Preschool has been so exciting this week with so much action! Last week was hard to beat, with the pirate activities, but we were busy and excited with Valentine activities and the Letter "V"So, I cut out various sizes of valentines for some of the activities and I was good to go

I did my little yahoo dance when I finally emptied the last of the kleenex boxes for our Valentine boxes.  I was able to cover them with newspaper print paper and Grampa helped me finish them

I did not have enough boxes for me to make one, so I used this paper bag and showed them a couple of ideas.  We used these little doilies and colored through the holes. It was fun for them, then they actually pasted the lacy doilie on their boxes.

Brigham colored, put stickers and pasted colored hearts on his, as did some of the others.

While they completed their boxes, I talked to them about Presidents Day and why we celebrate it.  Abraham and George Washington, two of our Presidents of the United States, had birthdays in February.  I told them how George W was called "The Father" of our country.  Then I read some of the information to them about Abraham--where he lived, what did he eat, how did he travel, etc  and compared him to Joseph Smith, the prophet of the Church in that they had similar things in their lives.  For instance, they lived in a log cabin.  They helped their father clear land for farming.  They traveled by covered wagons drawn by horses.  They did not have electricity in their log cabins, so they read by the light of the fireplace, or by candle.  Books were scarce and they walked many miles to get books to read.  They both read the scriptures and were  Godly men.  They both set people free-one from physical slavery and the other spiritual slavery.

We also added another state to learn--yes, Washington who shared the same name as our first President.

We now have learned Arizona, New Mexico, Texas, Pennsylvania, California, Oregon, Washington, Utah, Nevada, so you might want to point out those states and encourage them to name them for you.

Last week we introduced a new thing to play with--a pirate island  They had a good time getting to know how it worked  We talked a little bit about the flag with a skull and cross bones--indicating a warning-bad people or bad things (poison)

We worked on our cutting and placing the correct number following another , for instance, after 0 comes 1

And we used conversation hearts to do a little more patterning as a follow up of last week.  these were an ABAB pattern and they did very well with it

Today I cut out valentines and put a number from 1 to 10 on them,  I hid them around the room and one by one they had to find them, in order and bring them to me.  the one who got the most got a Valentine reward.  This teaches them the order of the numbers AND that there is no pushing to reach the valentine first.

We also made necklaces with valentine shapes and straw pieces strung on white yarn

We placed some conversation hearts  any way we wanted them, on five rows.  When they finished placing the hearts, they were asked to find out how many of each color did they find on the paper.  There were a total of 20 and we added them to see if we had the right number.

Another "V" word  is view master, so the kids were able to look at some of the slides through these view masters.  They love to show each other the things they are looking at, such as, bugs, dinosaurs, cinderella, spiders, etc.  Once they learned to look to the light, they were able to see the things better.  The sharing is the joy of this activity.

We have been learning rhyming words and their spelling.  Today I had them spell some of those words.  They are learning the sounds of the letters that make these words and it is fun to see them solve the problem

They had asked me if they could dress up, so the girls were princesses today and the boys were able to play with the swords and be vikings of pirates.

I introduced the Lite Brite machine last week and today Brig and Sam had their chance to add light pieces to make a ship.  They had a good time with this!

When the others had gone home Sam sat at the kitchen table and got into his Valentine box.  This is his first valentine box and he really was excited.  All the kids shared things with their "friends" and I think that it was the end of another fun week for these preKinders.  I love these kids!!