O Week

This week with the letter O. . .

We painted the letter O orange. We made an "Ocean O" and an "ostrich o." We ate oranges and carrots (orange foods) and then had oatmeal cream pies for dessert.





Our theme today was Ocean Animals, so we pretended to be different ocean animals. We walked like crabs, leaped like dolphins, chomped like sharks, and had a blast. We did the Fishy Pokey. We also did a parachute activity where we bounced ocean animals on the waves.





We caught fish according to the numbers on them and their color.







We read about Jonah and the Whale, "One Fish, Two Fish," and "Swimmy" by Leo Lionni.
We counted goldfish crackers into muffin cups labeled with numbers 1-5.



We are getting so smart!

N (Better late than never!)

Sorry this post is late, but I thought I'd still put up pictures of what we did at preschool last week with the letter "N."

We made read "On Noah's Ark" by Jan Brett, then painted arks of our own.




Then we matched up our animal crackers and marched the animals into the ark, two by two.





We glued newspaper on the letter N, and made "Nail N" and "night n." We read "The Nose Book" and the kids smelled lots of different things, like mint, mustard, cinnamon, nutmeg, and garlic. We made noodle necklaces, and we used a net to catch numbers.






We played with balloons.



Things were pretty crazy, but I think we had fun!

Marvelous M

I had a blast teaching Preschool this week, and I hope the kids had fun, too. I didn't get a ton of pictures since it was just me, but hopefully the kids can tell you about what we did with these prompts.

We spent the day on the letter M. We made a "macaroni M" for our posters, and a "magnet m" and "mouse M" for our craft letters.





We read "If You Give a Moose a Muffin" and enjoyed muffins and mozzarella cheese sticks for snack time. We marched to music and attempted to dance to the "Macarena" song (from when WE were teenagers!) for exercise time. We built letters and shapes with marshmallows. The kids got really into this-Alice made squares, Katie put marshmallows on each end of her toothpicks, Jeffrey made an L, Nate made kebabs, and they all ate far too many marshmallows.








For math time, we talked about equal and not equal with monkeys, then did "Five Little Monkeys Swinging in a Tree." The kids took turns munching the monkeys with the alligator. For music time, the kids each chose an animal out of a bag and we sang songs about the animals. (I don't think I mentioned, I chose animals as my theme for these 3 weeks.) We did animal puzzles and read "The Mitten" and the kids helped to put the animals in the mitten. We also made mail for missionaries.







The kids were great, and are so much fun to be with. Thanks to all of you for all you do in raising amazing kiddos--I'm glad Nate has such cute little friends. Also, thanks for all the work you've each put into preschool--it is a lot of work, huh?! But worth it!

All about I

Today we learned about the letter I, we did a number review on numbers five through eight, and we talked about our sense of hearing. We started out the day by meeting Itsy Inchworm. We showed him all of the I things we brought today. I think I was a pretty tricky one, but everyone did a really good job! We had an itchy monster, ice cubes, insects, and an igloo. For math graph we did our favorite flavor of ice cream, chocolate or vanilla. Most of us liked vanilla!

Then we started our letter art. Today we made an inchworm and an iguana. We didn't do any poster letters today. Since we got behind I think we're going to do all the poster letters in two weeks when we do our letter review.

After that we talked about our ears and what they do. We made loud noises and soft noises. Then we talked about all the animal noises we know and we pretended to be those animals. The kids were really good at pretending! Even Lillian got in on the fun.

Here Nate is showing us how to be a dinosaur.

Next, we broke out the paints so we could decorate our instruments. Some of the kids were more interested in the water and how it changed colors, and some gave up on the paint brush completely and started in with their hands, but however they did the shakers looked great when they were done!

When we finished that everyone was pretty hungry so we decided what better way to learn about I than to make Ice cream! It was super easy and lots of fun. Unfortunately Deborah and I  were so wrapped up in controlling the shaking that we didn't think to take any pictures until after. The kids had a great time shaking the bag until it got too cold to hold! They had a great time eating it too! I'll put the recipe at the end of this post in case any of you moms would like to try it at home.

We had lots of fun at play time. As you can see they made a great little hide out under Katie's crib. They also did a pretty god job putting together a band. Nate was on the drum, Alice sang, and Olivia played the xylophone.

After that we did our number review. We had pumpkins in a patch with seeds on them. We had to pick the pumpkin, count the seeds and put it in the right basket for the farmer. All of them were able to count all the way to eight with out help. One to one counting was a little harder for some of them, but I think we're coming along great! Then we practiced counting little pumpkins, but they weren't all that interested so it didn't last very long :)

By then our plates were dry so we put together our shakers. Unfortunately I should have bought bigger beans! We had a spill before we even started then as we tried to play them while we sang songs beans were flying everywhere! Jeffery kept playing his with his head and every time he would hit his head with beans would fly out the top. It was great fun lol!
We didn't have as much time to talk about loud and soft as I would've liked. I wanted to talk about the places we go and how we should talk in those different places. So if you have a chance this week talk about it some more. Maybe we'll be able to quiet sacrament down a little. We can hope right?

Next week we'll talk about the letter J, the number 9 and our sense of smell. See you all then!

ICE CREAM RECIPE

• 1 tablespoon sugar
• 1/2 cup milk or half & half
• 1/4 teaspoon vanilla
• 6 tablespoons rock salt
• 1 pint-size plastic food storage bag (e.g., Ziploc) 
• 1 gallon-size plastic food storage bag
• Ice cubes 

1. Fill the large bag half full of ice, and add the rock salt. Seal the bag.
2. Put milk, vanilla, and sugar into the small bag, and seal it.
3. Place the small bag inside the large one, and seal it again carefully.
4. Shake until the mixture is ice cream, which takes about 5 minutes.
5. Wipe off the top of the small bag, then open it carefully. Enjoy!

 It only took us about 2 minutes for it to be pretty solid, and we made two doubled recipes so everyone would get a small scoop.