Halloween Progressive Dinner

This past Friday we had a Halloween Progressive Dinner. All the kids wore costumes and it was darling. Our husbands came too! What a treat!

 We started at Fischer's house where Katie served cute appetizer's. Mummy dogs were so yummy.

The kids even sat and posed for a picture! 

Say Cheese Doc!!

 Then we came to the Hazen's household and had snake sandwiches and mummy pizzas.

Look at how cute these two are, Woody is giving his Ladybug a drink!

 Batman.....I mean Buzz.....

Lastly finished up at the Burden's with a fire and smores! The best part, we never had to drive, the kids loved walking from house to house to go play. We made sure each house was clean and toys picked up before we left. It was a great night!

CJ really loved those Smores! Watch out for your fingers Katie! 

Buzz Light Year with his glow stick!

A ladybug and a pirate, perfect match!

Belle made sure everyone had fun at the ball!

A Little of This, a Little of That

I've decided I like review weeks. At first I was intimidated to plan two mornings full of activities that would keep the kids engaged without a lot of help from the curriculum. But it turns out these are great weeks to do more hands-on stuff than we normally have time for. And the kids seemed to really enjoy it.

We started today with the calendar (they all know it's October, finally!) and we read the story of Moses crossing the red sea again. Then we moved right on to an activity to practice counting. I found this idea on Pinterest, and it proved to be very challenging for our kids...I think this is definitely one to come back to periodically.

I put a bunch of Duplo Blocks in a container in the center of the table, and each student got a paper with a graph of sorts on it.

The kids were instructed to build "towers" to represent each number on the paper.

 

 

Look at that focus!

 

Nice work Jack!

 

 

After some serious coaxing (it was apparently more fun to make one giant tower than to make a bunch of small ones), they all got it.

 

Then we moved on to a science experiment. I put a giant tub of water in the middle of the table, and passed around a container full of random objects. The kids had to choose an object and decide if it would sink or float. As they made their predictions, they dropped the item in the water.

 

Jack picked the apple first. Everyone was surprised that it floated!

 

 

Annabelle tried to sink her pom-pom.

 

 

It was so funny to watch them carefully place their items in the water as if trying to will them to float...especially the spoon and the rock!

 

Next we read "Little Blue Truck Leads the Way" while we had our snack...I thought it kind of went along with Moses leading his people out of Egypt...ok, it's a bit of a stretch!

 

Next we made some handprint trees as part of our secret ongoing project :)

 

 

 

 

Even CJ got in on this one!

 

It's a masterpiece!

 

 

To wrap up the morning, we played a letter review game on the back patio. I drew giant letters (capital and lowercase A-E) in circles with chalk. I gave each kiddo a bean bag, and they had to throw the bean bags into the correct circle as I called out letters. It took them a minute to get warmed up, but they soon got competitive!

 

 

 

Everyone stayed for lunch today (I love days like that!) so the kids and the moms got to hang out and socialize a bit after school was done. What a great morning!

 

 

See you next week!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Has It REALLY Been Nine Weeks??

Time is zipping by. It's hard to believe we have been at this preschool thing for nine weeks already. I feel so unbelievbaly blessed to have a group of mommies and kiddos to "do school" with. It has made this journey SO fun. And I think the kids are really getting a lot out of it. The moms stay motivated, and each week the lessons are full of great learning opportunities for the kids. We are LUCKY!

So week 9 is a review week. I offered to plan this week's lessons so I could try out some of the cool ideas I've found on Pinterest!

We started by reviewing the story of Moses crossing the Red Sea. I read the story out of The Jesus Storybook Bible...this is my absolute FAVORITE kids Bible. The three year-olds were riveted. And the stories are longer than the usual kids Bibles I've seen...anyway, I digress. Check it out if you can.

Then I told the story again using the felt board.

 

We also sang our memory verse from last week (Philippians 4:19 to the tune of London Bridge). I think the kids are gonna need some more work on that one :)

 

After Bible time we sat in a circle to play "Pass the Letters". It works kind of like "Hot Potato". I put the capital and lowercase tactile letters we've worked on so far in a bag, and we passed the bag while singing the following song:

 

Pass the Letters

Tune: The Muffin Man

 

Oh, look who has the letter bag,

the letter bag, the letter bag.

