Pre-K Wednesday: {Books We Love}

At our preschool, circle time is one of the kids' favorite activities, and for many of the children, reading is their favorite part of the day! So I've compiled a list of a few of the books we love to read most:

ONE | MADELINE


Madeline by Ludwig Bemelmans

Madeline is such a classic, and it's my personal favorite. I even dressed up as Madeline for Halloween! The kids just love to hear all about Madeline and her adventures.

TWO | OWL BABIES 

Owl Babies

Owl Babies is a sweet read for children aged 2 1/2 to 5 years old. The kids love helping me read this one aloud.

THREE | THE EARTH AND I

The Earth and I by Frank Asch

This book is a favorite of a few of our students, who bring it to me at all times of the day to hear it read over and over, helping me make animal noises (which we improvise) and for them, it is great fun.

FOUR | KNUFFLE BUNNY

  Knuffle Bunny: A Cautionary Tale by Mo Willems

Knuffle Bunny is a very sweet and funny tale of a young girl who loses her stuffed bunny - and all that ensues. We love reading in the main character, Trixie's voice as they discover that Knuffle Bunny is missing!

xoxo

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Pre-K Wednesday: {Christmas}

Play-dough Snow

It's so sparkly and it smells like peppermint!

This year, we have had a variety of play-dough colors and scents, and for Christmas, we decided to make play-dough "Snow." 

Since we live in coastal California, snow just isn't something we come by too often, but this was a very fun (and much more warm!) alternative. We added glitter and some peppermint extract, and it really got the kids talking about Christmas! 

They even made snowmen:

Letter Recognition Tree

We have been working with letter recognition, writing practice, and spelling quite a bit, but the kids have been losing focus. I wanted to find a fun way to get them excited about spelling again, and this worked! I cut a ton (seriously, these kids have so many letters in their names!) of small circles in various colors for their 

"ornaments" and then added a letter to each one. I then cut out a tree for each child, spelling their name on the tree. They then had to match their letter ornaments to a letter on the tree and glue it down. 

We had so much fun!

Christmas Ornaments

We also made little circle glitter ornaments, and the kids love glue and glitter, so this was really fun for them! 

On top of our fun crafts, we've also been reading quite a few Christmas books, listening to Christmas music, and we are even having a mini-party!

xoxo

Pre-K Wednesday: Sunflowers & Pumpkins

This week we have been focusing on nature in Autumn- sunflowers, pumpkins, and apples have all been featured. Pictured above, we have sunflowers with petals made of each child's handprints, paper plates colored brown by the kids (though we found out that dot paint looks better!), then we glued real sunflower seeds in the middle. They look so cute!

Also, look at this awesome pumpkin that I found at the pumpkin patch over the weekend - we are going to cut it up and count the seeds! I can't wait!

xoxo

Pre-K Wednesday: Our Bunny!

Meet our bunny! 

She is just so fluffy and adorable, and the kids love her a lot. Mostly they watch her hop around in her crate, but every so often we let the bunny hop around our large rec room. The children have to be reminded often not to chase her but they certainly enjoy tip-toeing behind her around the room. Petting and feeding the bunny is always an exciting task, and more than once a child has tried to give her carrots from their own lunch! 

This week, we did an activity that included our bunny:

What do bunnies like to do?

We received a variety of answers, but the most common answers were: "Hop!" and "Eat carrots!"

That was perfect because we were writing the answers on carrot construction paper. 

I liked doing this activity because it reminded the kids of how much they are involved with our class pets, and they love talking about the bunny at home!

xoxo

Pre-K Wednesday: The Halloween Frenzy begins!

October is here and so our Halloween activities have begun! We dug out some Halloween themed books and have found plenty of Halloween crafts and snacks to keep us busy for almost the whole month!

Pictured above, as well as below, were our smoosh-paintings: we just used Halloween colors: black, orange, and white, then let the kids put the paint wherever they wanted on construction paper. After that we fold the paper and let the kids "smoosh" it with their hands, and voila! Weird shapes in fun colors. 

There were lots of outcomes and funny shapes; the kids really enjoyed this activity. My example piece (above right) looks like lungs!

These collage pumpkins are silly and so cute:

We also read a variety of books, including:

Rattlebone Rock

And we sing the song in this book:
  Five Little Pumpkins (Harper Growing Tree) So far we teachers have been having just as much fun with Halloween as the students!
What are your favorite Halloween activities to do with kids?
xoxo

Pre-K Wednesday: Welcome Week!

Our preschool has been back in session for a week and a half now, and we are finally able to get some crafts in with the kids! Last week was our welcome week, so we let the children adjust to their new school and surroundings.

With Autumn approaching, we will be doing many apple-themed projects. We did a dot-paint worksheet (pictured below; I found the worksheet here) and the kids did a great job learning the first letter of the alphabet! We also had a fun apple snack: we used a twist apple corer, and the kids were able to "make" their own snack! It was lots of fun for the kids and teachers.

Since the majority of the children are younger (age 2), we wanted to have activities that were fun but not too difficult! We decided upon painted hand prints with a poem below them (pictured at the top of this post, and below). It was a little bit tickly, which made the kids laugh! 

