Dance like a jelly fish

One of the best parts of my job is making parents smile. Like last week when I sent the kids home with shower caps on their heads I saw more than one mom laugh out loud. In case you can't tell, they are supposed to be jelly fish. Who knew a shower cap makes a great jelly fish? 

Mother Goose time had this clever craft in this months theme box. The kids were supposed to cut and tape all the ribbons on themselves. But… I had so much I wanted to get in this day that I just made them all for the kids so we had time to review our letters as well as make some movies with the iPhone.

I'm such a goober because somehow, i deleted all the videos!!! But what we did was film these jelly fish "hats" being dropped from up high in slow-mo. When we watched the play back, they looked like real jelly fish floating around. It was a blast! Then, because this group of kids are dancing foos, we had a jelly fish dance party. And yes. We filmed that too. I was able to post a 15 second clip of it on Instagram before I deleted them though. 

Also, this week we had a great review game from MGT.  The child tosses the green pom pom onto the board. Then, he has to find the match from the card that are face down. They all had to pay close attention to which card were being flipped. The fun part of the game was they couldn't choose where the pom pom would land. Some of the kids tried to be sneaky and leaned waaaay over to place it on the letter or word that they wanted. I sometimes pretend to not see.

 Going right along with our Ocean Commotion theme this month means playing with sea shells. I don't know what it is about shells that fascinate preschoolers? They have been loving making designs, playing games with them, and practicing their counting with them all month.

I didn't go a great job with pictures for this next activity. It was enough to get everything prepared by myself that I pretty much wasn't even thinking about pictures. We celebrated Arbor Day on Friday. It was a little break from our ocean them but learning about trees and the earth is such a great lesson for preschool kids. In years past I've gone all out! Like ordering saplings from the arbor day foundation for each of the kids, planting a tree in someones yard, and a huge feast of tree foods. This year I kept it simple. I assigned each of the kids to bring a food from a tree. Apples, oranges, coconut, almonds, walnuts… It was a pretty long list. Then, each child had a sample of all the foods and together we tasted each food and talked about it. What is the texture, was it sweet, sour, bitter? I always love the lemon tasting. 

It's been a pretty busy week. We are learning so much. It's crazy that this month is just about over and there is only one more month in the school year. Man I'm going to miss these guys. But I don't want to think about that yet. May is such a big month. It's the busiest month of my entire year. I'm hoping that I can get it all done and keep my sanity.