Oh, look who has the letter bag,

Now please take a letter!

 

Whoever has the bag when the song stops takes out a letter and tells the group what letter it is, and whether it's capital or lowercase.

 

 

 

They did great once they started to get the concept of actually PASSING the bag! We did discover that lowercase "b's" and "d's" are very tricky :)

 

Next we played a little game using some dominoes. I pulled out all the dominoes in our set that contained numbers 0-5 (I didn't want to confuse them with too many dots). Each child got 4 dominoes in a bag. I asked them to look at their dominoes and listen as I called out a number. If they had a domino with the correct number of dots on it, they were to hold it up in the air. It worked pretty well...they difinitely had to concentrate!

 

 

 

 

I decided to throw in a little science today too. I made up some "experiment bags" for the kids. Each bag contained magnetic, and non-magnetic items. Then I gave each child a magnet and they had to decide which items would stick, and which ones would not. It was a hit!

 

 

 

 

 

We wrapped up the morning with a quick game of Colorama. We love this game! It's great for the 3-year old crowd because they don't get too frustrated. It's fast moving, and it was great for reviewing colors and shapes.

 

 

See you all Thursday!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Week 9 Lesson Plan

Week 9 - October 22-26
	DAY 1: Introduce	DAY 2: Recognize	DAY 3: Identify
Bible Story	Crossing the Red Sea (flannel pg 55)	Tell story using flannel. Kids take turns putting pieces up.	Review Story - Kids take turns telling it alone while putting up pieces.
Verse	Philippians 4:19 Tune: London Bridges	Review Verse	Kids recite without adults.
Song	He's Got the Whole World in His Hands (100 Hymns - Disc 2 #2)	Review Song	Kids sing without adults.
Poem & Rhyme	Jack & Jill	Review Poem	Kids recite without adults.
Book of the Week	none	none	none
Craft
Number	Review Numbers with Dominnoes	lego graph
Letters	Letter Bag/Letter Pass	Fish for letters in name
Snack	No Bake Cookies	Letter/Number/Shape Cookies
Game	Colorama	Uno Junior
Fine Motor Skills	Science: Is it Magnetic?	play dough - roll snakes and make letters and numbers discussed so far.
Gross Motor Skills	Hop to chalk letters/numbers	Make letters with bodies
Other

Moses and the Blue Cool Whip Sea!

Week 8 October 15 Moses and the Blue Cool Whip Sea!

The kids listened to the story of Moses crossing the Red Sea and were probably a little confused as to why it wasn't red. They learned a new song this week, "Pharaoh, Pharaoh," and took some time getting used to it.

Moses Crossing the Blue Cool Whip Sea with grahams and frosting was a hit. Noah needed to eat it with a spoon, geez! Who's kid is that! Jack wasn't going to let a spoon slow him down, he loved it!

We then all went outside for an obstacle course. The kids loved running around and through everything and luckily, no injuries!

 The second day of the week began with creating monsters. The kids got to choose 4 colors and create their own monster by blowing with the straw. We quickly learned that the fancy straws made it difficult, so we switched to the simple straight straw.

Eisley and Annabelle did a great job and created really cute monsters!

Say cheese, with halloween approaching, these cute smiles were a hit. Apples, peanut butter and marsh mellows, can't go wrong!

Elephant handprints for the letter E. Addison did a great job keeping her hand very still while it was painted with grey paint. 

Jack's finished product, I was really proud of the kids. They colored and added all the parts themselves. Good job kids!

Our field trip this month was to Gilcrease Orchard. The kids enjoyed walking through the orchard and picking their pumpkins. The best part, was the end, where we all got to enjoy apple cider donuts! We even got little Gus in the picture, how awesome is that! 

CJ was so sweet and shared his wagon with Noah and Juliette. 

The best part, was the end, where we all got to enjoy apple cider donuts!