Two, A, Apple.

Hello,

I hope you are having a great week! I apologize it has been so long sense my last post. It has been crazy these past few days!  Here is just a small recap of everything that we accomplished here at preschool this week.

Monday: Letter A! We practiced making our big and little A’s. Along with gluing alphabet noodles onto our big A’s as a fun craft for the day. Another notable lesson we learned today was fallowing directions to make a picture. I started by giving simple directions like to circle the left balloon and then color one red and one yellow. You can continue doing this from home by giving step by step directions to complete a special task. I guarantee your preschooler will be delighted when the task is finished and there able to say that they did it all by themselves.

Wednesday: Number Two! Today we focused on number two. We started out the day by coloring our cardboard two’s and then taking pipe cleaners and bending them into the shape of a two. While we worked on our craft we came up with everything that we have two of. After that was done we moved away from the number two and made our red and yellow pattern sticks. This turned out to be a fun task to watch everyone concentrate so hard on alternating between red and yellow.  

Thursday: Today we talked about Johnny Appleseed! We opened up the day by discussing what our favorite color apples were and then we took a look at the inside of an apple. After some pretty intense investigating we decided that the shape reminded us of a star. We then moved onto making our own paper apples along with reading “The Dappled Apple” and “The Apple Book”.  My favorite part of the day was talking about the story of Johnny Appleseed and his memorable choice of hat. The kids thought it was pretty silly that someone would wear a pot on top of his head. Happy Birthday Johnny Appleseed!

Here is a little poem we learned today in school!

-A little red apple 
Hung high in a tree. 
I looked up at it, 
And it looked down at me. 
"Come down, please," I called. 
And what do you suppose? 
That little red apple 
Dropped right on my nose!

Have a great weekend! See you all on Monday!

FALL!!

Ah autumn is in the air, and while the leaves are turning and the air is cooling your children are learning! Today as we were counting down the final days of summer you could just see the anticipation growing as we got closer and closer to Saturday, our first day of fall! So, of course we decided there were no better colors to study then those that we see falling from our trees. To start off our Wednesday morning we opened our crayon boxes and put our reds and yellows to work. Shying away from the word fall for a while we turned our attention to all the things around us that are red and yellow. Each student completed their very own book of red and yellow things that included a heart, bus, banana, stop sign, corn on the cob, and lips. While making our pictures into an actual book I had the pleasure of working one on one with some of the children on how to use their scissors ( my goal is that by Christmas everyone will be able to work a scissors on their own). Next we went back to our fall centered lessons and listed off everything that we are able to do this time of year that we can’t in all the other seasons.  Together our list amounted to jumping in leaf piles, visiting pumpkin patches and apple orchards, eating pumpkin pies and my personal favorite celebrating Halloween and Thanksgiving (or better known in their minds; Turkey Day).  Next we moved on to our bigger craft of the day and made the most adorable wind socks! The kids really had fun gluing all the colorful leaves on and getting to see how a bunch of little things can turn out to make such a cool project! They even asked if that could hang there wind socks outside for everyone to see but then had to be reminded that they were made of paper, and the wind and rain probably wouldn’t be very kind to their wonderful masterpieces. Once our windsocks were all put together and everyone was situated we all went onto creating our flashy bracelets, sticking with our red and yellow patterns of course! The kids were pretty eager to show off their colorful new accessories to one another. I thought this was pretty cute especially because everyone’s was exactly the same, Ha-ha. As we completed the last few details of our project we all had the joy of singing along to the fun little book Kelsey brought along to share called “The leaves are falling one by one.” I was amazed how well everyone began to chime in on the silly song once they got the flow of the pattern of the book. Overall we had quite a successful day here at Mary’s!  My only hope is there energetic attitudes continue on throughout the year!
Thanks for reading! Now, get outside! It’s a beautiful, beautiful day!

F is For...

F is for….Family, Fish, Friends, Fruit, Fly, Fox….and Focus!

Hello, and happy Monday!

