It's lots of fun at Christmas time

The spirit of Christmas is in the air!!  The kids are feisty, moody yet, are humming jingle bells throughout the morning.  That little humming should be wonderful, but when we are trying to hear, causes some confusion.
This morning after opening exercises, we settled down to looking at Christmas cards sorting to see if the kids could come up with some ideas.  I gave them paper and had them tell their own stories.  I chose a little "angel" in the forest surrounded by little animals and told the story of the "stranger in the woods" where the children made a snowman and put all kinds of goodkes on it for the animals to eat.  They each had their story to tell from snowballs to Santa Clause.  Miss Jo Dee read the "Night before Christmas" poem and that helped the thought process.
Then we found this little maze taking Micky Mouse to the door to find the Christmas ornaments.  all the kids well on that!!

 Sam finished his quickly.  He likes to do mazes.
 

Lily did quite well with her maze, too

Sam showed us his basketball

Joey showed us his light up squishy worm for show and tell

 Then we tried to pull these ornaments out of the bag and guessing what they were by the feel of them.  After a couple of tries, the kids caught on what they were to do .  It was a challenge, but they met the challenge well.

 The morning passed quickly and I told them if they hurried, I would show them the lighted tree, Santas village, a snowy wonderland, and of course the train that whistles as it moved along the track around the tree. It doesn't take much to entertain kids when there is a train!! And I rather enjoy it too!)

They wanted me to wind up the pond where the skaters went round and round.

 After snacks and play time, we came back to the room where the children were given these Christmas trees with a swag of Christmas lights on which appeared the letters of their names.  I encouraged the parents to get the children to match the letters, in the order they come to spell out their names.  Have them then spell out the names .  They are able to match letters, but do not always know that J-a-n-e-t spells Janet, not just a bunch of letters.

 Sam worked on his on the floor beside me  Then put the lights back into his plastic bag and each child was to take them home for their parents to work with them.

 Jo Dee read several books to them--This one was great because we had talked about making snowmen and this showed them what to do!

 This book took each of the letters in the alphabet and gave a word such as snow, evergreen, winter

 N for Nativity

 This book gave various verses of Jingle bells  and the kids were able to use the bells to make sounds when they sang the chorus.

 This is a picture of the children from all over the world that were included in the verses, such as, the Philipines, Sweden, Kenya and Italy.

Another good day in PreK and one week closer to the greatest event in History--The Birth of Our Savior--celebrated as Christmas!!

Elvin Elephant, elf, leg, bells, music

Tis the season for the little ones to want to be home with their mothers and this morning we had two of them finding it hard to leave their mothers.  BUT, we prevailed, and they settled down  to music, games and fun learning.  We have been using the push pins to make an angel print  and It is very hard for them, so we are slowly completing them. getting lots of practice with the pins.

 These three bells each has a different sound.  The first is like a cow bell with a low sound, the one on the right is high and the one in the middle is  a sound in between.  Object, we needed a distinct difference to make the high low sounds.

 We repeated the names and sounds of the letters already studied.  C O G A D S L I T F E

 We listened to the book The Enormous elephant show and words beginning with the e e e elephant sound

 We counted the snowmen and then figured out together which two were alike and how the other three were different

 When I talk about the number 5 and have them write it I tell them this number has a hat, a neck, and a big belly.  so, if they say that, you will know what they mean, right?

 Amazing as it seems, this little girl counted the items in each block and circled all the correct numbers.  A three year old, at that!!

 H is very proud of that same feat!!

 everyone made a stab at it

 At snacks they wanted me to take pictures of their funny faces

some not so funny

 Then we worked another sheet with words having a short vowel sound

 leg, flag, sled, eggs, elf and cat  matching pictures to words.

 another cutting exercise

 Some how someone always loses a piece that cannot be found.  Where, I wonder, do those pieces go??

 A new puzzle for us and we all worked together to get it finished.  Each child was given his or her own pieces to figure out where they were to go  Pretty good job!!

 Each loved ringing the bells and I pulled a few more off the shelf.  We marched to the music, ringing our bells until the music stopped and the would "freeze."  A fun time

 Now, here is our elf who was hiding in the tree this morning.  The kids helped put the little snowmen ornaments on the tree and worked all around him until "H" found him.  We hid him several times after that and "H" found him each time.  Very observant, right??

 More snowmen  the branches were loaded in one place, empty in another, but they liked doing it.

We have been listening to Christmas music, which everyone loves.  They love ringing bells, using the flutes and other instruments.  Next week we will be using other music for activities.  It is easy to tell that the spirit of Christmas is here!!  Another fun day in Prek

E elf

It was a chilly day for Arizona preK children  Here is Janae with hat, scarf and warm jacket

And Lily with her jacket, carrying her back pack  We don't get many cold days, but with the wind blowing, today is a chilly one!!

We started the day with a cutting exercise.  This was quite a bit harder than others we have done, but they tried their best.

 The main thing is that they are learning the correct procedure in holding the scissors and cutting

This week we are learning the letter "E" and they pasted little elves on the template, colored the elf who is peeking from behind the letter.  The upper and lower case letters are also on the page and the word elf.  I encouraged them to use red and green for this months colors, but some had minds of their own

We played Elf Bingo with the letters we have learned so far plus the numbers from 1-5

Then we used push pins to make this angel picture and we will finish this on Thursday as it was very time consuming for this age child

Miss Jo read and they showed us how to make snow angels

 We found where Sam was hiding (we have  a Sam in the class so he thought that was great!)

 And we counted the ornaments on the Mouse Christmas Tree

Each was given an ornament for their tree with their own faces on the little elf costume.  Now they can hang this on the tree and see what they looked like in December, 2013

Time always gets away from us when we are having fun and it was another great day at GranJan's