Fun Field Trip

Today was our field trip to Celebration Park and we had a blast!  The girls were most excited about riding the bus.  But then we all had a great time once we got to the park and ran and climbed and slid and swang!  I took lots of pictures that I will try to post this evening!

A few pictures with more to come soon!



Shopping cart races are a great way to end a long day!



Two friends play together!



Constructing train tracks is a favorite activity



The kitchen center was a BIG hit the first few weeks of school!



Mmmm, snack time!



Making towers with pegs

Rice and beans table is tons of fun

FIELD TRIP!!

When: Thursday September 30th
Where: Celebration Park
Time: Leave school at 8:45am, return to school at 11:00am
Transportation: Bus (for all students and staff)
Activities: small pumpkin patch for students, fun fall activities

**Parents are welcome to join us at the park, we should arrive around 9:00am. We will not have enough room on the bus for extra adults. Permission forms are coming home today (Thursday Sept. 16th). Please complete and return this form to school by Monday September 20th. Also, an email was sent out to all parents today asking about car seats on the bus. If you have not already, please email me and let me know if your child will need a car seat on the bus. Students qualify for car seats if they are less then 4 years old old less the 40 lbs. If possible, I need a head count for car seats by today. Dismissal times will the as normal through out the day.

If you have any further questions, please let me know!

Having lots of fun!

Well, we are well into the new school year and everything is going great!! We are having tons of fun and already learning lots! All of my friends are doing a great job remembering all of their tasks when they first arrive....get their folder, move their picture, choose snack drink, hang up backpack, write name, soapy soap on hands, then go to table toys...whew! Lots to do, but they are doing great!

PRETEND CENTER
The first few weeks we had the pretend kitchen set up and everyone loved it. After that we transformed our kitchen into a grocery store...boy was that fun shopping for empty cereal and drink containers! Last week we closed up the kitchen and store and set up the bus station with our pop up bus. We visited many places in our bus and took turns being the driver...watch out...wild drivers in here! This week in our pretend center we are doing office. Today was lots of fun pretending to type on the keyboards and write letters to our friends. A few parents are getting lots of beautiful sticker filled envelopes today :)

ART CENTER
At the art table we have been very busy learning all about all the different things we can use at the art table...glue, scissors, paper, stickers, crayons, markers...and the list goes on! We completed our first official art project...a school bus last week. We worked with our scissors on cutting out a big rectangle, smaller square and two circle wheels. That proved to be a challenge for some, but that's okay...those scissors can be tricky little things, but we will figure it out! We are proudly displaying our busses on our art wall in our classroom. This week we are making apple trees...but not just any ordinary apple trees. You might have noticed your child came home with some extra coloring on their little feet today :) That's because we painted the bottom on one of our feet brown and stomped on paper to make a tree trunk. Then we painted our hands green to make the tops of our tree. Tomorrow we will add apple stickers! Next week we will construct our own apple shakers to play during circle time!

FINE MOTOR
Each morning we have the chance to work on some fine motor tasks....things we do with our little fingers. So far our favorite has been lacing and stacking small pegs to make a tall tower. We have also started working on our Handwriting With Out Tears workbooks. Each week we will do 1-2 pages and work our way through the book. So far we have just been practicing coloring in small circles. This week and next we will start working on tracing lines down and across.

CIRCLE TIME
Circle time is definitely one of our favorites! Each day we come to circle when the clean up music comes on (after we clean up of course). We have to find our names on our chair and hold our name card until all our friends make it over. First we sing our "where oh where oh" song to find out who is at school today. Next we sing our hello song then talk about our star helper jobs. We have talked about that we have to share our jobs and sometimes we dont get the job we wanted, but maybe next week will get that job. Waiting is so hard sometimes! Next in circle we talk about the weather and do calendar. If we have time we sing a few songs or do a movement activity. We listened to the Goldfish song last week...its pretty darn fun!

I will continue to update on our various activities in the classroom. Be sure to click on the Lesson Plans tab above to see the plans for each week. This would be a great way to ask your child about what they did at school each day! :)

Ready for week 2

We all made it through week 1 and had a great time and now it is already time for week 2! I am very excited about my class of preschoolers this year! Everyone is doing a great job adjusting to the new school year, schedules, rules, and expectations!

