Rechenka's Eggs

Rock 'n' Roll song - currently freezing.  Every class we have to do Tootie ta - must be a favorite. 

Rechenka's Eggs was such a fun book to use for lesson planning this week.  I didn't even look online for ideas, because I have a million crafts and games that have to do with eggs/Easter.  My mom has a small, OK large, fetish with eggs, so growing up we did lots and lots of fun things with eggs. 

  

Ava wanted to try to blow out her own egg after preschool, so I let her blow out her own egg after preschool.  

 While we were reading the story, and I asked if anyone had seen their moms blow out an egg.  Much to my surprise, NONE of them had seen it (minus Ava and Grant).  I thought blowing out eggs was something everyone did at Easter time.  Obviously, my crazy mom was the only one that painstakingly (it's starts to hurt your ears after awhile because of all that pressure going through a small hole) did this for us. Anyway, I decided to change my activity and show them how to blow out an egg, like Babuska did in the book.  The kids were amazed! :)  Afterward, I let them all throw the hollow egg in the air and watch it fall without cracking.

 Ava got a little overzealous and hit the ceiling with it so it did crack a little. 

For math we used an egg carton to help with number recognition.  I drew numbers in each egg slot and then added a couple marbles to the carton.  Each kid got to shake the carton and wherever the marbles landed, they had to tell me what numbers were in that egg slot.

 "Only 4 kids (generous, considering I always grew up thinking the rule was 2 at a time - which we never obeyed either) on the tramp at a time.  If you add all the balls, only 3 kids at a time".

Obviously, they don't obey that well. 7 kids and the balls (at one point all 9 kids, and all the balls were on there). :)

 For our craft on Tuesday we made paper mache bird nests. No pictures from the actual making of the nests, because it was SUPER messy.  I was so happy when they dried and they actually worked.

 Phonics lesson. Egg hunt for eggs with "E's".

 Some of our eggs had "E's" and some did not.  They are getting so smart and recognize most of the letters now.

 

Thursday we used the same egg carton for math, but this time we added the 2 numbers together that the marbles landed in.

 

Thursday's craft was creating beautiful eggs, just like Babuska did in the book.  Logan, was very into making his egg look nice, and even spent most of outside play, inside covering every last spot on his egg. Cute kid.

 They all did such a great job.  I hope they like their nests, egg and little chick. 

I can't believe this was my last week with these kids. I know it's cliche, but I can't believe they are going to kindergarten in a few months!! Crazy!  It's been so fun having them.  They are a great bunch of kiddos.

Mike Mullegan and His Steam Shovel

 I had this book last year, so I thought it would be easy to just do the same thing.  However, I ended up switching weeks and it landed right after Valentines day.  I decided I didn't want ANYMORE junk food around the house, so I opted out of making the chocolate cakes to dig into (last year we dug squares out of chocolate cake just like Mike did in the story).  I knew the kids would love it, but if they didn't know about it, they didn't miss it....right?! 

So, for Tuesdays activity, we discussed different forms of matter.  We put a metal pan in the freezer while we read the book, and afterward we talked about what a solid, liquid and gas are.  Next we went to the kitchen for a little experiment.  We took an ice cube (solid), and melted it on a spoon over boiling water (liquid).  We also saw how the steam from the boiling water makes a gas.  The freezing pan also helped show the gas a little better (just held the cold pan over the steam and it makes the steam off the pan more prominent).  The kids really thought this was cool.

 Feeling the ice.

 For our craft on Tuesday we colored tractors (I cut them out and assembled them later).

 Our phonics letter was 'T', so after our phonics lesson we practiced writing the letter 'T' on the floor.  This cement floor has come in handy numerous times.  I promise I threatened them, that they can ONLY write on my floors.  

At some point Ava transformed into Belle.

 Thursday for our activity we talked about steam machines and how they work.  

I showed them a little clip of a steam shovel at work.  It looked just like Mary Anne from the book.

Our craft was painting our shape sticks.

 

 These dumb shape sticks were an awesome idea in my head, but I couldn't quite get them to work like I planned.  At first I tried super glue, but no bueno, it didn't stick at all.  Then I tried the hot glue gun which worked a little. The velcro stuck to the sticks, but a lot of them kept falling off.  Oh well. The kids thought they were cool for a little while. 

 I gave them a paper with different shapes on it, and we tried to replicate the shapes from the paper. 

-SQUARE-

 Tiptoeing around the "Tt's".

 Trevor laying on a 'T' pretending to be a 't'. :)

All of our 't's'. 

I promise I sweep that ugly cement floor.  It just looks disgusting, but it's clean. :)

It was a fun week.  The kids seem to really love being together and are getting so smart.  I can't believe they are almost kindergarteners!!

March 6th - Let's Count it Out Jesse Bear

We continued our week of "Let's Count it Out Jesse Bear" with some great activities. We missed Blake and Stewart, but we still enjoyed our time together. After we read the book, we started our bear masks for our activity. The kids were really excited to make their masks. 

After that, we were able to go outside again. The rain stopped for us. It's so nice to be able to go outside and get out a little energy. After snack time, we did our math activity. The kids did an addition activity with their do-a-dots. They did a great job. They are really starting to understand the concept of addition. 

The masks weren't quite dry by then to finish, so we switched things around a bit. We did centers and finished our masks afterward. 

The masks turned out really cute and the kids were excited to be able to take them home. It was fun to see each of them paint on the mouths and noses and put their own artistry into the mask. This is Tyson's mask, his is the only one I had a picture of, sorry :)

We had a few minutes left to do the phonics lesson. We talked about "X" again. The kids were pretty disappointed that there wasn't a treasure box to find, but we did get to have a fun discussion about X. Reading time is always great. Usually I end up with all of them around me on the couch making different requests for books for me to read. It's great. The perfect way to end a busy day of preschool!

March 4th - Let's Count it Out Jesse Bear

Ok, I am really, really bad at taking pictures while the kids are at my house. So, I apologize in advance for the lack of pictures.
We had a lot of fun this week. It is so fun to have the kids at my house. They are such good kids and each of them is so unique. This week we read "Let's Count it Out Jesse Bear." The kids had a lot of fun with it. You can tell that they are getting older and maturing in their abilities. We started out the day with play during which, they played house. The baby was sick and all of them were making different food items and bringing them to the baby to make it better. It was pretty cute. Writers workshop is always fun for me. I love to hear their stories and what is important to them in their lives. Music time is one of my favorites. It's so fun to hear them all sing and do the actions along with the songs. Sometimes they go a little crazy, but I still love it. We read the book, and they all enjoyed it. We had fun counting on our fingers and talking about numbers. For our activity, we played eenie-meenie-mynie-moe. I thought it would be fun to practice the opposite of what the book talks about and take one away each time.
I think the weather was watching out for us this week. Each day it stopped raining in the morning, just in time for us to go outside and play. The kids have fun playing tag, superheroes, or kicking the ball. After snack time, we had math time. We used different food items and glued them into different squares that had specific numbers in them. The kids had a lot of fun doing it.

We didn't have enough time to do the craft and centers, so I asked the kids what they wanted to do and they wanted to do centers, so that's what we did. 

Phonics lesson was great. We searched for a treasure box with an "X" on the top. The kids loved looking at the map and searching all over the house for the treasure box. It was a fun day with the Busy Bees.