Fruit Salad....Yummy Yummy!

Ian is thinking about the orange


Camden and Michelle enjoy their fruit salad


Chase and Ian also enjoy their fruit salad


Look how hard Michelle is working on the pear!


Ian gives the apple a try


Now doesn't that look tasty! :)


Chase perfects his banana peeling technique


Camden enjoyed licking the oranges!


Camden works on cutting oranges


Michelle works on cutting pears


Ian is working on the apples


Chase is picking grapes off the vine!

Last Friday morning we set out on our latest cooking adventure of making fruit salad. Of course the activity had to be proceded with watching the Wiggles Fruit Salad song/video first, just to get us warmed up. Then we all got our hands washed and sat down at the table. I showed the kids pictures of the ingredients we would use (green apples, red apples, bananas, grapes, pears, oranges) and had them go find each item on anther table. Then we handed out plates and plastic knives (with plenty of supervision!) and away they went. There was some very creative cutting and slicing going on or in the case of the bananas....Chase decided just breaking them in half would work too! And all the yummy fruit got tossed in the bowl, mixed up and down to the tummys! We had lots of satisfied customers with our little project. Given the amount of handling the food experienced :), us teachers just took the kids word for it that is was yummy! :) Above are some pictures of our activity!

Pizza, pizza, pizza

This week in preschool we have been setting up and running our own pretend pizza shop. We have been playing with pretend pizzas, rollers, pizza boxes (from Pizza Hut, even the real thing), a variety of toppings and setting up a table complete with a red/white checkered table cloth to serve our yummy pies! The students are really enjoying this activity. We are concluding our concluding this week by making our own mini pizza's on Friday....yum, yum!

Next week we will be continuing with the restaurant theme and serving up ice cream in our ice cream shop! What flavor do you like? I think my friends' favorite part might be the sprinkles!

For snack on Wednesday of this week we made pudding pies and boy were they tasty. As a group we read the recipe box to make two big boxes of chocolate pudding. Everyone got a turn at pouring and stirring and waiting (that was that hardest part). We smelled the pudding and decided it smelled really good! Then we scooped it into mini pie crusts, plopped on some cool whip and topped it with.....you guessed it.....sprinkles! Doesn't get any better then that! I had to be out of the room when my friends ate their creations but I hear they enjoyed them alot. They saved one just for me which I had for my lunch time dessert today and it was pretty tasty!

On Tuesday we had a special visitor to continue our community helper visits. Lea Krannawitter, a friend of Miss Amy's, and a great eye doctor, visited our classroom to share with us what you do when you go see an eye doctor. She brought along an eye chart and we told her what letters we saw. She also brought some other cards that had drawings of a house, circle, apple and square and we had to see if our eyes could see them....I think we all passed! :) The coolest part was two special books that she brought. One tested our color vision and the other had special glasses that went along with it and helped us see things in 3-D....kinda cool! All of my friends were very nice during her visit! She brought along her own little assistant, her 3 year old daughter Mia, who helped her pass around the books and glasses. My friend Kaden was super sweet and suggested we all tell Mia our names so she knew who we were! :)

We have welcomed two new friend to our classroom this week. Bri and Erick started on Tuesday and are with us in the mornings right now. We are happy to have them in our classroom. They are doing a great job of learning the ropes and figuring out all the fun things we do in preschool!

I want to send a BIG thank you to all parents who attended Parent Teacher Conferences! I very much enjoy meeting with each of you and sharing all the wonderful things your children are doing in school this year. We are having a very successful year and I'm very proud of each of my students and their accomplishments! Thank you for coming!

Valentine's Day Pictures

Chase is delivering friendship notes into a friend's mailbag

Michelle is showing off her heart frame

Kylie worked very hard on her heart frame!

Kaden is working very hard on his heart frame

Chase has decorated his jacket with Sponge Bob stickers!

Camden is using a marker to decorate his heart frame and Noah is working with Miss Diana on his heart frame

Michelle came all dressed up....foot loose and fancy free....for our Valentine's Day party....love it!