Thank you to all parents who were able to make it to Back to School Night! It was great to see everyone and share more information with you about my preschool program! Please don't hesitate to let me know if you have any questions at any time....email is the best way to get ahold of me!

WELCOME!!!

Welcome old and new friends! My paras and I have been very hard at work the past few days getting our classroom up and running and ready for the first day of school! We have worked real hard today getting the room ready to welcome friends tonight for "Meet the Teacher" Night! I am looking forward to seeing my old friends from last year and meeting our new friends that will be joining us this year!

Playing is so much fun!

Look at all my friends playing so nicely!


Love this picture!!! My sweet friend Bri!


Camden is checking out the castle


Will and Camden playing with the train


How many friends can play with the garage at once?


Loved watching this!

Awesome day!!

We had an awesome day today in preschool! After my friends left yesterday, our paras got out LOTS of Little People toys....train track, house, castle, garage and more. When my friend came in this morning they were all excited to see these new toys out. We have all worked very hard this year on learning to play with toys, share with our friends and keep playing with toys for longer then just a few seconds. All of that hard work paid off today! My paras and I just got to sit back and watch in amazement as all of our friends played, interacted and had so much fun for LONG periods of time today! I LOVED it!!!! Enjoy some pictures from today!

Thanks to all the families that were able to make it to our family picnic. The weather turned out perfect!!! It was great to see everyone!

Change of Plans

We were originally scheduled to walk over to the High School track on Thursday the 20th, however, we have rescheduled that for Tuesday May 25th. We will be heading over about 8:45am and back by 11:00am and then again about 12:45pm and back by 2:15pm. We will be running, playing in the sand, and on the big mats and having a great time!!! Please be sure to send sun screen that day if you would like your child to wear it. Also you can send a water bottle if you'd like. Please be sure to label both with your child's name.

We are still planning on having our Family Picnic this Thursday May 13th from 5:30pm to 7:30pm at Celebration Park by the play area. We will provide hot dogs and condiments. We ask that each family bring a side dish to share with others as well as table service (plates, napkins, utensils) and drinks for your own family.

I look forward to seeing everyone at this event!

Upcoming events

It is May and that means one thing....busy busy busy time of year!!! The last day of school will be here before we know it! The preschoolers last day will be Thursday May 27th! It has been another great year! I'm so proud of all of the hard work each of my preschoolers has done and all that they have accomplished! We will be having an end of the year family celebration/picnic next week on Thursday May 13th from 5:30pm to 7:30pm at Celebration Park in Gardner. I am sending home a note today with details. We will provide hot dogs and buns. Please bring a side dish to share with others. Please also bring table service (plates, napkins, utensils, cups) and drinks for your own family. Please be sure to RSVP to me either in the daily note book, email or a phone call so I know how many people to expect so we have enough hot dogs! This is a fun event that we will share with the students and families from Miss Sara's room as well! We will be in the shelter house area near the play groud so the kiddos can have a great time! Hope to see you there!

On Thursday May 20th we will be walking over to the high school track in the morning and afternoon to play and have all kinds of fun. We will do this instead of participating in the school field day. The kids will be able to run free around the track and through the football field, play on the large track/field mats and in the long jump sand pits. We will also take wagons, bubbles and chalk to play with. Please be sure to send sun screen that day. You are also welcome to send a water bottle as well.

Please let me know if you have any questions about end of the year events!!

High School Visitors

One more picture from our "trash" game...Erick and Michelle having fun!

Our "trees" have grown up and their branches are swaying in the wind!

Our trees are starting to get bigger! Some of our high school friends are featured here as we teach them our fun game!

Here we are seedlings curled up in a ball getting ready to make a tree!

Nick works hard on his sun catcher as some of his new high school friends help out. Miss Candaces daughters joined us as well today for Take your Child to Work day!

Erick and his high school friend work on a sun catcher!

Camden and Bri work on their sun catchers as their new high school friends are near by!

In the last post I shared about our high school visitors who came on Earth Day. Here are some pictures from that visit. There are some of them helping us make sun catchers and some of everyone playing the "make a tree" game! Thanks GEHS friends for joining us for a little while!

