The Mitten By Jan Brett

Lindsay is teaching the pre-school portion of our day as part of her student teaching. This lesson, based on the book, The Mitten by Jan Brett, was adorable!! Listen to all of the giggles as the "mitten" expands to hold everyone!

 

Nn week and Mittens

You may notice that the blog history doesn't go back as far as it used to. I ran out of space due to the fact that I use so many pictures. Rather than buying extra space, which I would undoubtedly use up,  I purchased a PDF file of the blog from 2010. I attempted to send it to all of the daycare parents, but it was too large. If you are interested in getting a copy, let me know and I can save it to a disk for you!

Lindsay made it "snow" today in the basement and the kids had to pretend to be snowplows to make a big mountain of snow. We found that our mountain was much bigger when we worked together. 

"What's gonna work? TEAMWORK!"

 Isn't Parker an awesome little snowplow? He took his job very seriously!

 Then we got to bundle up and go outside to see how hard it is to shovel and plow real snow. The kids loved it, but Lindsay and I were COLD!

 As we talked about the letter Nn this week, our favorite activity was making Noodle Necklaces. I am sure you all saw them worn home! (Again, awesome fine motor activity!)
Lindsay also gave them magazines and challenged them to find big "N"s and little "n"s and then cut them out. That took some great detective work!

 Such concentration on those little faces. This necklace making is serious business.

 Mason was so proud of his single noodle. I asked if he wanted more and  he said, "No, I'm done."

 We learn to read early around here!

 We talked about mittens and made lots of mitten crafts. We looked at different materials and tried to determine which would make the best mittens. Aluminum foil, plastic wrap and paper all still made our hands cold. We decided that we needed many layers of fabric to keep our fingers from feeling the ice cube.

We traced our hands in sugar cookie dough to make mitten cookies.

 YUCK! Mason is not a fan of stuff on his fingers, can you tell? Reminds me of a different Sweeney boy at about this age! ;-)

 Too cute for words!

M week and Penguins

The letter M...making mountains

 Push pin alphabet. Strengthening those little fingers and getting them used to a pencil grip!

 What?!?! Cara says we can dump out all the Legos!

 Do you think she knew I was taking her picture? Such a little model!

 Bode sorting the bears

 Halie would like to tell you that she completed this 400 piece puzzle all by herself, but it was a team effort on a day off of school.

 Learning with Lindsay

 Look at that perfect pincer grasp!!! (Something only a pre-school teacher could love.)

 Magnets have an added appeal when we take them under the table and put up a blanket to create a tent!

 Does it sink or float?
Penguins put rocks into a special pouch in their mouths to help them sink down to catch their food. Once they catch food, they spit them out so that they can float again!

 Hey, Preston...when did you get old enough for centers?? Where have all my babies gone?

Christmas 2010

"I will NOT wear that hat and smile no matter how much you want me to!" -Genevieve

Where has the past month gone?

I know I'm slacking on the blogfront when my background goes straight from autumn leaves to Valentine's Day!

 Bode, below, is a sweet and fun 4 year old who will be joining us for just the pre-school time 2 days per week.

 The kids were shocked when I gave them real tools to try out. They did great with them though!

Despite the lack of posts, we have in fact, been learning and growing right through Christmas and into the new year! We just finished learning all about tools and machines and the letter "L".
Now we are gearing up for our peguin unit and we continue to work on mastering writing our names. Not only do we practice with pencils and paper, but we focus on many fun activities and games that strengthen our finger muscles and ready our hands for writing. A favorite is flicking little balls of paper and opening and closing clothes pins. The simplest of things are so effective!