Families and homes are imortant!

I knew that we would need a little more time today, so as the kids came in I gave them a long sheet of paper and cutouts of girls, boys, moms, dads and dogs.  Each one was to paste these figures onto the long sheet to show their family and tell us a little bit about them.  It is always fun to listen to kids tell about their family.
We, of course, went through our morning schedule with the pledge of the flag, the calendar, the weather, and of going the alphabet and the vowels.  Then, it was back to building our families.

Each one of the kids is unique in their presentation, but they were proud to tell about a sister or brother and their pets.

They washed their hands quickly and we had a few minutes to go into the front room and look to see if any of the birds were at the feeder.  We were able to see the hummingbirds, which are always the favorite of the kids.

Because we are talking about families and houses, when we went to the playroom, I pulled out four houses for the kids.  It is always fun to see what they do in their house.  Cooper and Avery wanted to be together in one house.  Avery is a little mother, with putting baby in the space, making sure that she used the little vacuum sweeper to clean it, and talking to Cooper about the things that need to be done around the house. Brook and Ivy were in together with their babies; Brigham took the phone and some cars into his space.  He made calls to Sammy, who also had a phone and cars, and then they tried to call the others, who just had to pretend they had phones.  It was really cute watching them play together as though they were neighbors and friends.

 We made houses out of paper bags and discussed ways we would know how to get to their house if we had never been there before.  I said, maybe we should put our addresses on our houses and Brigham said that he did not have an address.  I told him that his mother had given me an address and told him what it is.  I said, Brigham, you live on 8th street.  I live on 7th street, that means that we don't live far away.  Oh, he said, I did not know that!!  So, parents, go over your address often with these little ones so that they know where they live.

They are always anxious to have books read to them, so We first read the Berenstains A book.  It is an easy read and I know when we get to the letter A, that we will be rereading it.  Then I read the Stranger in the woods and I personally love the book because of the natural pictures of wild life in the forest.  I think it is one book that they will be choosing again.
Well, another week gone by for us.  Families are forever and important to us and we are all blessed to have a home to live in, for the moment.  It is great to have these kids in preschool this year and to complete just one more day!!  Avery was the prize winner for August.  She is helpful, gets her work done and helps the others when they need help.  Congratulations Avery!!  Who will be get our next prize?

learning about tasting and touching, smelling and listening

Our morning started out with the use of the view masters.  As the children came in one by one, two by two, each was given a view master and a disc that they could look at.  They passed them around as they finished one, then were able to look at each of the discs because they were oohing at each picture, wanting to share what they were looking at.

As you can see, Brig has a red one, Brook a green one and Coop an orange view master

Avery chose a green one and Ivy had a red one










They would have looked at discs all morning, but we finally had to move on to another subject.

If you remember, we are learning about our bodies  Today we talked a little abut how the brain manages our senses.  So we now have on our papers our hands and feet, and our nose, mouth and eyes and ears.

When we went into the kitchen for our snacks, Brig had brought apples and cheese for our snack today.  I was able to cut the apple through the middle and ask them what they saw.  Of course, the response was "seeds".  I showed them that there was a star in the middle of the apple. They also remembered another star that appeared--when Jesus was born.  Interesting. . . . .  While they ate their snacks, we had a good time smelling and tasting various other fruits.  First, the apple, then the strawberry, and then pineapples.  For a variety, we then smelled the peanuts, and tasted them and told about the differences.  We also ate cheetos and tasted salt and even flour.  Ugh, they did not like flour and I suggested that if they added some water, sugar, yeast and oil, that they might like the dough when it was made into those cheetos, or bread.  They were very good to at least taste the items, though several made it known that they did not like certain things.

When we went to the play room, we took pictures of those hands and feet and spent a couple of minutes talking about feeling.  We had touched various things to see the difference in textures--cotton, paper, wig hair, and netting and plastic.  We wondered what would happen if we could not feel--what would too much cold do, or heat?

How do we protect our bodies?  Safety glasses, shoes, clothing.