Happy Earth Day

Michelle tossing items in the recycle bin during the "trash" game

Nick is trying to decide if he would rather keep the Dora bandaid box :)

Camden adds tissue paper to his crayon holder

Nick and a friend from Miss Sara's class play the "liter bugs" and are throwing trash around the classroom :)

We have been celebrating Earth Day all week with fun activities! We have played Earth Bingo, made crayon holders out of recycled plastic water bottles decorated with tissue paper and painted an earth with marbles rolling through blue and green paint.

Today we had a special treat when 5 students from the high school Communications program visited our classroom. They were great helpers as we used blue and green colored glue to swirl together in a butter lid. These will be sun catchers when they dry in a few days! Then we showed them our "tree" game we have been playing all week. We got to learn from them about the recycling projects they do every week at the high school and share with them the blue recycle tub we use in our classroom!

Our favorite activities of the week have been making "trees" with our body's and playing the "trash" game. When we made trees, we first started with eating a seed (otherwise known as a skittle). Then we curled up in a ball on the floor as I "watered" my trees. Then we slowly grew until we were standing up and our branches (also known as arms and legs) popped out and we were big trees swaying in the breeze until chopped down. Then of course we repeated this SEVERAL times every day! It was great to see my friends really enjoy this game and ask for it again and again and again and...... :)

When we played the "trash" game we took turns being liter bugs and throwing items from our recycle bin all over the room. Pretty funny to intentionally trash the room....my friends got a kick out of that. Then when the musis started we ran around and gathered up as much stuff as we could and ran it back to the recycle bin! Super fun game that we played several times!!

Friday we will conclude Earth Week by making recycled crayons in a very fun crayon maker. We will reuse our old crayons and melt them down to make swirled new crayons!

Old McDonald Had a Farm

Michelle was not sure about the horse


Camden didn't really want to get any closer


Erick thought it might be cool to poke at his eyeballs


Nick touched the horse about as long as it took to take this picture!


Bri was all about the horse!!!!


Nick is not sure about this jello stuff


Erick was a fan of the silly jello


Michelle's favorite part was the "cloud"


Our blue jello puzzle piece...kind of fell apart


Camden was a big kid and tried the jello!


Rainbow jello! :)

This week we have been talking about farm animals! We got a special treat on Wednesday when one of Miss Sara's friends brought animals from his farm to show us! We got to meet a baby lamb born on Monday, a sheep, a calf and a horse. We got to pet them all! Some of us were a little less interested and others thought it was GREAT!!!!

We also welcomed a new friend to our classroom this week. Our little friend Will started school for the first time on Monday. He is having a great time hanging out and trying to figure out what in the world we are doing in this crazy classroom of ours! All of my other friends have been very nice to him and are excited to have someone new with us! Welcome Will!!!!

For the next few weeks we will be doing lots of Earth Day activities. If you have empty egg cartons, please send those to school, we will need them for some projects!!!

April is Autism Awareness Month. We showed our support last Friday by making blue jello (blue is the color for Autism) and cut it into a puzzle piece. Then we made several other kinds of jello and made "rainbow jello" with whipped cream as our clouds. My friends did a nice job trying this silly snack!

Above are a few pictures from our farm animal adventures as well as our fun snacks! :)

What's the Weather?

This week we are talking about the weather....and since it's spring and we live in Kansas, we tend to have something different to talk about each day! We are very happy that snow has melted, the sun has come out and we have been able to get some fresh air several times a day!

Today we read the book "It Looked Like Spilt Milk" and talked about how clouds can make different shapes in the sky!

Later this week we will be playing games about the sun. We are in need of some flashlights (to be our suns) that we can shine around the room. So, if you have one or two that we could borrow for a few days we would appreciate it. You can put your name on it somewhere and we will be sure to return it by next week.

In the next few weeks we will be moving on to talking about farm animals. Last week we got to attend an assembly with the Southwest Dairy Farmers who brought Ginger, the cow, and showed us where cows lives and how they milk them. We even got to see the farmer milk Ginger for a few minutes! All of my friends did a nice job sitting and watching! We got special cups that show us how much milk we should drink every day. We are keeping those cups at school until the end of the year so we can use them during snack time!

We may be looking in to having some farm animals come visit us. So if any of you know of anyone who has farm animals that like to travel and would be nice to my preschool friends, let me know and maybe we can arrange a time for them to visit. If not, Miss Sara next door, is working on some arrangements as well!

