Easter Week

This week was a fun week.  Our theme was "March Goes in Like A Lion and Out Like A Lamb" and we did some Easter activities since next week is SUPERHERO WEEK!!! :)

This week we did some fun crafts.  We made handprint lions, cotton ball lambs, bunnies and we also painted with peeps!

We made handprint lions by tracing our hands on brown paper and cutting them out.  We added a mane out of yellow, brown and orange paper.  Some even added stripes :)

These were our cotton round and cotton ball lambs.  The kids had to snip the green paper to make grass and add the lambs.  They made the lambs out of white construction paper circles and added cotton balls and cotton rounds to add texture.  They turned out super cute :)

We made cute Easter bunnies.  It was a craft and writing activity because they had to answer the question, "If I were a bunny I would...".  We had some pretty creative answers such as the one below.  A lot of the kids said they would eat carrots and hop!

Today (Friday) we had a day all about PEEPS!  As a kid I loved these sugary marshmallows, but now they gross me out.  BUT they are SUPER cute and the kids love them, so we had to have a day of fun activities with and about peeps.  In our reading group we talked about words that rhyme with peep like sheep, deep, sweep, jeep, etc.  They even made sentences with the -eep words!  We also picked our favorite color of peeps and used our five senses to explore the peep.  We colored a peep, counted it's eyes and ears, and talked about what it felt and tasted like.  Here are two of the completed peeps below...we used the peeps like sponges and the result is shiny because the sugar mixed with the paint!

Some of our friends were practicing their fine motor skills by tracing a lion on Monday!  Then, they colored their lion anyway they wanted.  This specific kiddo used lots of different colors! ;)

We used our Easter capital and lowercase letters to match to our letter tiles.  They also ordered the alphabet from A to Z.  So proud of these kiddos!! They did this with no help!

 Our other fine motor center was tracing different types of lines.  This lamb had loopy lines and the lamb on the back had diagonal lines up and down.

We worked on different skills in math this week.  This center was patterning.  They had to figure out which color egg came next.  On the back the kiddos had to go through a maze with capital letters.  We are really focusing on the difference between capital and lowercase letters.

This color by word/letter egg was one of our reading activities for the week.  There were three different levels of eggs. We had two different sight word eggs and our younger friends were working on letters.  They had a color code and had to find the word or letter and color it in.  They did so good!



Here's a sneak peek for Superhero Week...this was made by Mr. Jason.  He did such a good job making our city for our superheroes in dress up!  He made the city out of cardboard and the sky is on construction paper attached to our dress up storage.  We are so excited for superhero week!

THANKS MR. JASON!!!!

We had a fantastic week! Don't forget to become a member of this blog to get updates!  Have a happy weekend!

:) Danielle

Grandparents Lunch

Today was our annual Grandparent's Lunch...

Thank you to all the grandparents who attended the Grandparent's Lunch today!  The kids LOVED it! :)

My mom even came and hung out with Travis...she was so excited! 

 Both her and Travis had a lot of fun!  He had so much fun he fell asleep and than after she left he slept for 2 1/2 hours at home...hence me updating this blog!!...

We are doing so much fun stuff this week with Spring week and even some Easter curriculum thrown in as well! 

Check out our bulletin board celebrating Autism Awareness Month in April! 

Have a great week!

Danielle

We had such a fun Spring Week!  The weather was beautiful and we spent so much time outside!  Our natural playground is so beautiful at the daycare and the kids spend a lot of time running up and rolling down hills, sliding, jumping and just being kids!

This was our sensory table for the week.  This table stays the same all week long and is out during free play and centers.  I don't know if you can see it, but the birds nest is a real nest that was found on the playground.  I have a fascination with birds nest lately and now we have another one on a tray with magnifying glasses for the kids to explore.  This sensory tub also have birdseed, pinecones, scented pumpkins (potpourri), feathers, big and small black buttons, a bird house and magnifying glasses.  I also bought small (fake) birds eggs and birds.

I redid the room a little this past weekend and this is our new science center.  The blue tub pictured above, is right below me on the picture but you can't see it.  On our shelf we have store bought and homemade sensory bottles, musical instruments, magnifying glasses, kaleidoscopes, color paddles, dinosaurs, animal fact cards, a cd player for classical music (which I must find new ones of because mine are all scratched), our fish named Blue, our plant and cactus, word cards and pictures of the life cycle of a chick.  We will leave up the chick facts for awhile since the past two weeks we have been hatching chicks!!!!

This is a close up of our life cycle eggs.  It was a big egg with the life cycle of a chick.  We started with the egg and the next part is the egg cracking and the baby chick is peeking out of the egg...notice the baby chick's face..some of the girls even drew the chicks with eyelashes!!!  The next step was the baby chick with his soft feahters and he grows up into a hen (or rooster) which they made with their hands!  I found this idea at "I Heart Crafty Things"...ours is almost the same, but I had to change some things for time sake.

