Penguins/Hibernation

With the weather starting to get cold, November over and December here why not start learning
about hibernation and penguins!

Before I talk about our hibernation unit, here are some pictures of our center time that we do through out the day.

We are starting to learn to write words!

 



 

Practicing our letters.

 

Playing trucks in our large square.

 

Color sorting and stacking the containers. 

 

On Monday I was gone due to my son being sick but the sub did a great job I heard.  They learned about penguins.  They walked like a penguin, did a triangle penguin craft and read books about penguins! 


On Wednesday we finished up with our penguin unit.  We reviewed that penguins eat fish.  We used Goldfish Crackers to count with.  They had to count the correct amount of fish to put into the penguin with the matching number.   We then started to learn what hibernation is.  Hearing some of the preschoolers actually say that word was quite amusing :), but by Friday they were all saying it correctly!! YAY!  We learned a new letter, number and shape this week.  We are learning the letter Kk, the number 5 and the shape triange.

We started off with a book to introduce hibernation.  We read "Hibernation Station," a great colorful book to show they types of animals that hibernate.  We talked mostly about bears during our hibernation unit.  We played a game called Grizzly Bear, oh Grizzly Bear.  It's a game where you have a child lay down (being Mr. Bear) and pretending to be hibernating.  The rest of the preschoolers walked around while we sang our little song that goes with it.  I had one preschooler shake the bear.  When we told the bear to wake up, he/she had to guess who woke them up. 

We read a book called "The Mitten" by Jan Brett.  We learned about the different types of animals that went into the mitten and sorted out which animals hibernate and what animals don't.  We then made our own mitten, colored it and colored the animals to fit into our mitten.

On our Fabulous Fun Friday we had a pajama day! Since it was the last day of our hibernation unit and hibernation means to sleep, why not have a pajama day!  The preschoolers were very confused when they walked in that morning for there was some type of fort built out of blankets. 

It was our bear cave!!! Once they put the cave, bears and hibernation together they got very excited!  We did our activities throughout the day, but did most of them in our cave!  We closed our curtains and shut off our lights for most of the morning.  We used our flashlights for our light!!!  Here is a picture with them in their 'cave' with their flashlights.

 

While learning about hibernation, we went on a bear hunt....in the DARK!! Again we used our flashlights to light our way to find our bear!  On our bear hunt, I had a preschooler come up to me and say that the bear we are looking for forgot to hibernate, that's why he's up.  (Love it!!!)

We made a bear snack that consisted of: pretzels, marshmallows, teddy bear graham cookies and of course a little sweet treat :).

 

Here are some pictures of our funtastic day!

 

 

 

 

Indians

Once again I am behind on posting things up on the website!

I hope everyone had a marvelous Thanksgiving holiday.  I cannot believe that Christmas is 15 days away!!  Where has the year and time gone?  Anyways, the last week of November when we came back from our super long break we learned about Indians as well as the letter Gg, 4, orange/brown and a square. 

We learned some traditional games that the Native American children played.  One was land and water.  I put a large square made from tape on the floor which was our water.  The land was everywhere outside of the square.  When I would call out 'go to the water' they would jump into the square.  When our canoe was starting to sink we could swin to land.  While they were on land I had Native American music playing in the background.  We discussed why the water was so important to the Native Americans.  Along with our games we learned the song, '10 Little Indians.'  Since there were 10 preschoolers, acting out the song made it much more fun!

We then made little handprint Indians.  I painted their palms a peach color and then each finger had a different color (for the feathers).  When they dried, a face was drawn on each one.  I'm sorry I don't have a picture.  We also made feather bands and vests from brown paper grocery bags.  Those turned out cute! When we put everything on, I had one preschooler say, "we all are now aliens!"  He couldn't quite say the word Indian (had to work on that one :) ).

New coat rack!!

I have to show this off to everyone!  I am so blessed to have the greatest preschool parents ever!! One of my preschool parents made a new coat rack for our preschool room.  I have 10 preschoolers and getting their big coats and bags onto the small coat rack was almost impossible!  I had coats and bags falling down everywhere!!   I told her that if she wanted to she was more than welcomed!  Oh my did she do a good job!! The coat rack is super duper cute! I can't believe how there's so much more space than before!!! The preschoolers even told me today when they got to 'try it out' that there is a TON of room now! 

Here are the pictures of our new coat rack!! Again thank you Angela for making it!  You did such a great job!!! 

Our new coat rack with a shelf on the top to put our gloves and mittens!!! 

 

The handprints on the top are her daughters!! I am so proud of her for 'getting her hands dirty' and doing each handprint!