Cheeseburgers and fries :)

The other day Miss Amy enjoyed a super delicious cheeseburger from Blazer Burger during lunch....at the same table as my friends....which was probaby not the nicest thing I could have done! I had several friends use their words very nicely....."I want cheesebureger", "can I have french fries". So, today they got their wish....our Friday cooking project was cheeseburgers and fries! Not quite a Blazer Burger but still quite tasty! Each of my friends got to help smash the burgers with the burger press....being very careful not to touch the raw meat of course! Then Miss Amanda served as a grill chef and cooked them right up on the George Foreman Grill :) When they were ready we got out the small buns and cheese slices...except for my GFCF friend, he just got the hamburger of course! We all enjoyed our "pre-lunch lunch"....needless to say no one really wanted to eat at noon very much, which was okay!

We are hoping that the snow outside is going to continue melting so we can get outside to run and get a little fresh air very soon! We have been trying to go out each day if the temp. is high enough even if just for a few minutes! Thanks to all parents for sending winter weather gear each day so we can bundle up! Please continue to send hats and gloves as we transition from fridgid winter to slightly warmer temps for spring!

Don't forget, Spring Break is coming up really fast! There is no school for students Friday March 12th and then the entire following week. Students start back to school on Monday March 22nd!

I will try to get some pictures posted soon of our preschool adventures the past few weeks!

Pizza

Today we made pizza as our Friday cooking project! We first helped our friend Nick mix up his gluten/casein free crust. We had to crack a few eggs and add some oil and milk....all of which we managed to do with out much of a mess! However, I am all for a mess during our cooking projects. I figure its a GREAT opportunity to learn from it and figure out what to do when we do make a mess. And, I've got some great little "cleaner up-ers" in my classroom! :) We may be able to see in the picture of our pizzas that we had to improvise a little on our cheese. It turned out we didn't have any shredded cheese so we improvised with string cheese...and it was really yummy! :)

Friendship Day Party

Monday February 8th will be our Friendship Day Party. We will be doing fun activities through out the day. For this party, I'm going to invite parents/family members to join us for an hour at either 9:30 am or 1:30pm, which ever time works best for you! We will have an art project, fun activity and friendship snack planned at one or both of those times. Parents, I ask that you email or write a note in your child's notebook if you plan to attend and which time so we know who to expect!

For our party, I am asking for a few donations. If you are able and would like to donate any of these items, please let me know and I'll send home a note the middle of next week with who is sending each item.

Friendship Day Party Wish List: red, pink and/or white balloons, cupcakes, valentines day sprinkles, juice boxes

Students are welcome to bring valentines for their friends if you choose to. We will have bags for each student to deliver and collect their valentines.

Also, please be sure to note information included on the right panel of our blog including upcoming dates to remember, general classroom wish list, suggested books and class lists.

Happy Birthday to Bri

the birthday girl!


Nick wore a silly hat to school today :)


Erick is being silly with his juice at snack


Michelle wanted a party hat too!

Bri with her birthday cake

Our friend Bri has been talking about her birthday since about September and now her special day finally arrived today. She is now a whole hand old! :) She announced to anyone who would listen that is was her birthday and chanted several times today "Happy Birthday to me!"

We had a good first day of the week after our extended weekend. We got to go outside for a little while for a little bit of fresh air which was a good thing! Still very chilly but good to get out for a while!

Reminder - No School Monday

We finished out this week with just two students at school on Friday. A few of our friends were sick today....we hope they are feeling better real soon!

Please don't forget - NO SCHOOL MONDAY JANUARY 18TH - Martin Luther King Jr. Day

I will look forward to seeing everyone on Tuesday morning! Have a great weekend!

Snow Pictures

Camden made a great snow angel




Our goofy paras from left to right: Holly, Sherrie, Amanda, Candace, Sue









Nick trying to get up after falling over :)










Camden was all smiles in the snow!








Michelle says "WHAT!" :)





Bri has her bucket ready to make a snow fort!





Erick is in deep thought!





Miss Amanda and Nick had fun jumping off the snow mountains





Bri making a snow angel




Michelle had a great time in the snow!




Erick movin' snow one small scoop at a time!