Columbus Day!

During the week that Columbus Day fell on, we didn't learn a new letter, color, shape, etc. Instead we talked about Christopher Columbus and reviewed what we have learned so far! I also let each class have lots of extra play time.

The Friday morning class had a special visitor who was there to help me - my son, Kiegan!  The kids all loved having him there and he was such a good sport by playing with them all.

It was also an exciting week for my Tuesday/Thursday "young 3's" class who were introduced to my rice table! Not sure if I've mentioned my rice table much, but I have two very simple rules for it. #1 - Only two friends at a time are allowed to play at it. #2 - Please keep the rice IN the rice table. When I first took the lid off for them to see what was inside, it was somewhat chaotic because everybody wanted to jump right in! But they quickly got the hang of it and do a wonderful job waiting for their turn. Keeping the rice in the table is something we're still working on though. :)

Other popular play areas include my tub of building trinkets (which really should have come with more than one hammer, if you ask me) and anything puzzle related!

Painting is also an all-time favorite!

Of course to go along with our Christopher Columbus week, we had to make Spyglass Telescopes!

And it wouldn't be right to learn about his voyage if we didn't make pictures of his ship sailing across the ocean!

We reviewed our shape of the month - diamond - by making some diamond necklaces.

And we reviewed the color orange in the most delicious way by snacking on Orange Floats!

Finally, here are some random pictures of us from the week!

 

P - Pets



Before I start talking about our week of P-Pets, I want to share a few pictures from the previous week that I found!

 

We loooove playing outside and we loooove to race! I think our days of nice weather are numbered (there's snow in the forecast for next week!!) so we try to get outside as much as we can.

 

 

I love this photo of Alexis and Bruiser! Bruiser is very much loved by all of my preschoolers. They especially love it when he gets all excited and races around the backyard with them!

 

Khloe figured out that the beads can also fit on her fingers! She walked around with those beads on her fingers for the longest time.

 

Bugs, bugs, and more bugs! I think my bugs and the scoopers are one of my most popular table toys. Here Tyler is trying to fit as many bugs as he can into the bug jar.

 

This week was all about the letter Pp and Pets! Who doesn't love to talk about their pets?!  We talked about every kind of pet from dogs to fish to snakes (ewww!)!!

Adalyn, Alex, and Maddie show off their puppy puppets that they made. :)

 

We also practiced our cutting and gluing skills by making a collage of animals that we would like to have for pets. Let's just say that there were a number of "interesting" pets chosen!

 

 

I didn't get a picture taken of the kids using their hands to mix some red and yellow paint together to make orange, but once the two colors were mixed up they pressed a large leaf cut-out onto the paint. They turned out so neat! On some of them you could even see some bits of red and yellow that didn't quite get mixed up. This craft was an easy one and definitely put us in the mood for Fall!

Of course it just wouldn't be right if we didn't have POPCORN for snack when learning about the letter Pp!

You know what else starts with Pp??  PLAY-DOH!!  The kids played with their Play-doh and the different tools for the longest time.

I started sending home Math Bags this week. These are little bags just big enough for each preschooler to fit six of the same item into. They don't need to be the same color, same size, etc. - just the same KIND of item (i.e. - six rocks, six cars, six pencils, etc.). When they bring their Math Bags back on their next school day, we all sit around my graphing chart and take turns laying out what we brought. It's fun to see if everybody brought something different or if two or more friends brought the same kind of item!

We loved watching our caterpillars grow, build cocoons, and then turn into butterflies. We also used magnifying glasses to study different REAL bugs such as grasshoppers, worms, and roly-poly's!

 

 

Part of our math this week was filling in the numbers 2 & 3 with all sorts of fun stuff!

 

 

And finally, our reading corner has become quite popular lately. The kiddo's love to pull my blankets out and get all cozy while reading or being read to!