Here's the link to their project!

http://iheartcraftythings.blogspot.com/2011/09/life-cycle-of-chicken.html

This table is holding our BUGS!! Ewww...they are dead bugs encased in some sort of glass.  I (stole) borrowed these from the school age room two years ago because their kids never used them and my kids go CRAZY for them!...especially the boys of course! :)

Our room smelled like coffee all week thanks to our "dirt" sensory tub!  We will be using real dirt during our gardening week so we used a different variation this week.  The kids love the coffee...definitely NOT one of my favorite smells.

I like to source where I got my ideas but I cannot remember where this came from.  It was a cute art project showing that baby chicks hatch from eggs.  Some of our friends made chicks coming out of the egg, some made the chick hiding in the egg...they were super cute!!!  The second picture is the whole wall of chicks!

We worked on tracing this week.  This was tracing curved lines and circles!  They turned out neat and the kids really took their time!

This was one of our math worksheets this week. The kiddos had to count the leaves on the branches and circle the numbers.  They breezed through it...it's amazing so see how far some of my kids have grown and developed since they walked into my doors in September!  They make me proud...ok I'm done gushing!!

 This art project was very fun for the kids and worked on their fine motor skills. They had to crumble up the tissue paper to glue on to represent flowers on our spring tree.  They turned out cute and very colorful!

These were a very simple and fun project for the kids and they actually took awhile on them.  You probably can't tell but they are capital letter B birds.  Don't you love the backwards B! ;)

Hope you enjoy the beautiful weather, even though it looks like it's suppose to be a little rainy this weekend!  We had a great week and look forward to our next week entitled "March Goes In Like A Lion and Out Like A Lamb..." stay tuned for more exciting adventures! :)

Danielle

Chick Magnet

HAPPY SPRING!!!

The baby chicks have hatched!!!  They are super cute, but man do they poop a lot!

On another note...

My baby is a chick magnet!! LOL :)

We had such a fun week...pictures and details to follow later!

:) Danielle

 



Peeps

So I might be a little crazy about peeps!  I don't actually like to eat them but I like to do fun things with them...i.e. "peep paint", count them, graph them by color, blow them up in the microwave...and other things!  That's next week though.  THIS week we are talking about Spring and of course we HAVE to talk about birds! Tomorrow's snack is a bird's nest...It was super easy to make and I've posted the recipe below thanks to http://sunscholars.blogspot.com

I didn't realize until I finished making these that they are suppose to make 6 birds nests...mine made about 12, but they are a good size for little hands.  Here's the recipe:

2 Cups Choy Mein Noodles

1 Cup Rice Krispies

1 Cup mini Marshmallows (I did not measure these)

1 Pkg. butterscotch chips...I added more to mix it all together and you could also use peanut butter chips but we aren't allowed to use it in school!

Peeps

Jelly Beans

Wax Paper

Your first step is to melt the butterscotch chips.  In a different bowl mix the noodles and rice krispies together, then add the butterscotch chips.  Once mixed, add the mini marshmallows.  When thoroughly mixed, use a spoon to scoop out the mixture onto wax paper and shape into nests.  Add the jelly beans (I used three on each) and add the peep on top.  My peeps didn't stick, so I melted more butterscotch chips to use as a paste on the bottom of the peeps!

Eat and Enjoy :)

Yum Yum,

Danielle



Tricky Leprechaun

We had a visit from the leprechaun yesterday.  I couldn't write about it yesterday because I was so exhausted but here I am today trying to post all of the pictures from our classroom before my little man wakes up!

I think the bear in the bathroom might have been the best part!  He also peed green in our toilet!

Side view of our room...the book center!

Long view of the classroom...you can see everything is sideways, upside down and flipped! LOL!

The carpet/circle area with all the "toys" and Mr. Bear.  You can't see it but there are helmets everywhere and a puppy dog hanging from the ceiling!

The tables were on their sides with chains on top, pillows and our spelling letters spilled everywhere!!



The funniest part is that after they get over the fact that our room is a disaster..THEY START CLEANING IT UP!  This is my third year of doing this in pre-k and every year they freak out and than clean it up.  Every now and then, you hear someone saying "That leprechaun is so naughty". 

I should have taken pictures of the snack as well but we had ALL GREEN FOOD!  We ate mint chocolate chip ice cream, green rice kripies, green grapes, green milk, rainbow cupcakes (for a birthday party), green oreos and a lot of other stuff!

Me and My baby!  I can't believe he's almost 4 months old!!!!! :)

St. Patrick's Day was fun at school but we hit a milestone at home...Trav is eating food!  He didn't love the rice (of course) so we had apples and squash!!!! Such a big boy!

Have a great weekend and enjoy your St. Patrick's Day!

:) Danielle (and Travis)

St. Patrick's Week

Hi Everyone!  We had a fantastic week.  The leprechaun is making his final debut tomorrow and messing up the room!  That tricky leprechaun...it's funny how gullible these kids are.  They have no idea that me and Mr. Jason disappear for awhile! :) that's why I love this age!  Anyway I wanted to recap our fun week before you see the crazy pictures from Friday!

Check out our leprechaun...he was so silly hanging from our clothesline :)  He magically moved while we were outside!!

Below is our friend Roy G. Biv.  I also found this idea on www.pinterest.com and you teach the kiddos about the color of the rainbow by putting the colored strips of paper in order from red to violet!  What a neat idea and it turned out really well.  We cut the strips a little too big that some of our friends looked a little like lions but they got the point!

