Preschool March 2014

I was in charge of teaching preschool for the month of March.  Since we were out of town the first week of March due to our cruise, Tenya taught for me that week and I resumed teaching the second week of March.

FIELD TRIP FIASCO: We arrived home from our trip late Monday night (March 10th) and the next day, Tuesday, I had scheduled a field trip for the preschool kids to go to the Bridger Valley Historical Museum here in the Lyman town hall.  I called and scheduled it before we even went on our cruise and I was feeling pretty prepared.  Unfortunately when we arrived there, it was closed and dark and there was no one there.  Confused, I called the number of the lady I had spoken with on the phone, and she told me that she was in charge of the museum in Evanston.  When I had called her the first time, I had used the number on the outside of the Bridger Valley museum door, and just assumed I was talking to someone in charge of the Bridger Valley museum.  I think I said something like, Hi, is this the museum? And she of course said yes.  What neither of us realized was that we were talking about different museums.  So the field trip was a bust, darn it! I just took all the kids over to TJs and we got some ice cream and played a little bit in the kids playhouse in Jane and Main, then we went home.  I felt like a failure as a preschool teacher.  :(

The rest of the month went considerably better.  The following week, Monday fell on St. Patrick's Day, so we had a St. Patrick's Day party!

Marble painting

 For our craft, the girls made leprechaun hats! They also each got a name tag with their Irish name on it: O'Evie, O'Taylee, and O'Heidi

Their finished shamrocks

Their leprechaun "gold"--candy that we ate for snack

Playing hide the shamrock

We wrote down all our golden thoughts and put them in our pot of gold.  Then I asked each child what they would like to find at the end of the rainbow and recorded their answers to put in our pot of gold

 March 18th: Letter U.  U is for United States of America! We talked about how the United States of America is our country, we found where we live on a US map, we sang some patriotic songs

 U is for Umbrellas!

The Umbrella counting game.  Place the correct number of raindrops on each numbered umbrella.

 Learning how umbrellas work: we used a squirt bottle to simulate rain.  I squirted the girls without the umbrella, then with it so they could figure out how umbrellas keep us dry. 

It worked especially well with the clear umbrella.

They loved this activity--"Squirt me again! Squirt me again!"

Cute friends!

The next week we learned about the letter R.  Day 1: Rainbows

We used the color wheel for a couple of different activities centered on helping us learn the order of the colors of the rainbow

Color mixing--we started with just the three primary colors

Then we mixed the primary colors to make a rainbow! Pretty!

This helped us learn about primary colors and secondary colors.

Craft--Fruit Loop rainbows

Circle rainbows.  Just glue concentric colored circles one on top of the other, then slice in half and glue back to back.  Easy, cute rainbow.  Evie wanted to wear hers as a necklace.

Yay for rainbow day!

 Letter R Day 2: Rockets!! This was a space-themed day--so much fun!

First we did a moon walk--we pulled out all these cushions and pillows and talked about how there is less gravity on the moon so our steps feel "bouncy"

We bounced around a bit to see what it might feel like to walk on the moon

 Then we built a rocket!!! We used an old cardboard box and it turned out pretty sweet!

All the kids took turns "driving" the rocket.

Can you see the names on the front? I had each child pick out the correct stickers and spell their name--it was a good letter recognition exercise.

Shaelyn wanted to be part of preschool too!

I like the blasters on the back--and Taylee's cute face!

I am still very in love with those beautiful blue eyes!

Snack time: moon crater pizzas.  They look most like the moon before we put the toppings on.

Yum!

Aliens vs. Astronauts tic-tac-toe.  I like how Evie is really contemplating her next move. 

Astronauts won!

 Then we learned about orbits.  Taylee held the yellow ball and pretended to be the sun.  Everyone else held various sized balls and pretended to be planets.  We all walked around the sun to illustrate how orbits work. 

 Then it was time for balloon rockets! I love balloon rockets!

And my final week of preschool we did letter W.  We talked about water, weather, wind, and watermelons!

We practiced our cutting skills by cutting out pictures of things and then classifying them as either things that start with W or things that don't.

We painted paper plates then folded them in half to make watermelons

We had watermelons for snack

W is for water--we dove under the blue sheet (the water) to find the watery creatures--crab, octopus, seahorse, fish, etc.

 W day 2: Weather.  We used the weather to help us make art--we put drops of food coloring on our papers then set them out in the snow. 

We talked about wind and made pinwheels

Our snow paintings! They turned out really cool.

We made weather windows

 Then we pulled out the fan and played with wind--I had planned on experimenting with different things to see what the wind would blow and what wouldn't blow, but the kids were having so much fun with the tissues that I just let them play.  The sheer amount of giggling during this activity was astounding!

Every time the fan would take the tissue up in the air, the girls would squeal and giggle up a storm!

Haha! Love it!

Preschool is so much fun! I love when it's my turn to teach, we always get to do such fun things.  Although after a month, I am ready to be done teaching for a while, because I usually procrastinate my preparation then I have to stay up late the night before getting everything ready, then I am super tired the next day.  It's my own darn fault, I know.  But after a month of staying up late week after week, I am tired! Despite my irresponsibility, however, we had a ball doing preschool at my house!  Next month is at Tenya's.  She always has a lot of fun learning with the kids too! I am so glad we do this neighborhood preschool.  I love being involved in my kids' learning!