Graduation Day!

It was a great day despite the wind blowing all the kids caps off and all of my decorations getting blown away. They looked so cute and were so excited. We sang 3 songs that they had chosen as their favorites. "The Chicken Dance" "Sally the Camel" and "Tiny Tim".

We were missing a couple of kids in this picture. 


Then I had each child come up as I read a little note that I had written to them with a picture of me with them. They were excited to get the star suckers that I had to go with the diploma. 

Afterwards we were able to let our butterflies go off into the world. They didn't really want to leave so the kids were able to hold one while their parents got a picture. I had to laugh at a couple kids who wanted to hold the butterflies a little to rough. :) 

Afterwards the kids were off to play on the playground. Thank you for all of  you who brought a treat to share, they were delicious! 

Thank you also for making this a fantastic year. I loved teaching your adorable child and am looking forward to a great year next fall. :) 

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Thank you for making this such a wonderful year! I have loved every minute of it. Thank you for allowing me to teach your child. I love ever single one of them. I am excited for our preschool graduation/party on Thursday.

Super Healthy Kids

We had a great visit from Amy from Super Healthy Kids. She has a great website with some great ideas for cooking and eating healthy. She read "Gregory the Horrible Eater" to the kids and talked about healthy and not healthy things we eat. They got to play a fun game of throwing a dice and matching a fruit or veggie to the color it landed on. We also sang a song to go with each fruit or veggie that was chosen. It was pretty funny at the end when the kids were so excited to play with her pretend food. I think I will need to get some for next year. :)

Teddy Bear Picnic

What a fun day we had and thank heavens the weather cooperated for us. I was so excited for this day. A few of the kids were able to bring their sibling with them, that would be coming to preschool next year. I got going early and decorated outside a little. We had a bear to welcome them to the picnic and bear footprints leading up to the door.

We did some fun listening skills about bears and sorting the bears or stuffed animal they brought in different sizes, colors and if they had clothes on or not. We also played hot potato with a bear while listening to the song, "The Teddy Bear's Picnic"

Their favorite part was decorating cookies with gummy bears and Teddy Grahams. And of course going outside to eat lunch in the big tent and read stories about Bears. 

At the very end of the day we played Big Bear, Big Bear (a fun tag game) They loved running around and screaming. It was a blast!

Also, I forgot to mention that our butterflies hatched last Tuesday! Right while the kids were there. I couldn't have planned the timing more perfectly. We will release them next week for graduation!

The red stuff is meconium (not blood). They pump color through their wings at the very end and it releases that red stuff.

Books and Birds

We had a great week! One little boy brought his cousin who was visiting with him this week to class. She was so adorable and everyone wanted to be her friend. I love it when kids are nice to each other. On tuesday we talked about making our own books. The kids got to make a picture book and read it to the class. They turned out cute but I have to admit that some were a bit confusing. We also learned about the story, "The Ugly Duckling". Afterwards we talked about what lesson they learned from the story. It was so cute when one little girl said, "It's ok to be ugly, one day you will be pretty". :) We discussed how everybody has different talents and things that they are good at. We also made our own bird feeders. So far I saw one bird pecking at ours outside, hopefully more will find it. For cooking we made Orange Julius I promised the kids to include the recipe as this was another favorite. Next week should be a lot of fun. We are having our Teddy Bear Picnic on Thursday. I can't wait to share pictures of the fun day!

These are our grass heads we made a few weeks ago with out plant unit. The kids were so excited to take them home and give them a hair cut. I used white socks this time instead of black like I normall do. I think I will stick to the black as the dirt made them look super dirty.

As promised, Orange Julius Recipe:

1 (6 oz.) can of orange juice
1 cup milk
1 cup water
1/2 cup sugar
1 tsp. vanilla
12 ice cubes

Mix all ingredients in the blender and enjoy!
It's that easy :) I doubled the recipe and it wouldn't all fit in the blender so I had to mix the ice 2 different times. Hope you like it!

Butterflies

Our caterpillars are getting bigger and are about to go into their cocoons. We talked about the butterfly life cycle  today and the kids drew some cute pictures to go with each part of the life cycle. We read the book, "The Hungry Caterpillar" and they enjoyed using my stuffed caterpillar to eat through all the food.

Yes they look sort of gross I know :)

I found this great site on You Tube that shows the Butterfly Life Cycle:

Butterfly Life Cycle

For cooking we made our own little butterflies, they were super yummy and they loved matching the wings with corresponding colors to show symmetry.

For art we made these cute butterflies and made a little card to go with it for Mother's Day. Happy Mother's Day to all of you, I hope you have a great day on Sunday. Thank you for sharing a little piece of your child with me, I absolutely love them. 

Rocks!

This post is from last week. I was out of town all weekend and didn't have time to update everything until now. We had a great time with rocks last week. The kids loved learning about how they are formed and were so excited about making their own rock collection. On thursday the kiddos got to be geologists. We did all sorts of experiments with their rocks and they were so excited about each one. 

We looked at the rocks with magnifying glasses.

Measured them to see how long they were.

Tested for iron in the rock (if they were magnetic)

Found out what colors were in our rocks.

Tested how hard our rocks were and if they could scratch glass.

Found out what rocks had limestone in them (the rocks would bubble in the vinegar)

If their rocks sink or float (all but one obviously sunk)

There were some pretty amazing looking rocks!

Thanks for all your help gathering and putting together these fantastic rock collections!

These are our edible ladybugs we made. They were super yummy.