All About Me and Apples!

Okay so this trying to post at least once a week thing isn't working out so well!  I don't know how some of you do it, but between school, planning, my own kids and their million activities, laundry, cooking, cleaning(yeahright) and everything else I just can't seem to find the time to post as much as I would like!  I still try to check my reading list everyday to blog stalk all of you and steal your awesome ideas!  Anyways.... We have been sooo busy at preschool these past two weeks!  And did I mention how much I LOVE MY CLASS!!  Seriously, they are just the sweetest group of little smarties EVER!!!  I just love them all so much!


Okay, so the week before last we focused on All About Me and Our Families.  We discussed how we all are different, but each one special.



We graphed the color of our eyes and then discussed the results.  They cut out the circles for the eyeballs and HELLO- awesome cutting skills!!!!  Yay!




Here is an interactive writing predictable chart that we did.  We focused on the letter Ii this week-look at those letter Is!!!  Yay!


 

 Here we measured how tall we were and then compared the results.  This picture was taken before we finished all the kids-we started this one day and then finished the next.  I guess I forgot to take another picture-oops!  We lined up from tallest to shortest, and then shortest to tallest.  For some reason they thought this whole thing was hilarious! Silly kids!


 

We talked about the people that make up our family and then did this Who Lives in My House glyph.  I got this idea on Pinterest and it was sooo fun!  The kids did an awesome job!  Not only did it cover knowledge of who makes up their family, but also color recognition, as well as counting!




 

Here is the key that we used for our glyph.  I made a really small version and glued it to the back of each of their houses, so the parents could read the glyph.






We sorted letter in our name and letters not in our name.






And of course since we focused on the letter I, we had to paint the letter I with ice cubes!  Every week, during small group time, one of the groups completes a letter for their alphabet book.  The groups rotate throughout the week, so everyone goes to each activity.  I keep the letter art, cut out and mount onto colored cardstock, and then assemble into a book and then they take them home at the end of the year.  We do all kinds of process art for these letters and the books really turn out awesome and fun!  One of my favorite projects of the year!

Sooooo then last week, we focused on Apples!!!

We started our week with a KWL chart and filled out the K and W.  I totally did not get a picture of this, but i was really amazed at all of the stuff they already knew!  Smarties!





Here, after discussing the parts of the apple and talking about seeds, we did a Seed Snip.  I gave them a strip of black paper and they had to snip snip snip to make seeds for their apple.  Again, I am AMAZED at the scissor skills this group has so early in the year!




We did a fine motor/following directions/ paper tearing activity.  This is one of my favorite apple activities that we do-I have done it every year!  I LOVE how the apples all turn out so different! 




Of course we read Ten Apples Up On Top!!!  We focused on AB pattern and they did it!!!  I will leave these hanging thru next week and then assemble into a classbook!  They LOVE classbooks!




This was one of our small group activities.  I am lucky enough to have one aide and a Foster Grandparent that comes to my room everyday, so we have three groups during small group time.  Two groups of 4 and one of three.  Sometimes I group them by skill level, and other times random.  This group was making AB apple pattern hats.  They picked two colors and then went to town with AB pattern on a sentence strip.  Then i just stapled into a hat.  We make TONS of hats throughout the year.  They LOVE making hats!



Here is the group working with Foster Grandma.  This is a game that I got out of a Mailbox magazine  few years ago.  They each have a sorting mat, take turns picking an apple card out of the bag, and then sort onto the mat.  When all cards are gone, they count how many of each color they have.  They love it!




This was the last group, and they were doing their letter art for their alphabet book.  And since we were focusing on letter A and apples, they did apple prints, of course!  Again, I will save these, cut out the letter, mount on colored cardstock and assemble into a book after we are finished with all of the letters.





And finally, here is a picture of my Family Projects Board.  Each month, I send home a Family Project to make the home/school connection.  Since we focused on All About Me in the month of September, I sent an All About Me project.  I found this on Pinterest,  except the original was for 1st or 2nd grade so I modified it for Prek.  I actually have added two more that were returned since I took this picture, so I have 9  of 11 families that completed the first Family Project and let me just say THAT IS AWESOME!!!  The kids REALLY love looking at this board, with the projects that they worked on with their families! 

Okay this post was REALLLLLY long!  I guess that's what I get for waiting two whole weeks to post.  We are just so busy!!!  Next week we are continuing our study of apples and will even be making applesauce!!!  I just love smelling that stuff cook all day long!  Hope everyone is having as much fun this year as I am!

Chicka Chicka Baby!!!

