Apples, Colors and Circles

    The books we read over the past two weeks included The Pig Who Ran a Red Light, Ten Apples Up on Top and My Rotten Redheaded Older Brother. We explored the letter Aa through different magnetic and textured versions as well as creating the letter A with a partner using our arms and legs. We sang songs about apples, including 5 Red Apples.

    We enjoyed dancing and playing our instruments along with songs about apples, rain and more. We had several days of extended play, including a very tricky case in capturing Sally the jewelry thief. The case involved A as police chief, E as the investigator, Princess Fiona and the beautiful police officer Kristin. Chain link traps and toy obstacle courses led to the eventual capture of S as Sally. Puzzles and empty containers were turned into computers and all of the children were involved in the case. This type of imaginative play teaches a variety of skills in an authentic situation.Other activities included the following.

In art, we explored the colors red and green. We also looked at real apples and the variety of colors found on a single apple. These are squish art apples, which are created by folding the two sides together after placing paint dots on the paper.

     We also painted with an apple in a type of marble art. This idea is included in the curriculum from Preschool Palace.

    Other worksheets and projects from the curriculum included a color red book and a Ten Apples Up on Top hat.

We enjoyed using our Do-A-Dot markers with the following worksheet from Making Learning Fun.

Our light table activities included color sorting with our large collapsing circles from Learning Resources.

     Other math activities included using manipulatives to build towers and matching numbers to their index card.

     Sensory activities included finding the red circles and our favorite shaving cream. We also used the red circles during circle time for hiding, counting, learning about spatial concepts such as above, beside and behind and musical spots. We also found items that matched the red circles from around the room.

    During the week, we also had a piñata party with wise owl this week for all of my kindergarten and preschool students. We talked about being readers, writers, scientists and more after successfully completing our first week of school. We used the apple tree outside, a rope, bandanna and a shorter PVC pipe as our stick. Here is a photo of the owl after the fun.

     We also had a school-age sleepover party during these past two weeks. We enjoyed making Alka-Seltzer rockets, Mentos geysers and playing group games like freeze tag and Night at the Museum.

 
    We are moving on to the letter Bb. During our walk at the end of the week, we looked for the letter Bb in signs along with the colors red and green. We drew pictures of what we saw on our walk.

    I will leave you with photos of a bird that was created by one of my school-age children. The bird actually glided when thrown. We will continue our look at the letter Bb along with the colors, shapes and numbers during the next two weeks.

A is for Apple and All About Me

   This week marked the return of our preschool schedule. Our calendar area and schedule were updated as we welcomed the return of favorites like circle time.

 

    The books we focused on included The Apple Pie Tree by Zoe Hall and What's Inside Miss Molly's Locket by Louise Croft. The second book is a gift I received from my amazing mentor for my college coursework. We will be revisiting these books next week as we expand on some of the themes presented. For this week, we looked at the life cycle of an apple tree and how each one of the children are unique with different skills and interests. The children shared some of their favorite activities and things they do well.

    Our table activities included worksheets from the curriculum I purchased from Preschool Palace. This week, I placed the worksheets in sheet protectors to add to our dry-erase writing center.

     Our art activities included painting with apples from the backyard tree, making a torn paper apple and drawing an apple. We also had a great time sharing our handprints with our "friendship art."

    For sensory and science, we searched for letters in noodles and compared apple slices that had been coated in lemon juice compared to those that were not.

   We had the opportunity to eat Gala and Granny Smith apples with caramel and decide which type of apple we liked better. We also referred to our apple chart to explore color as well as our own uniqueness.

    Other activities included a look at circles by playing with our Connect Four game and exploring color with the light table.

    We enjoyed the following video as we looked at the life cycle of the apple tree and look forward to continuing our unit next week.

Camping Activities and End of Summer Fun

    At the end of August, we took a look at some of our favorite camping activities. We began with building a camp fire craft with some odds and ends I had left from previous curriculum kits. You will notice that some of the children added some roasting sticks as well.

    Other art projects included nature art with natural materials, construction paper and clear contact paper along with sticker art, cutting out photos of camping food from flyers for our paper plates and printing with manipulatives. We also made slime again with equal parts of liquid starch and Elmer's glue.

 

 

    We made a solar oven for s'mores and shook up our own ice cream.

 

      The children also worked together as they chalked each brick of the fire circle in the back yard. The results were beautiful.

    We ended up having high temperatures for our last week and had a short-notice opportunity to visit a farmyard. We spent the end of our time there in the air-conditioned bounce area.

    We enjoyed our last weeks of summer as the children created plays, worked together on projects and enjoyed water play during our hot week. We were also able to enjoy the sunflowers we planted as they opened up for us. I am ending this post with a look at our flowers.