 Each time we get into the preschool closet we find just another special thing to play with

 Ivy seems to wander over to the dolls

 Brig has to be rolling, hitting or throwing something.  This discovery was the bowling ball and pins

 Brook decided she also liked to play and Ivy helped put up the pins, four, three, two, one.

Who is this little dinosaur?  Brook

 Brig moved on over to the potato head family

While Coop had his turn in the dino costume

 Next we made these cute little potato head activities  What do I use to . . . . .see, hear, touch, taste, smell

And the best part of the day was reading time. . . . .

What am I was quick and easy and talked about shapes  An easy read
Stellaluna, they said, was a little long, but they sat still and listened to the end. 
Another day in preschool and a fun time was had by all!!. . . . . . .

Using our "brains" today

I can't believe we are finished with our second week of preschool, but we all seem to feel comfortable with each other and having a good time together.  I keep the bag of blocks on the floor of the preschool room, and that is the first thing the kids wanted to do this morning, so we discussed how we sing the song about the wise man and the foolish man in primary.  Why do you ask??  Well, everything needs to have a good foundation and I showed them how they needed to have a good solid foundation for our "castle" so that it would not fall down easily.  Then we proceeded to make a good sized circle with the bigger, heavier blocks and then we had our foundation and they could build the castle up.  Pretty soon we had all the kids involved and it turned out to be a really  fun activity for all of us.

When our castle was complete, it was time for our morning activities.  We had our pledge, repeated John 3:16, moved over to the calendar, the weather, and then once again we sang our alphabet song and Cooper and Avery took turns pointing to the letters in order for us to associate verbally as well as by sight.

We are beginning to learn about our bodies and this will be the pattern we will add parts to, as we learn body parts, functions and purpose.

Today the children pasted the brain on to the body and they told me where the brain is located.  Then we discussed the many things that the brain is responsible for in keeping our bodies moving.

The first activity we did was: I placed 6 items on a tray and had them identify each item, then I  put a cloth over the items and removed one item and had them guess what was missing.  Then removed two items, added a few more, removed more, etc showing them that our brain helps with our memories.

We will be adding sight words to their word boxes now and so I asked each one what was a word he or she wanted to put into their box.  Cooper chose the word "see" and Brooklyn wanted a rhyming word, so she chose "bee"  Brig chose "dad', Sam chose "mom" Ivy chose "ivy" (which we decided was a good one because it also meant a crawling vine.  Then Avery chose a rhyming word for "dad" and that was "fad" so we discussed what that word meant.  Then we decided that we would all add "dad" to our boxes and so we repeated them several times, got our boxes and put them into them as our learning begins.  so, please go over these words .

We then noticed it was time for snacks and Sammy's mom brought strawberries, and cookies for our snack today.

While we were at the table, I took this opportunity to discuss how important it is to take care of our bodies, in this case our heads.  We decided it was a good thing to always wear our helmets when we rode a bike or scooter.  I placed a soft dish towel on the table, took an egg, and dropped it.  Nothing happened to the egg and they told me it was because the cloth was soft.  Then I dropped the egg on a paper towel on the table.  The egg broke!  We discussed the reason and what was the result.

Fun time in the basement and exploring new things.  Brig walked on the pathway (roads) we made last week and Ivy and Brook were our viking chiefs today. 

At the end of our day we read two books, chosen by the children.  The first was "There was an old woman who swallowed a bell"  and that was interesting the things that she swallowed!!  Then there was "My World" and how many times was My read.  The question sticks helped us to find out more about the books and we had some very interesting remarks.

There is always excitement when a mother or father sees just what kind of work their child is doing.  When I presented this activity today, I put my example paper on a cookie sheet and attached it with magnets. I showed the children how magnets worked and they are anxious to work with magnets again.  Anyhow, I try to go step by step with the kids to have them learn how to follow directions.  When I looked at how they followed instructions, Sammy, who is the youngest in the class really amazed me at how well he was able to do. (And his mother was impressed, too!!)
Way to go, kids, another good day in preschool!