 Okay so it's Monday and I'm just now posting about LAST week!  My weekend just flew by WAY to fast-full of football, football, and MORE football!  A house full of boys means lots of football!  Anyways, last week we read everyone's favorite alphabet book "Chicka Chicka Boom Boom".  My little sweeties LOVED IT!  All day long they kept saying "Chicka Chicka Boom Boom"   After we read the story the first time, I busted out our very own Chicka Boom Boom Tree!



 I was so excited to use this!  It was one of my fabulous Dollar Tree finds- inflatable palm tree!  I just used velcro to attach foam letters.  I took the letters off of the tree and stuck them to my feltboard, then , I used these super cool plush letters from Lakeshore (which I just have to say were purchased from a garage sale for $2-omg!!!) and just held up a letter and called on a kiddo to come up and find the letter on the feltboard and add it to the Chicka Tree!!!




These letters from Lakeshore are AWESOME!!!


 Oh man they LOVED THIS!  They wanted to keep doing it over and over, so of course I left it out for Centers! 


This week we also mae our own Chicka Trees with our name and then counted the letters and wrote the numbers- I had a few that could totally write the numbers on their own!!!! YAY!!! :)  






We  also decorated the first letter of our names and then I atttached their photo and then put them up on our Chicka bulletin board outside our door.



 We cut apart our names and then glued them back together and then counted the letters in our name and graphed them.




 We ended our week with a coconut exploration!  Okay, I like coconutty things, but I had never tried a real coconut before and I just have to say EWWWW!!!  We explored the coconut using our five senses and then it was time open it up and taste it- I poked a hole in the "eye" just fine and drained out the milk.  It did not taste good!  It was gross and the kids faces were priceless when they tasted it!  Then came the hard part, actually cracking it open to get to the white stuff!  Oh my I couldn't get it open!  I finally resorted to putting it on the floor and smashing it a few times with a hammer and it finally popped open!  The kids thought this was the funniest thing EVER!  The white stuff was not much better than the milk! 




We had so much fun!  Wow we had such a busy week!  I am totally LOVING my class this year!  Such a sweet group of kids!  Oh I almost forgot! We took some paint and markers outside and what did we do?!?



 We painted and colored the fence!!!  They loved it!!  And the best part is it washes off in the rain and we can start all over!  I LOVE MY JOB!!!! 

We made it!

Okay the first week back has come and gone and I have to say it was the BEST FIRST WEEK EVER!  Seriously, my class is awesome!  No criers, no clingers, no accidents!  WOW!  I am very lucky that all of my kids are returning preschoolers-they were all in a 3 year old classroom last year, so they kinda have the whole school thing down.  They all came in ready to go!!!  We had a great week!  We mostly focused on the normal first-week-back stuff-rules, procedures,introducing a few centers.  We read The Kissing Hand of course.  We talked about and charted First Day Feelings and made kissing hand hand prints.  We talked about and charted things we can do at preschool and then they drew a picture and dictated.  We talked about ways that we can be Safe, Respectful, and Responsible at school and added those sentences to our Pedro PBIS board.  We played Beach Ball Buddies and Friend Bingo to help learn our friends' names. Whew we were really busy!  We totally had a blast and I am soooo excited for the rest of the year with my sweet little SuperStars!!!!  (okay I know that things can change in the blink of an eye, especially in Prek, but I gotta luv it while it's good!)

Soooo, here are a few pictures-actually I didn't get very many- I guess we were just sooooo busy I forgot to grab the camera!!  But I did manage to get a few.  (I promise I will get better with my camera-this is something I always have to remind myself with.  I usually put my fabulous associate, Tammy, in charge of the picture taking-she better get right on that-HA!)



This is our PBIS board.  The little snail is our schoolwide PBIS mascot.  His name is Pedro.  We talked about what being Respectful, Responsible and Safe at school meant and then we charted them.  I then transferred to sentence strips and added to out board.  We will review these EVERY DAY!!!



We discussed the different things that we could do at school and then did a predictable chart.  Then they drew a picture and dictated.  I actually saw something similar to this on Pinterest-HELLO I LOVE PINTEREST!!

This is my sensory table.  I decided to start with rice this year.  I just colored it, tossed in some magnetic letters and scoops and shovels.  I taped matching letters onto cookie sheets, and then attached the cookie sheets to the wall with good ol velcro-everything in my room has velcro-heehee!  I can change this out with numbers, lower case letters-anything.  The kids love it!

Okay I guess I didn't get many pictures at all.  Sorry!  Next week we are doing  Chicka Chicka Boom Boom!  Can't wait!