Rain and Rainbows

The last couple of weeks have been great. We have been learning about Weather. Last week we talked about the letter U. We made this cute umbrella art project.

There was a lot of glitter in the house, but the kids had a great time making this out of pipe cleaners, cupcake papers and cotton balls.

On Thursday we talked about the letter V. We made such a yummy Vegetable Pizza. It was super easy to make. You roll out a pizza crust and then bake for 5 to 7 minutes. The sauce is made out of 1 cup of Sour Cream, 1 package of cream cheese, and then a packet of ranch dressing. It was super delicious! Then top with your favorite Veggies. Most the kids loved cucumbers and carrots, a few liked cauliflower, and nobody put on green and red peppers, except for me of course. You should try it at home, it is one of my favorites for a snack now. We also played I Spy with my Little Eye to learn about one of our 5 senses of seeing.

This week we learned about rainbows. The timing was perfect since St. Patrick's day is right around the corner and we could talk about Leprechauns and a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. Here is our art project we made.

This little girl helped me a ton! Those rings took forever to make and glue on. She finished so quick and helped the other kids. This was a project I made with my 2nd graders. I was SO IMPRESSED that they were able to make it so well.

For our 5 senses we talked about Taste today. They got to come up one at a time and be blindfolded and then describe the food they were tasting. The best was when someone described a marshmallow as crunchy! I couldn't help but laugh. We also made our own rainbow. All you need is a clear bowl, I used a pampered chef mixing bowl. You shine your flashlight at different angles and it bends the light into a rainbow on your ceiling. It works best with a dark room, but the kids were still able to see it. Did you know that rainbows are really circles? They just look like an arc because they are cut off by the horizon. It was pretty cool to see a circle rainbow on the ceiling.

For cooking we made rainbow toast! I was so excited to do this, I couldn't even sleep the night before. It looked so good when it was done and the kids loved it. All you do is dye milk the colors of the rainbow. Paint it on to your bread. Toast in toaster. Top with favorite toppings! Ours included: Cinnamon sugar, honey, and jam! You should make it some time, it was so much fun.

I can't wait for next week for a leprechaun to hopefully visit us and to go on our field trip to the Bean Museum.

Finally Turtle Week!

This little guy has been telling me for months now that he can't wait until we get to the letter T so that we can learn about turtles! So when the week finally arrived I of course had to do a unit on turtles just for him. You should have seen how excited he was when I told him it was turtle day. We learned all about turtles and where they live, their babies, predators, and how they protect themselves. It of course wouldn't be turtle day without learning about the fable, "The Tortoise and the Hare". Afterwards we made our own turtles that had a string attached to them so that the kids could walk their turtle. They absolutely loved making them come to life.

Later in the week we continued to learn about our 5 senses with this week learning about different sounds that we hear. I found a great site that had all sorts of fun sounds. The kids had fun listening to them and trying to guess what each one was. For cooking we made Strawberry Banana Smoothies. A few kids said it would have tasted better with ice cream in it. But I told them it is good to have a healthy snack without lots of sugar. (Plus they got a cupcake for a birthday treat with it, so I figured they had plenty of sweets for the day :)

Olympic Week and the 5 senses

Wow what a great week! We had a blast. We have been learning about the olympics and the kids got to participate in their own olympics. It was a blast.

These are the olympic flags we made. They got to march in together and we sang "It's a Small World After All".

Balloon race, and yes a few popped but they just thought it was funny.


Carrying an egg race.
This was so funny they got their gold medallion but when I asked them to hold it up but still let me see their face they just didn't quite get it. O well. They were so proud of their medal.
Learning about Canada. We made the Maple Flag and for cooking made waffles and homemade maple syrup. My sister in law, who is from Canada, says they love maple syrup on pretty much everything.

For science the next few weeks we will be going over the 5 senses. Today we learned about the sense of smell. I had each cup covered with some holes to smell. They made some of the funniest guesses as to what they thought was in each one.

Guesses: Pickles and Olives. Pickles was the right choice!
Guesses: Top Ramen, Pepper Correct Answer: Onion
Guesses: Bananas Correct answer: Marshmallows
Guesses: Flowers, Ramen Noodles, Soap Correct Answer: Wax that smells like flowers
They all guessed this one right! Bananas
Everyone got this one right: Cinnamon

Valentine Party

The camera was charged and ready to go but unfortunately we were so busy that I only got one picture and it didn't turn out the best so I decided to not post it. We did have a great time though and I wanted to give a special thank you to the parents that were able to help. The best part was seeing how excited the kids got to pass out and receive their valentines. Sorry we ran a little over time, but I hope your child had a great time.

I like to add some of my favorite stories or quotes from the kids. This quote was a week ago by a cute little girl in our class. "Miss Julie, guess what? My dad got pulled over by a police man, but don't worry he didn't have to go to jail!"

Q is for Queen and dental health month!