 



Thanksgiving and Turkeys!!

This week is we learned about Thanksgiving and of course TURKEYS! We continued working on our letter Ee, brown, squares and the number 4.  I apologize now because there aren't a lot of pictures from this week.  My camera died on Monday and on Wednesday we had so much fun that taking pictures completely slipped off my mind (one of those days :) ). 

Anyways this week we learned about what giving thanks means and somethings that we are thankful for.  It was interesting on some of the things that they were thankful for.  Most of them were thankful for their puppies!  :)  The whole week we were gobbling around like turkeys and strutting while we walked from place to place.  We also had to gobble while we did it.  You can not be a turkey without gobbling!

On Monday we made a turkey dinner.  We stuffed brown lunch bags with newspaper, twisted them, taped and shaped them to look like turkey legs.  We next added our mashed potatoes which consisted of cotton balls.  You couldn't have mashed potaotes without butter, so we had to add some butter!  We also added yellow and green tissue paper for our green beans and corn.  I LOVED how they all reminded me that corn and green beans were a vegetable and that they are good for us! 
Here is a picture of our Thanksgiving meal.
 

 

 

I am addicted to pinterest!  If you have never heard of it or been on the website you are missing out!  There are oodles and I mean OODLES of good creative ideas.  I found a turkey craft that we had todo.  It involved FINGERPAINTING (their favorite)!!   Here are footprint and handprint turkeys! 

I had to take a picture of this one.  It was one of my favorites!  When I painted their hands, I used one hand to 'blend' in the colors.  This little boy choose green and orange. The reason I love it is because one of the 'feathers' turned camo, pretty neat!!  What made it even better was that he pointed it out! :)  I love how my preschoolers are so smart and the things that they notice!

 



 

 

On Wednesday we continued learning about turkeys.  We made turkeys out of rice krispies.  They didn't turn out as well as I planned.  When we tried to put out fruit loop feathers on, our turkey fell apart. :(   In the end it was a great lesson on how things don't always turn out like you want them to.  You just work with what you have and make the best out of it and that is exactly what we did! 

 

 

Since our rice krispie turkeys didn't turn out like we wanted them too, we made another turkey!! 

 

 

 

I hope you all have a great Happy Thanksgiving and enjoy your break with friends and family!!! 

 

 

 

 

 

 

My Body!

Where has November gone? I can't believe it's almost Thanksgiving!  I apologize for being behind on my posts!
Last week we learned about our body and eating well!  We played games which included finding different body parts such as: arms, elbows, knees, shoulders, etc.  We listened and sang to many songs! One of the favorites was: 'I can Wiggle".  We wiggled all of our body parts from our heads to our toes!   Some other songs we did were: The Hokey Pokey (of course! great body part song!), Head, Shoulder, Knees and Toes, and Can You Find it? 

We learned about different types of foods that are good for us and that aren't good.  I had some stuffed vegetables and fruits I used to explain and show them some foods that are good for us.   Later we did an activity where they had to sort out the healthy foods vs the non healthy foods.

We learned about our bones and how they are important to us.  Even though you cannot see our bones, they are still inside of us.  We discussed what an X-ray is and what it does.
Here is the craft we did with an X-ray.  I painted bones on their hands and it says, 'Even though you cannot see, here are the bones inside of me.'   The little raccoon in the picture is Chester from the Kissing Hand-we learned about Chester the raccoon the first week of school.  He is with us everyday in preschool.  When the kids feel 'homesick' or are just having a bad day, they get to go to Chester and give him a hug and put his 'kissing hand' to their cheek!)

 

 

 

Along with learning about our bodies, the shape of the week was a square and the color was brown!  We made our bodies out of brown squares!!

 

 

 

 

We learned about the letter Ee this week.  I made a big Ee on the carpet using masking tape.  They though that was the coolest thing ever!!! I couldn't believe how much they loved that big Ee and playing on it!  Here are some pictures of us forming the letter Ee.

 

 

 

During center time, they got to drive cars on the Ee! 

 

 

I think Friday's in preschoo are one of my favorites and that's why we call it Fabulous Friday!! Since we are learning about Ee this week, we had to do an experiment with an egg.  We did the egg in a bottle experiment.  I asked them if they thought I could get this egg into the bottle.  I placed the egg on the bottle and it wouldn't fit.  I got responses telling me, "we should blow it up" to 'cut it into smaller pieces'.    I told them I was going to make egg be sucked into the bottle.  Their faces explain it all!

 

 

 

 

 

 

Along with learning the letter Ee, we did an elephant craft. 

 

 

Here are what they look like!