Apples, Apples, and more Apples

Happy Birthday Johnny Appleseed!

Today we talked about apples, the different colors, sizes, and things you can do with apples. We did a fun science experience, we cut 4 apples. We put one in water, one in milk, one in lemon juice, and left one in nothing. We took guesses what would happen to the apples. Later we looked at the apples. The one left in nothing, turned brown. The one in water was almost all brown, the apple in milk starting to turn brown, but the apple in lemon juice was still white. The children were amazed. They thought for sure either the water or the milk would keep the apple from turning brown. I love to see how excited they were to see the changes in each apple.

We read a story about Johnny Chapman Appleseed, then Miss Janalynn cut open a apple with a hole in it and found a worm inside. It too was amazing! We painted a large apple and even suck our fingers in the holes to make funny little worms sticking out of our apples.

For singing time, we learned a new song "Do You Know the Apple Man", and then we played, "Find the Appleseed".

We "picked" our apples from the preschool tree. We counted the stickers on our apples, then chose a small treat for each sticker we had.

In the 4 year old class, we cut open a red and a green apple. We looked at each apple. They were the same on the inside, and different on the outside. We counted the seeds, and used the apple halves to stamp paint onto paper to make a picture of the inside and out side of an apple. Afterwards, we got to go outside and pick green and red apples from Miss Janalynn's apple trees, to take home.

Shapes Party

Hooray For Shapes

What a fun day. We not only know our shapes, we practiced drawing them too. Our 4 year olds made beautiful rainbow art work tracing around all the shapes.

Together as a class we made a small shape book and glued shapes to the pages.

Some of us brought items as our favorite shapes, we passed them around to show. Others brought snacks shapes. We shared and passed them out too.

We read a funny book called "Icky Bugs Shapes", by Jerry Pallotta.

Our favorite part of our Shape Party of course was the games. We played, Shape basket, and Toss to the shape.

Hearts and Stars. My Family

Hearts and Stars

Hearts and Stars are easy! We sang Twinkle Twinkle little star and talked about the heart meaning "Love". We finished gluing shapes to spell out our names today and practiced printing or tracing our names. The older class stamped heart and star shapes onto a large heart and star.

My Family

We reviewed relatives, and and showed pictures that were brought of the people in our family. We glued our family pictures onto a pre-made cube. We had fun rolling our family cube and naming the family member that was showing on top each time.

We read the book "Amelia Bedelia's Family Album", by Peggy Parish and played "Farmer in the Dell".

Diamonds, Ovals and Families

Ovals , Diamonds and Families

Today the older class finished out cutting their shapes. We practiced tracing our names and then writing our names without the tracing. We played shape match over and over.

After reviewing our previous shapes, Diamonds and Ovals were introduced. We looked at pictures of things that are the shape of diamonds or ovals. We glued ovals and diamond shapes with letters of our names, to our names. For snack we had hard boiled eggs because they were shaped like ovals, and rice krispie diamonds instead of squares.

We talked about families today. We learned that families are people who love us. Some members of our family lives with us, and some don't. Some families have brothers and sisters and babies. Some have only one child. We talked about relatives. We learned that relatives are part of families. Relatives can live close by or far away.

We read the book, "The Relatives Came", by Cynthia Rylant. And then colored a home with paper members of our family to go into the house.

My New Friends

My New Friends

Rectangles and Triangles

After finding rectangles and triangles throughout the room, we reviewed circles and squares and repeated our shape activity of matching rectangles and triangles with the letters of our name.

For our snack we had juice boxes in the shape of rectangles and a slice of cheese pizza the shape of a triangle.

We read the story, "Who Needs Friends", by Christine Taylor, and learned a new friendship song, "I Have A Friend".

We practiced taking turns by playing a few games. I made the "matching" game with the pictures of our preschool friends on them. We also rolled the ball to our friends and practiced nice things we say to our friends. Last but not least, we put together our very own friendship puzzle. It was a picture of our friends at preschool.

Hooray For ME!

Hooray for ME!

Circles and Squares!

The older class started scissor practicing today. We started with squares , then circles. We practice where to place our thumb and fingers and what in position the scissors and our hands should be in while holding and turning the paper. The cutting became much, much easier when they caught on the hand and paper positions.

We took turns going around the room pointing out circles and squares. And then practiced our shapes by matching circles and squares to the letters of our name.

We talked about ourselves. I found out what some favorites are from the children. We talked about our feelings and what makes us happy, sad, angry, etc. We took our measurements, and decorated with coloring and yarn hair a paper figure of ourselves.

For a fun game we played "Simon says" except replaced Simon with the name of the child who's turn it was. It was a new game to most of the children. It was fun to watch each child think of something for the rest of the children to copy. I had to help with the "Simon says", part, however it still was a hoot to watch and play.

Snack was square cheese with round crackers. The children enjoyed tearing the square cheese into smaller and smaller squares and building tall sandwiches with the crackers. I think they played with snack more than they actually ate it. Good thing we wash our hands good before snack time!

Welcome Back!

I'm so excited to have preschool back in session!

Open house was September 1st. We took pictures, colored a welcome sign and received our preschool backpacks filled with koolaid bottles, play doe, crayons, and a fruit snack. I enjoyed visiting with both parents, and children.

Wednesday September 8th was the official 1st day of preschool. We went over what rules were, and the rules at preschool. We learned our "Hello" and "Good-bye" preschool songs, read the "Kissing hand" and stamped our hands to make a fun hand print with a loving heart for our parents.

Our favorite part of today was snack time. We made chocolate pudding by shaking it in a large jar, and took turns using a whisk to make vanilla pudding. It was yummy. the majority of the children liked the vanilla pudding.