Here are pictures from our Valentine's Day party!

Pictures of making cookies

My friends (Michelle, Ian, Noah, Camden, Chase (front)) in the morning sitting at the table as we put the cookies in the oven!

MMMMMM....tasty! Makes you want a bite doesn't it! :)

A few weeks ago we made cookies on a Friday morning as our Friday cooking project and then decorated them as a class in the afternoon. As you can see from the pictures they are very creative cookies, but when you have 3, 4 and 5 year old cooks in the kitchen you are for sure going to get creative things! The students really enjoyed decorating the cookies with frosting and fruit for friendship fruit cookie pizzas!

Pictures of my friends

Look close you can see that Ian wrote his first and last name and how old he is!

Here are a few more pictures of my friends working hard at school!

Kaden wrote his friends name and is not getting ready to write his own name very nicely!

Ava is waiting patiently at the table for the next activity

Post office pictures

Here are some pictures of my friends pretending to be a mailman!

Michelle is trying out the postman outfit

Kylie is picking up the mail

Noah is delivering mail

Chase is checking out the mailbox!

Happy Valentine's Day

Today was a fun day! We got lots of work done this morning and even enjoyed some time outside despite the wind. After lunch we did circle time then moved into centers for one last day of playing mailman in the pretend center. We had tons of fun in the hallway with an obstacle course that took us through the stretchy fish tunnel, down the hall on a scooter and back on the trike. At the art table we practiced peeling the back off stickers and make a heart collage. Then after a quick recess some of our moms and dads arrived for our short party. First we worked on a heart shaped frame with a pick of each student inside. Then we moved to the snack table for a cupcake from our friend Noah....Thanks Noah and Noah's mom for the yummy snack and plates and napkins for our fun party. Then we got to practice our mailman skills and deliver our valentine notes and treats in our friends mailbags. We finished our day with a short circle time where we are practicing our phone numbers. Some of my friends are working hard on saying the numbers as they see them and some are doing awesome telling me what number comes next before they see it! I'm very proud of them all!

Just a quick reminder the students do not have school until Tuesday February 17th. I am looking forward to meeting with each of you this week for parent teacher conferences. A note should have gone home today reminding you of your date and time for our meeting. If you are not able to attend this date/time please let me know as soon as possible (856-0413 or wilcoxa@usd231.com) so I can reschedule.

I am working on getting some pictures downloaded so I can add them on here of the great things we have been doing at school....stay tuned!

Playing Mailman

We have been having a great time this week pretending to be the mailman in preschool. We have a pretend post office set up with keyboards, envelopes, a mailbox, stamps (stickers) and a mailman outfit. We have been taking turns buying stamps and mailing off our letters and being the mailman to deliver the mail! Today we practiced our trike riding skills while delivering mail to houses (pictures of a house with a student's address....we had to match up the address on the envelope with the address on the house)....tricky stuff to ride a trike and carry an envelope AND look for the right house all at the same time. We've also been working hard on making our own mailbags that we will use on Monday to collect our Valentine's from friends. We laced them together yesterday and decorated them with stickers today.

Last week we talked about the letter A/a and this week we've moved on to the letter B/b. We have sang about what sound B/b makes, played the B/b games on www.starfall.com and looked at pictures and tried to guess if they start with be and if they don't what would they sound like if they did....for example, we decided that banana starts with B, but cat does not but if it did it would sound like bat! Pretty cool how that works! :)

Friday we will be making friendship fruit pizza cookies (heart shaped sugar cookies with frosting and fruit pieces) as we prepare for Valentine's Day. On Monday we will have a short Valentine's Day party but a day filled with fun friendship activities! I sent home a list of the friends in our classroom if you chose to send in Valentine's.

Reminder, no school for preschool students next week on Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday and the following Monday. I am looking forward to meeting with all parents for Parent Teacher Conferences. I will send home a reminder note on Friday with your meeting date and time.

Enjoy the rest of the week!