It was a very amusing sensory activity. They all enjoyed seeing their hand prints up on the wall!

We will certainly continue to see how their hands grow throughout the year!

xoxo

Pre-K Wednesday: Dinosaur Week!

My example

Since we have had a lot of boy students this summer, most of whom are headed to Kindergarten, we had to find some dinosaur related activities for them. They've spent weeks finding all of the dinosaur books possible in the classrooms, so I came up with an activity sure to get their attention: paper-plate stegosauruses! 

Pretty close to the example! 

They were all so adorable, but I really liked the ones done by the younger kids (age 3 and 4):

Aren't they just the cutest?

Some of the books the kids loved to read were: Dinosaur Dinosaur by Kevin Lewis and Dinosaur A-Z: For kids who really love dinosaurs! by Roger Priddy. We also told many dinosaur jokes, which always make the kids crack up. A personal favorite is:

What do you call a sleeping dinosaur?
A dino-snore!

xoxo

Pre-K Wednesday: Ocean & Sea Creatures!

Hand-print crab!

Since the Summer is drawing to a close, we wanted to make sure to include a week (or two) dedicated to the ocean before we send off our kindergarten kids and begin our new school year.  Since we live by the beach, it was easy to create a sensory tub full of shells and seaglass, and I even found a fully intact sand dollar to show the kids! We created hand-print crabs (my example is pictured above) at the beginning of the week, hand-and-foot-print lobsters (example pictured below), and paper-bag jellyfish.

We also did a variety of circle time activities involving music and books. The kids' favorite song to sing is called "Slippery Fish," and it goes:

Slippery fish, slippery fish

Swimming in the water

Slippery fish, slippery fish

Glub, glub, glub

OH NO! I've been eaten by a...

Octopus, octopus

Swimming in the water...

And it continues with a tuna fish, great white shark, and finally, a humongous whale! After you sing about the humongous whale, rather than saying you've been eaten again, you sing, "Glub, glub, glub... BURP! Excuse me..." The kids love to hear their usually-ladylike teachers letting out a huge, fake burp!

We've also been reading a large number of sea-related books, like Eric Carle's Mister Seahorse (you can buy it at my Amazon store) and A House for Hermit Crab (buy here). We also read The Ocean Alphabet Book by Jerry Pallotta, and the kids loved hearing all about the creatures we could find in the ocean.

Enjoy your last days of summer!

xoxo

Pre-K Wednesday: Zucchini Bread and Graduation!

Our homemade zucchini bread

We made zucchini bread with the kids this week! We let them grate the zucchini into small bits and allowed them to measure out our other ingredients. The zucchini was from our garden! It was a fun and time-consuming activity. We used a recipe from the Better Homes & Gardens' New Cook Book. You can buy the book here or see the recipe below:

Zucchini Bread

Preheat oven to 350 degrees fahrenheit. 

In a mixing bowl, combine 1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour, 1 tsp. ground cinnamon, 1/2 tsp. baking soda, 1/4 tsp. salt, 1/4 tsp. baking powder, and 1/4 tsp. ground nutmeg. In another mixing bowl, combine 1 cup sugar, 1 cup shredded unpeeled zucchini, 1/4 cup cooking oil, 1 egg, and 1/4 tsp. finely shredded lemon peel. Add flour mixture and stir until combined. If you please, stir in 1/2 cup chopped walnuts before pouring batter in a 8x4x2-inch loaf pan. Bake for 55 to 60 minutes. Cool for 10 minutes, remove bread from pan and cool thoroughly on a wire rack. Wrap and store overnight before slicing, makes 1 loaf (16 servings). 

Enjoy!

Graduation cupcakes

Many of the families were excited for their children to graduate for the first time ever, and one mom even made these great graduation cupcakes! She used funfetti cupcake mix (I'm in my twenties and funfetti is still my favorite). She made the graduation "caps" with a lollipop stick, a Reese's peanut butter cup, Hershey's chocolate (2 pieces per cap), an M&M, a sour worm-type candy, and melted chocolate as "glue." 

They turned out so cute! 

Hope your baking adventures are turning out delicious! 

xoxo

Pre-K Wednesday: Camping Theme! (With Mason Jars!)

The school where I work is up-and-coming, which is great because our class sizes are low and we get to come up with new ways to teach, finding what ways work best. Right now, we're trying theme weeks in order to inspire our creativity as teachers and give our students some structure. So, our very first theme week is: Camping!

We set up a tent and a "picnic table" inside the rec. room, and with our mural, it looks like the kids are camping on a beach! For snacks, we've been doing things like graham crackers, hot dogs, and we're even going to have s'mores! Since we can't have the kids around an open flame (danger alert!), we're going to cook them on the stove and let them pretend to make s'mores with their own "campfire:" 

Link

Earlier this week, we did a mason jar printable project: since we don't have fireflies/lightning bugs in California, we used the printable on top of black construction paper, and let the kids finger paint lightning bugs!

My example piece

Example in the middle, with two great projects by the kids on either side.

This project was great: it was easy, quick, and the kids loved it. We will definitely be doing things like this again.

xoxo,
Caryn Elizabeth