St Patricks Day Fun

I like to start off each day with a morning self starter. Anything is game. Blocks, worksheets, play dough, counting games, pretty much anything they can do while we wait of our friends to get here and where they can socialize with each other. 

Our morning starter for this St. Patricks day celebration was making bracelets out of green and white pony beads and pipe cleaners.  They were a instructed to make a pattern with the beads  {ABA AABB ABBA}. By this time of the year most of the class is able to grasps this concept fairly easily. This is also a great fine motor activity. Look how she has to use her thumb and pointer finger to grab each bead. 

During our Circle time today I introduced the letter R and we talked about rainbows. Of course I had to write a song about rainbows. I'm kind of a rock star that way. It's to the tune of Muffin Man and goes a little something like this…

If I saw a rainbow, a rainbow, a rainbow

if I saw a rainbow, this is what i'd see

Red, orange, and yellow

Green, blue, and purple

Red, orange, and yellow

Green, blue, and purple

I know i know! Pretty amazing. Just call me maestro. But seriously, it gets the job done. So much of my teaching is done through songs. It is the best way to teach and the best way to learn. The kids love it and so do I. 

We painted rainbows by number.  They are leaning the order of the rainbow and reviewing color names and numbers all at the same time. I'm sneaky like that. Always finding ways for them to learn without knowing they are learning. I found this rainbow printable at Just is a four letter word . 

I wanted the kids to have a funny hat to take home and I debated on having them make their own or if I just wanted to hurry and make them for them. I chose to do it. I wanted to have enough time for stories, songs, snacks, and an irish dance lesson. I printed these off from Just is a four letter word as well. 

Watching preschooler do some irish dance is great!  I have some Irish jig music and taught them to put their hand on their hip and one above their head and tap one foot at a time. Heal toe heal toe... This lasted a a few minutes and then it was just a big ol' crazy dance party. I had one little boy suggest to the class that each boy find a partner and so they could all dance like "man and lady". I die! 

I spent the weekend procrastibaking and made some special treats for everyone to take home. These days I use any and ever excuse to make a batch of royal icing sugar cookies. I had a few of the mustache cookies break and so I didn't have enough for each of the kids to take one home but they all got a cute polka dot shamrock to gobble up. 

Happy St. Patricks Day

Blast Off to Space

It's time to learn a bit about outer space! The first time I taught this theme a few years back I was skeptical. I mean, isn't this stuff complicated?  I was afraid the knowledge of planets, gravity, orbits, and all of that space stuff would go waaay over the heads of 4 and 5 year olds. And what do I know about Space? Not much I'm afraid. Before teaching this I couldn't tell you how many moons Jupiter has (63 by the way) or the order of the planets, or what a gas planet was. Pretty much I had forgotten everything I had ever learned on the subject.  Boy was I surprised by how much we all loved it! Not only loved it but actually got it and learned so much. Mother Goose Time  hit the nail on the head with this theme!

This is going to be a really great month of learning and fun! In case any of you missed the calendar, here is our basic schedule for this month. I'll get some pictures up of our activities and projects. But until then at least you know what we are up to this month. Along with all the space fun, I am really going to make a big push on lowercase letter recognition. We are doing great but those tricky lower case p, g, and j letters are still giving some kids a hard time.

Last Wednesday I taught them a little song about the planets that I may have heard once or maybe I came up with it myself (I have no idea). It's to the tune of twinkle twinkle twinkle and it goes like this…

There are 9 planets that we know

Round and round the sun they go

Mercury, Venus, Earth and Mars

The closets planets to our star

Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus too

Neptune, Pluto we won't forget you.

Try singing this at home with your kids! They really love it! Plus it's one of those things they recite to  grandma when she visits. They'll think you have a genius (which of course you do)!