 If you haven’t been able to tell yet what our theme was today…you may need to get your eyes checked!

Today our theme was letter F! We started out the day by going around and saying what we like to do with our families, and then moved on to list everything that came to our minds that started with letter F. The first craft of the day was taking our cut out F’s and beautifying them with our little fingerprints. After getting all cleaned up from that we moved on to talking about how many people were in each of our families, which then led to my favorite craft of the year so far; family portraits! This I must say was a bit humorous to watch, but at the same time it was also so exciting to see everything a child picks up on. At one point in the activity one student in particular pointed out to me that they made daddy much bigger then mommy because really that’s how it was. As simple as that sounds it was invigorating to hear just how observant your children are and that they have the knowledge to put such details into their art work. One really awesome part of doing the family portraits today was that we will be doing the project once again later in the spring to show you how far your preschooler has come throughout the year! So if possible store there artwork that was sent home and come back to it later in the year, my hope is to absolutely blow you away with their progress!

Last but not least, our final topic of the day; Feelings! As you can imagine this was a pretty fun topic to cover here at Mary’s being that we have such dramatic, silly kids. We started out by giving each child a two sided face, one side wearing a happy smile and the other a gloomy sad frown. Then we went onto asking aloud various questions that could be answered by showing a happy face or a sad face. Here are just some examples: Grandma and Grandpa are coming for a visit, does this make you happy or sad? The bee stung you today while you were playing outside, would you have a sad face or a happy face when the bee stung you? And so on…

Finally we ended our Monday by chanting loudly “if you’re happy and you know it clap your hands!”

So now after hearing all about our day I hope you can bring your Monday to a close by ending the same way we did. “If you’re happy and you know it clap your hands!”

Thank you and goodnight!

Left foot. Right foot. Feet. Feet. Feet. =)

Oh Mr. Sun! Sun! Mr. Golden sun, please shine down on me!

Hello! Hope everyone is having a fabulous day and not letting these stubborn rain clouds above our heads affect us from having a bright and cheery Wednesday! Although, really who can complain we have had nothing but beautiful weather lately. In fact today was the very first day since we have started school that we have had to shade in the cloudy day box on our weather tracker! Hopefully our luck will continue on throughout our fall. Anyway, beside the weather we accomplished quite a bit today in school as you may have been able to tell with all the crafts your kiddos got sent home with. Here is sort of the play by play of how our school day went.

1.       We started school off by discussing what chores we can do to help our mom’s and dad’s.

2.       Today our theme was based on circles, what objects can make up a circle and where we may be able to find circles. This went along with the book your child brought home.

3.       Next we continued working on letter (M). Everyone completed a worksheet on how to make an (M) on their own. (If you’re looking for something to keep your child occupied I suggest having them sit down and work on writing there letters, some sort of struggled with this task.)  

4.       Left foot. Right foot. Feet, Feet, Feet! Oh my goodness were we excited about getting to tie our own shoes! We started off by first reading “The foot book” By: Dr. Seuss. Then everyone got the very own practice shoe where they were showed the shoe tying process. Super fun!

5.       The book “Let it fall “was read and we went over what new changes fall brings. It was fun to be able to hear their favorite things about fall. (Most included getting to jump in big piles of leaves. Shocker there=)

 Last but defiantly not least we closed off our lesson by going around the table and saying what makes each of us special and oh my goodness what I would have given to get that on video tape!  You should have seen your children; it was probably the sweetest most innocent thing I have seen in a very long time. We had answers ranging everywhere from I like to take baths, I’m good at coloring, I know how to play fun games, and my personal favorite I love my family.  Ah, it still to this day blows my mind how loving children can be, it is such an awesome opportunity to be able to share special moments like this with them.

Your child’s homework for this week is to:

·         Practice your letters! Specifically (M) if not all of them!

·         Work on tying their shoes by themselves ( I know most of the kids wear Velcro shoes however it is still a very important and useful  task for them to be able to do.

Thank you all for fallowing and I’ll see you tomorrow! Sweet dreams and goodnight!