Like any holiday, the kids need their hands painted!

 It's amazing how many different things you can turn a handprint into!!!

Off Topic, but I wanted to share a photo of our awesome bulletin board that DID NOT win the bulletin board contest for March.  Can you sense I'm still a bit bitter.  I am a very competitive person and I guess I might still need to work on that!  Anyway...the kids LOVED this bulletin board because essentially the crocodile is eating the kids while they are "reading" Dr. Seuss books.  I also cut the letters out of my cricut machine and I think they turned out so so so cute!

These were our curly bearded leprechauns.  I found this idea via http://thefirstgradeparade.blogspot.com and the idea was so cute!  They had to make their leprechaun and answer the question why they feel lucky!

Our split pea sensory tub.  We loved scooping, pooring and measuring.  This sensory table led to an indepth discussion about split pea soup (gross!) but apparently some of the kids LOVE! :)

In math we were working on counting and one to one correspondence.  We had 10 pots of gold to count the coins and match them to the right number.  We used our fingers to count slowlyyyyyyyy...

I found these masks at AcMoore for a dollar. They are so neat :)

This is where our leprechaun was hiding on WEdnesday morning dressed up in green glasses...I missed taking his picture before he ran away but he left his coins for our friends to find!

On Thursday we painted rainbows!  Love the use of colors :)

This was our hat that the kiddos had to cut out the shapes and glue them onto the matching shape on the leprechaun's hat.  They did fantastic!!! I am so proud when I see kiddos that couldn't cut before, now can cut out itty bitty shapes like this!!

The eggs are here!!!  Quiver farms www.quiverfarms.com has been doing this project with us for many years and the kids love love love it!  Farmer Eric came and brought us a dozen eggs to put in our incubator.  He also showed us a hen and a rooster that were so cool to see!  The eggs should hatch on Monday or Tuesday so Wednesday, Thursday and Friday we will be visiting the chicks!

Check back tomorrow and see the pictures of our leprechaun disaster!

Thanks!

Miss Danielle

Just a little brag...

Do you want to know how good my kids are?  Guess what we did today...

WE HAD A PARTY!!!

About a month or so ago I started a good behavior jar.  The kiddos had to earn pom poms to fill up the jar by doing nice things, treating each other kindly, saying nice things, using good manners, etc.  We filled up the jar about a week ago but I kept forgetting to get them stuff for the party.  We (FINALLY) celebrated today by eating a ton of popcorn..nacho cheese flavored, and watching Alvin and the Chipmunks!  Our weather here has been gorgeous so we also went outside for an hour and a half. The best part of the day was that lunch was homemade Mac and Cheese and it was delicious!  What an awesome way to spend the morning with your class!  I bet you are all jealous!

They did learn something today (LOL!).  We learned the colors of the rainbow in order from red all the way to violet by making a Roy G. Biv craft that I found on pinterest.  Links and pictures to follow.  The cutest thing of the whole day was about two hours after we made the Roy G. Biv craft one of the kiddos says to me, "Miss Danielle, is this ball indigo?"...!  It made my whole day to see them learning and taking things from the classroom and applying them to real life!

Have a great week! Check back Friday for more pictures and posts from our St. Patrick's Day week and mess I'm sure the leprechaun will be making on Friday!

:) Danielle

Dinosaur Unit Part Two

More Dinosaurs...

Below are two pictures of our dinosaur glyphs.  I found some ideas around the web but made up my own.  I got the main idea from www.mrsjumpsclass.com. 

The dinosaur Glyph says...

If you like the T-Rex best, add stripes.

If you like the Triceratops best, add dots.

If you would like your dinosaur as a pet ,give him triangle teeth.

If you would not like your dinosaur as a pet, give him square teeth.

If you think the dinosaurs are alive, give him a big eye.

If you think the dinosaurs are dead, give him a little eye.

They turned out so cute...I just wish I would have made the dinosaurs head a different color.

Below is our paleontologist puzzle!  I made this for our kiddoes to put together and learn their numbers.  Best of all they had to put their numbers 0-10 in sequential order.  It was a great educational math activity and was a great assessment tool for me to see who can identify their numbers, count to 10 in order and put together a puzzle! 

This was one of our "create your own" dinosaurs.  We cut out the body and added spikes, feathers, dots, stripes and gave it a name.  The names were very creative and ranged from buddy to falcon! :)

I love putting together two subjects and making cute projects.  This project was combining math and art.  We made a dinosaur face, added teeth to his mouth and had to count the teeth.  This dinosaur is smiling and even has a tongue sticking out!!!!  They were suppose to be scary T-Rex's but almost all of them are happy and have BIG smiles. 

Inside it says "The Tyrannosaurus Rex had 40 teeth.  I have _____ teeth.

Our Leprechaun caused some confusion this morning!   We couldn't find him...we found him at snack.  He was IN THE FRIDGE!  What a naughty leprechaun!  He even turned our milk green :)  One more week until St.  Patrick's Day...

Glimpse at the coming week...ENJOY!

Have a great weekend!

:) Danielle Danver