Peter and the Wolf -- January 21 & 23

We loved exploring the music of Prokofiev and reading the story of Peter and the Wolf. We used this book, which has an accompanying audio CD, so we could hear the story with the music. 

We made some popsicle stick masks and took turns acting this out. Everyone wanted to be the wolf, so we did it a few times. We also learned about each of the instruments and learned to match them to the animals. My mom also cut out and assembled some amazing puppets and the kids made a puppet theater so that they could perform it at home for their families.

Jack and the Beanstalk April 1st and 3rd

We had so much fun reading Jack and the Beanstalk together. We used the Stephen Kellogg version, and the kids quite enjoyed the nasty ogre giant! Of course, I am posting this months later, so I don't remember everything we did, but we used jelly beans a lot that week. We sorted them, graphed them, and played games with them. We also measured our own "giant" footprints and then looked for things in the house that we bigger than, smaller than, and the same as our footprints (in length). We also sequenced the story.  Here are the pictures I took! I know it is lame that I can't tell you everything else that we did, but I figured I should still upload the photos of your cuties to enjoy. :-)

Preschool graduation

 

Blake, Stewart, Trevor, Ava, Logan, 

Tyson, Luke and Margaret

*Busy Bee Preschool Class of 2014*

 Can you believe in a couple months these little busy bees will be in kindergarten?!  CRAZY!!

Preschool graduation was adorable, tear-jerking (we really don't get 2 days of quiet time every week) and so fun.  We wouldn't expect anything less, since it was Megan and Kelli doing it all. :)

The kids made these cute graduation caps for the ceremony.

Yeah! We They made it!

 Kelli thought it would be fun to trash Megan's yard with silly string. :) The kids thought it was fun too.

 The BEST preschool moms around.

 Great hit Logan!

 I thought this was a cool shot.

 

 Saddest part was when the silly string ran out. 

The kids did their official graduation walk, got their preschool diplomas and a cute bag filled with fun stuff.

What a great preschool year!!!

Wemberly Worried

Wemberly Worried is a story about a little mouse who worries about everything! It helps children learn to recognize and appropriately deal with feelings. After we listened to the story I asked the children to name things that they remembered Wemberly worrying about. They were great listeners! I wrote down something each child could remember and also a worry of their own. We stuck these worries on this page with a picture of Wemberly on it. Here is what they came up with:

Ava remembered that Wemberly was worried about the slide. Ava was worried about fires. (There was a fire in a nearby park last summer that seemed to influence some of their responses.)

Logan remembered that Wemberly was afraid of a tree falling and he also was worried about fire.

Meg remembered that Wemberly was worried about the monkey bars and she was afraid of bad dreams.

Trevor and Luke had the same responses. They remembered that Wemberly was afraid of going to school and they were afraid of bad dreams.

Tyson remembered that Wemberly was worried about a crack in the wall and he remembered how worried he was on the first day of preschool.

Stewart remembered that Wemberly was afraid the chain on the swing would break and he was worried about grass fire. 

Then we did a little writing practice. I had the kids take their sticky notes and copy the worry they remembered Wemberly had and their own and write them down on little sheets of paper. We glued these to our finished art projects on Thursday. (You can see the finished artwork a few pictures down.) 

Outside snack time! Found the boys at the table...

and the girls in the playhouse!

For art we painted with watercolors. I wanted them to make something similar to the cover of the book. I traced circular patterns with pencil and then they were to color each circle section a different color. (See below for a picture of the cover of the book). They did amazingly well with this! 

For math we did this dot to dot picture of Wemberly. They had to find numbers in order up to 40, so we practiced counting aloud while pointing to the numbers on the number chart before trying to do the worksheet.

We started with a number chart up to 20. 

Then we practiced counting with a number chart up to 50.

Here are the finished paintings. We added to this project on the next school day.

Free play! This camping set has always been a hit!

Here are our finished art/writing projects. We took the cut out pieces to make a Wemberly head and glued them on top of our paintings. We also used markers to draw on the faces.

Margaret modeling our phonics Wanda's Wig! We stuck things that start with W all over it.

For centers we colored Wemberly pictures,

planted a garden,

and played with bubbles!

Another phonics lesson... We sang a W song while following the words on a page. Then we each took turns highlighting a W in the text while saying its sound.

And just like that I finished my last week of teaching preschool for the year and for a while. It is definitely bittersweet. Kudos to Michal for thinking of this idea 4 years ago and getting us started. It has been a great ride. My children have done very well. They have loved school and learned more than I expected. It has been a pleasure working with such smart, adorable and fun little kiddos and an honor to work with such amazing moms. Love to all of you!