yellow, blue, and white. Let me know if you want to borrow it for school. It's WASHABLE!

Recipe Blog

Hey Ladies, I would put this link on the sidebar if I knew how, but this is the best I can do so far. It's the website where I found the caramel toffee dip and cinnamon chips. You can find those recipes under Crafts/Special Features in the index.

http://www.ourbestbites.com/

Halloween Week Was a Scream!

On Monday we used Miss Liz's welcome song, which is such a joy for Miriam and (he) Lane because they get to stand up and flash their grins with a little coy head bobbing. Everyone wanted to dress the weather frog (and feed swimmy, the class mascot; and say the prayers, and sit in the huge awkward leather chair on wheels), so we talked about having a sticker chart next time to show who has had turns so far.

The lesson material had us hardly able to contain ourselves of course, but we managed to discuss Halloween and pumpkins along with a letter game using the "at" sound (Teri, I had to laugh that you did the same thing the following week and I apologize for the delayed post, but as you said, repetition is golden). The "A" and "T" magnets were placed on the floor, surrounded by consonants such as M, P, Z, J, R, C, B, H, etc. Each child chose a consonant to place in front of "at", and then decided if it was a real word, and if so, determined if it was a Halloween word. Elizabeth was skeptical about my stretch of the word mat being included because of doormats at trick-or-treating time. But no one could dispute cat, bat, rat, or hat.

Thanks to the other teachers, we had lots of Halloween stories to choose from, our favorite being Berenstain Bears and The Spooky Tree, which had each child riveted and terrified and begging for more.

Here we are dancing the Monster Mash, Addi doing some break dancing. It truly wasn't Ryann's or Laine's favorite part of the day. But they perked right back up when we had some playtime in "those little guys' room". Playing tigers was the craze of the day, as we had almost enough plastic tiger figurines for an entire tiger preschool family. Ryann is especially good at pretending.


While the kids played, they took turns getting their hands and feet traced on black paper for our grand Halloween art surprise, which turned out not to be a grand surprise. The kids were excited about drawing their own pumpkin faces and gluing on their own hands and feet so the moms could guess which pumpkins were whose. We just got too excited about the party to remember that on Wednesday.

Writing/Coloring time was fun. Laine did a super job on her capital and lower case letters after only one example. A cute occurance was that Elizabeth lent Addi several different colors of her crayons during our H workbook time, and upon being asked for peach, she kindly replied, "Honey, you're going to have to get some crayons of your own." Seriously, it was in the kindest way with utmost concern for the situation. And Liz, don't worry, Addi has crayons, they just weren't as easily reached or as fun as the ones coming out of that cute little pouch I think.

The other awesome thing we (I) forgot was our performance! The kids memorized (or re-memorized, it appeared) the Five Little Pumpkins poem with actions and much enthusiasm. You'll have to see if they remember it still. Pretty cute stuff!

We carved the hat off of a pumpkin to end the day and Miriam proved to have the most zeal and dedication for scooping pumpkin guts, with or without the scraping tool.


Wednesday was terribly exciting, as you all remember. Before you arrived, the highlights were:

• singing the hello song to each child in costume (Tinkerbell, won't you stand up...)
• practicing the Five Little Pumpkins with even more enthusiasm (jumping included)
• dressing the weather frog after the first snow...everyone got a turn
• putting the finishing touches on the party food (taking turns making cinnamon chips using Halloween cookie cutters)
• what in the world just happened to my font? that was a novice blogger accident!

Thanks for making it a great time! We are loving preschool days each week.

The Little Red Hen

We sang Hickety Pickey Bumble Bee and each child stood up and said their own name proudly in the song. We moved the date and Ryann knew exactly where November 4th was. We sang our "I" song and put 9 apples on the tree. Then we hunted for 9 hidden airplanes with numbers on them and landed them on a runway in order. Since 9 was our special number, we all wore 9 stickers and went on a 9 walk. Every time we found a nine we raced and touched it. This was so much fun, but Addi especially loved it! She loved finding 9's all by herself, not just touching the ones the older kids found. By the end of the walk we were all better at telling 9's from 6's.

Miriam showing us her 9 sticker!

We read The Little Red Hen and then reviewed our bingo song. (Miriam has such a memory for songs, and at lunch time she led everyone in singing bingo all on her own.) Repetition is so good for these preschoolers. Today they all knew the song and could even clap the rhythm. (Try it at home. ) Then we played Bingo with the farm animals from the story. The 3 year olds had picture Bingo cards and the 4 year olds had word Bingo cards. Elizabeth and Quinn were GREAT at recognizing words like duck and cow and mouse with no pictures or help from me. It was really fun!

Everyone working on Little Red Hen craft gluing wheat and feathers. Laine LOVED the glue.

Then we read Pancakes Pancakes by Eric Carle, (wonderful book!) and ground our own wheat into flour. Everyone added 2 ingredients and we made our own pancakes for lunch. We each had a job setting the table and Elizabeth noted that like the Little Red Hen, we all had to help or we wouldn't get to eat. :) They were so proud they ate like horses--better than I've EVER seen them eat at my house. Lunchtime was wrapped up with a highly entertaining round of impromtu singing initiated by Miriam but quickly taken over by Elizabeth :). Quinn, Miriam, and Elizabeth were all standing and dancing in their chairs. It was quite a sight. I took a video, but it's turned 90 degrees and I can't figure out how to flip it. Darn. It was another really fun day.

Green Eggs and Ham

We sang a new welcome song called Hickety Pickety Bumble Bee. Then we learned the sounds that "I" makes and sang a song to help us remember them and then we read the sesame street "I" book. I learned to recognize the words "I love you" and practiced them in sign language. We read the story I Love You Through and Through and sang the song "I love you, and you love me" (pg 263 in the primary book) with our sign language. Then we hunted for our rhyming eggs and learned words with "at" endings. Quinn and Ryann read their eggs all by themselves and Elizabeth was so excited to take hers home so she could practice and learn all those words. :) Our shape for today was the circle and everyone raced to find something with a circle in it. Then we played shape bingo and Addi, Miriam and Laine were really good at putting chips over the right shape. The little preschoolers did so well today (and the older preschoolers always do).

For playtime we dug up buried dinosaur bones (and then got to feed them to dog). We took turns riding bikes and scooters. Then we went inside and did our "I" workbook page.

We had some singing time before lunch and learned Bingo (reviewed letters and sounds) and 5 Little Speckled Frogs (Miriam was really good at counting backwords in this song. Then we played a game matching eggs, ham, milk, hamburgers and bacon to the animals they come from. And read the story Green Eggs and Ham.

For lunch we made our own green eggs and ham with vegetables and dip and milk and we knew where all our food came from. Then we had fun playing with our farm animals and it turned out to be a 5-star day.

Miriam and Addie being very creative with their Barbies and farm animals