Last week we learned about the letter Q. I am so proud at all the kids at how well they learning the sounds and recognizing their letters. We made some crowns to go along with Q being the beginning letter for Queen. They were so excited about them and loved playing pretend. On thursday last week we did a big unit on dental health. We talked about ways to take care of your teeth and foods you can eat that are good for your teeth and of course the favorite foods that are not so good. I had started a little experiment the night before to show what happens to your teeth when a lot of sugar is on them and you don't brush. It was done with hard boiled eggs. The first egg is normal and hard, just like your enamel on your teeth, when you take good care of them. The second one had mushy soft enamel that causes cavities. The kids faces looked so scared when they felt the soft egg and none of them wanted to have their teeth turn out like that egg. So hopefully they are brushing more at home. I sent home a little chart to help them brush better. If you complete it at home and send it back with your child I will have a special prize for them. For cooking we made fresh homemade juice! Our mixture had apples, oranges, bananas and I put some carrots in as well! Some of the kids were a little nervous to drink it since it had carrots but everyone loved the juice once they tried it. I'm looking forward to our Valentine party next week! If you would still like to help out let me know :)

Open Enrollment

I am happy to announce that people are already wanting to sign up for next year! I remember last year being so worried about getting enough students and now it looks as though it shouldn't be a worry at all. I will allow first priority to my families already enrolled and then will have open enrollment to the public on April 1. I will still be doing only one session and it will be the same schedule as I had this year. I am excited for all the new ideas I have planned for next year. This year was great but I see so many ways that I can make things even better. I will still base all of my curriculum off of the Utah State Core to prepare your child for Kindergarten. I look forward to a great year to come and want to publicly thank my parents from this year for all their help. It has been a great first year and went better than I could have expected.

Yes I'm still here

I'm so sorry I haven't posted anything in the last week. I kept forgetting to take pictures and some days are so busy that I feel like a tornado hit the house with everything we have done and the huge mess at the end of preschool. We have done a lot of fun things though. For science we finished up our Arctic Animal unit. I was really bummed that we didn't get much more snow at the end of the month to make a penguin statue. O well, there's always next year. For cooking we were able to make some yummy pizza for letter P day. It was so good that I made some more for dinner that night. For letter O day we made these cute little owls out of Heart foams. The kids have been busy learning about money and all the different shapes the last couple of weeks. It's so funny to me that most of them didn't know pennies, nickels or dimes but as soon as we learned about the quarter all of them seemed to know this coin so well. I guess it's probably from asking for money to get a prize out of a machine at the grocery stores. Our Valentine's Day party is coming up soon. If you are interested in helping out with an activity please let me know, I always appreciate the extra help. It looks like the weather is starting to warm up a little. I hope we can all get feeling better as a lot of the kids have been sick this month.

Polar Bears

This week was a lot of fun but I feel so bad that a few kids have been sick this week. We didn't have a lot of kids at preschool this week and it was really quiet. I think a lot of it has to do with the gross weather outside. I really want to feel the warmth again. I hate the cold weather. Anyways, enough about that here's some cute pictures from this week.

On Tuesday we learned all about the letter N. We made these cute noodle

necklaces. The cute little boy on the right always likes to dress up. He was Darth Vader this day.
Polar Bear treats we made for cooking. The one on top has strawberry

yogurt rather than cottage cheese because a lot them didn't want

cottage cheese.

This is a video sharing our experiment on how polar bears have blubber underneath their fur to keep them warm in the cold weather. It was a lot of fun and the kids loved the feel of the shortening on their fingers.

Today was SO much fun! For science this month we are learning about different arctic animals. Today we talked about penguins. I taught the kids about emperor penguins and how the Dad takes care of the egg while the mom swims off to find food for the baby and the dad. We talked about the dad keeping the egg nestled close to his body between his feet to keep the egg warm. If he drops the egg it will break from the cold air. Each of the kids got to take an egg (a rolled up sock) and keep it in between his ankles. It was so cute to watch them protect their little egg and to quickly pick it up and put it back in if it fell off. We then learned about Penguins feathers and how they keep warm. We did and experiment with ice to show how the down feathers keep the penguin warm. The down feathers capture air and this helps keep them warm from the cold wind. It was a great day and a lot of fun. It was pretty funny during cooking to watch them stick the egg we used earlier under their shirts telling everyone they were going to have a baby penguin. Thank heavens it's not my job to explain that one to them :)

Happy New Year!

A
Is it really 2010? I can't believe how quickly the year went by. I just wanted to wish every one a Happy New Year. We celebrated our first day back talking about the Chinese New Year. Even though they won't celebrate the Chinese New Year until the 2nd full moon this year which happens to be February 14. It was a lot of fun for the kids because we talked about the big parade they have. I showed them pictures of the dragon that is in the parade and we performed our own version of the dragon. They loved having a turn to be the head of the dragon and leading the rest of the class around the house. We finished off the day making our own little Chinese Dragon.