O Christmas Tree

O Christmas tree, O Christmas tree, how lovely our your branches. The children helped to decorate this little paper tree for our gathering time.We made an ornament for our own Christmas trees by sewing ribbon on a tree and gluing on buttons. Very cute.For gross motor, we decided to enjoy our winter season and pretend there were small chunks of ice floating in the water, and we were penguins jumping from one ice to the next. After quite a bit of fun with that, we turned into polar bears and crawled from ice to ice.Then we played with play-do and Christmas shaped cookie cutters. Miss Andrea and the children had a lot of fun making a winter scene.

Snow/Winter and snowmen

We started off the day with Corbin showing us what he found to put in the box for the letter K.During circle time we read, "Snowmen at Night." We tried pinning the nose of the snowman with our eyes shut.
Then for art, we made a painted snowman ornament.
For our gross motor, we played some Christmas music and "ice skated" around the living room on wax paper. Our fine motor activity included cutting out a square, a circle, and a hat and gluing on a paper to make a snowman.

What a fun day we had today!

Policemen

We had a fun day learning about policemen! We started off by making our police hats and badges. We then learned about some of the things policemen do to help us. We listened to a great story called "Officer Buckle & Gloria" about an officer who teaches rules of safety to children at their school. No one listens to poor Officer Buckle until he gets a dog named Gloria and starts to bring her with him to his presentations. Gloria makes these presentations so much fun, without Officer Buckle seeing what she is doing, that the children start paying attention to the safety rules. This story was lots of fun! We also made stop signs and played "Policeman Says."

Post Office workers

Today we learned about postal workers. During circle time we watched a short music video about mail. This is a picture of our children watching the video.
For art, we made our own mail bags. The children had to "sew" up the sides of the bag and decorate the outside. They did a great job.

Then I put mail in their bags and they had to deliver it to the mailboxes. They really enjoyed this.

Firefighters!

We had a super fun day learning about firefighters. We started the day with a fire truck puzzle and our letter I activity.


During circle time we read a book about firefighters and sang a song about firefighters. After circle we rode to the fire station for a field trip. The firefighters showed us the whole fire station, even where they sleep. But of course our favorite was the fire truck.



After our trip we came back to Andrew's house and made our own fire trucks! What a fun day!

Jungle Animals

Mommy and Me was held at Andrea's house today--while Danielle was out of the country! Andrea worried that she wouldn't have enough to do, so she thought and thought....

For arts and crafts, we painted a paper plate that was later cut in swirls to make a jungle snake. Everyone worked so hard to cut along the lines!













































After art, we went outside to run through a jungle obstacle course! It was cold, so we bundled up and headed out. While outside, everyone got to jump like a monkey (hopscotch), fly like a bird, leap like a gazelle, walk like an elephant and ROAR like a lion! We ran through the obstacle course many times (what great Africa animals!) and then came in to play in the living room with lots of animals that might live in Africa.

We had lots of fun!

Safari Animals

Roar! That's a lion for you. Safari animals can be such fun to learn about. We made lion puppets for our gathering activity.

During circle time each child pretended to be a safari animal, and the rest of us tried to guess what they were. Corbin was an elephant.
For art, we made some binoculars to take on our safari walk around the neighborhood. On our walk we saw butterflies, beetles, and grasshoppers, but no safari animals were hiding in the tall grasses.
We also tried to use a straw like an elephant's trunk. This is actually quite difficult. The children would have to suck up the water and then spit it out through the straw at the tree.

Safari animals are fun!

Desert Animals

Today we learned about desert animals. We read Stellaluna, and looked at pictures of desert animals. We liked the bats, and road runner, and the tortoise.


For art, we made a big cactus with thorns, and a rattlesnake resting under the cactus.
Gross motor was quite fun today. The children placed a ball between their legs and walked like a penguin. (The arctic is a desert.) And then I put a blue blanket on the ground to symbolize water. I had the blanket folded thin, and then had the children broad jump over it. The water would gradually get wider and wider. The children did really well with the challenge of still broad jumping over a wide river.

We ended with a fun matching game of all the desert animals. We even had to play it twice. They were much faster the second time through, they learned they had to remember where all the pictures were.

Farm Animals and First Preschool day at Corbin's

We had preschool at Corbin's house today! What fun! The children put together a floor ABC puzzle. They took turns very well, and did a great job. They liked looking at it, so we left it put together for the rest of the day.

Miss Aenea did circle time today. She had a farm and different animals in a bag. The children pulled out an animal and said if it lives on a farm or not. If it lived on the farm, they placed it in the barn or near it, if not, they held onto it. They really enjoyed it. We read Click, Clack, Moo and other stories.

For art the children colored a rooster and glued feathers on its back.
Then the children covered big horseshoe shaped pieces of cardboard with aluminum foil and we went outside to play horseshoes with a baseball tee.Then we played games such as, duck, duck, goose and red light green light, but they have to move like an animal.


While we were outside, a big truck came and brought shingles to the house that was being built. The children got to take turns sitting in this cool piggy back forklift.

Meow, Meow, Meow

Andrew had the Alphabet Box at his house this week. He brought it filled with letter "E" items. Some things that start with the letter E are: elephant, engine, egg and Easter bunny.

Our theme today was about Pets. We had Rufus the dog come and visit us today.
The children really seemed to enjoy Rufus. We learned that Rufus would really like to find a cat to chase and play with.
We read The Three Little Kittens and then the children helped retell the story on the flannel board. We also read Have you Seen my Cat? and Millions of Cats. What fun.
For art, we created Stain Glass Pets. The children had cats cut out from wax paper and stuck tissue paper on the cat. Once dry, the cat can be hung in the window, for a stain glass pet. (Sometimes the glue was extra sticky.)

We pretended to be cats for part of our gross motor time. We stretched, pounced, pretended to eat and lap up milk, and then we pretended to take a cat bath.