"Every thing's free mom!"

I love this quote! It happened today as we made donuts for letter D day. When it was time to go this adorable little boy said, " Mom, we made donuts today. And every thing is free at preschool mom!" I couldn't stop laughing. What a cutie! We have been super busy but definitely are having a lot of fun. Last week we read the story, Goldilocks and the Three Bears. Afterwards we made bear masks. The kids loved telling me if they were the papa bear, mamma bear or baby bear. I think a majority were baby bear.

We also made some homemade butter and put them on mini blueberry muffins for cooking this day. If you can't tell it was letter B day. 

The butter is super easy to make. Just whipping cream and a little salt. You can put it in a jar and shake it over and over again. We were almost out of time so we made ours in the blender. It was really good later after being in the fridge for a day. 

For letter C day we explored with the primary colors. We were able to mix them and make new colors. I always usually buy carnations to show how water travels up through the stem of the flowers. But the two stores I went to didn't have carnations so I ended up buying white daisies. I later learned that they don't work the same as carnations. All the dye got stuck in the center but didn't go out to the pedals. We will have to do this experiment over again. What a bummer :(  We also made caterpillars into the letter c. 

Also, I wanted to share some of the books we have been using lately. 

We use the big books for shared reading lessons. They are great because they follow a pattern and the kids are able to read along with me after I have read it first. We also use it to find the letter we are studying. I love the alphabet books. They have pictures with each word before making a small story. We use these during reading groups. The kids are so excited to be reading words. And of course everyone loves the I Spy books. 

Last but not least. Here are the delicious donuts we made today. They were so easy to make and were DELICIOUS! I think I will be making them for Christmas breakfast each year as a tradition. I have included Paula Dean's recipe if you are interested in making them. 

Yummy Donut Recipe

First week and absolutely no tears!

This last week was a blast! I have such an adorable class and was completely shocked that nobody cried on the first day when they had to leave Mom and Dad. It was fun to see some of the kids that were 3 last year and so nervous, just run right inside this year as excited as ever! 

The first day is always really busy with learning how everything goes. We went over rules, and all the expectations while at preschool. We also read the book, "The Kissing Hand". I love this book because it talks about a little raccoon who is scared to go to school so his mother tells him the story of the kissing hand and she kisses him right on his palm. She reminds him that he can put his hand on his cheek and it will make his heart feel warm and always remember that his mom loves him. I gave each of the kids a heart sticker to put on their hand to remember that their moms and dads love them even when they are at school. Later we made "ME" masks. It was cute to see how creative they were. I did an example before hand and reminded them all the parts of their face, "nose, eyes, eyebrows, freckles maybe, ears, etc." They were excited to show them off to the class and the camera. 

 Love the big smile!

After making these we played the m & m game. Always a favorite! I made up a simple chart. Each child gets to pick 2 colors and based off of what color they pick they tell us something about themselves. 

Green: favorite animal  Yellow: Favorite Book  Orange: Best Friend   Red: Favorite food  

 Brown: favorite thing to do outside and Blue: Favorite Sport

Every kid loves seeing a school bus at this age! And even though they don't ride the bus to school we made a little treat and made our own buses. Nothing too fancy!

On Thursday we did our normal routine in the morning and then did Apple day to introduce the letter A. I always love apple day and telling the kids the story of the Little House with no windows and no doors, with a star inside. This year I even made the story about a little boy in our class. He loves sharks so we even made him visit a shark in the story. :) At the end I cut open the apple and show them the star inside. They always think it is so neat. Afterward we made carousels out of our apples. 

We also played a little math game with these apples to see who could find the number I called out first and cover it. They all did pretty well at knowing their numbers and being able to recognize them. There is also a fun game you can play with this with your more advanced learners. It is called Stinky 7. All you do is have 2 dice and some counters. One player rolls both dice and then adds up the 2 and covers the sum of what they rolled. They keep going until they can't go anymore. For example if they roll a number that has already been covered or if they roll a 7. (There are no 7's on the board, therefore the name Stinky 7) then the next player rolls.  The first person to fill up their chart is the winner.

It was such a fun week. I am really looking forward to this year! We also took class pictures. You have no idea how hard it is to get everyone looking at the camera with a smile. O well. I think our shirts turned out really cute this year. I love the lime green.