Fun in February

Here are some of the activities we've been doing lately:

Making patterns with foam shapes

Using heart-shaped punches to trace names

Using shape stampers in the play dough 

 Making Valentine's Day number books by putting the right number of stickers on each page 

 Making patterns with foam shapes

 Sorting objects with the initial sounds /p/ and /s/

 We learned the Bible story about Jesus healing the blind man. When Jesus performed this  miracle, he mixed saliva with dirt to make mud to place on the man's eyes.  In preschool, we made faces on paper and then made mud to put on the eyes. 

 Some of us chose to use a little bit of mud...

 ...while others used a lot! 

 Painting a giant heart with sponges

 Searching for matching hearts in the sensory bin

 Mr. Potato head

 Transferring water beads (the kind you use in floral arrangements) from the bowl to the hearts.

 Transferring is important for developing fine motor skills, focus, and concentration.

 On Thursday and Friday this past week, we learned about The Body. This fun costume goes over a child's head and shows approximately where each part would be on their real body. Plus, the parts are removable with velcro, so the kids can take them off and play with them. 

 We made people puppets to go along with the body theme. 

 This is Sam. He has been helping us learn about the body. 

 We used Sam's skeletal system to learn about bones. His bones are removable, which makes him fun and interactive! 

The kids did a great job of placing Sam's organs properly! You can even see his brain on top of his skull. 

January

I apologize for completely neglecting the blog during the month of January! Despite the fact that the weather is terribly cold and we just had a busy holiday season, January is actually a very busy month for preschool teachers. This is when we start getting ready for next year. Next year! Enrollment for preschool and elementary school is now open, so I would appreciate you telling your friends about our programs. 

I did take a lot of pictures over the past few weeks, so here we go:

Celebrating Epiphany with the 3 Wise Men

 Matching and folding socks

 Building towers

 Matching upper and lower case letters

 Sorting objects by determining their initial sound

 Making snowmen with Model Magic

 Penguins + Insta Snow!

 Matching mittens and clipping them on the clothesline

 Painting with ice and powdered tempera

 Winter counting books

 Making hibernation books

 Painting with cool colors

 Pastor Kinne and Ladel came by for a visit. Pastor read Are You My Mother? in the silliest voices!

 Ladel dropped by on her own later that week, and she inspired our little artists to draw some portraits. We also practiced writing her name. 

 Using Wikki Sticks to make letters

 We went snowing during Lutheran Schools Week.  Boy, was it windy!

 Practicing one-to-one correspondence

 Our Christmas Feast/Pajama Day (on January 31)

 This is one of our new favorite activities. These dice have words on each side, and depending on how you roll them, you end up doing some pretty silly things! 

 Snowball fight!

 This is one of my favorite Valentine's Day books:

We made the lion from the front cover on Friday

 We also made Valentines for the church's shut-ins. 

We read this book, which was a nice tie-in.  The characters in the story pass out Valentines to their neighbors, who happen to be sick and elderly. We talked about howValentines, or cards in general, can  make people feel. 

 It was Ladel's birthday this week, so we sang her Happy Birthday and gave her a treat on Friday.

 Matching upper and lowercase letters

Also, this is long overdue on my part, but Mrs. Peterson asked me to post this message of thanks from Christmas:

A special "Thank You" to all for the Christmas gift of the white ramekins and the dark chocolate toffee popcorn. Have not used the ramekins yet, but can tell you that the popcorn is almost gone!

    (I) look forward to the time each Wednesday and Friday when  am helping Lora in the Pre-School, and love each and every one of the children. 

fondly, Jane