Things That GO!

This week is all about things that go! 

Puzzles on the Move - I searched through my puzzles and found all the transportation ones.  The kiddos enjoyed them.

 

Clothes Pin Airplanes - I hot glued these little airplanes together and the kiddos painted them today.  The hard bit was waiting for the paint to dry so they could fly them.  So in my afternoon class we used water colors, which dried much more quickly.

I saw this cute plane idea on this website.

Boarding Passes - I found a download-able boarding pass online (sorry, I don't have the address).  The kiddos enjoyed stamping them before hoping on our Preschool Airlines.  We set up our chairs in airplane fashion and then taking turns as pilots we flew to lots of different locations.  (California, Mexico, Home Depot, Michigan...)

 

 Additional Tickets - Last year I bought this roll of carnival tickets to have on hand for these sorts of activities.  Since I had only printed one boarding pass per kiddo, we needed new tickets each time we went on a new flight.  So the kiddo hopped off the plane and pulled off a ticket (or two), stamped it, and then hopped back on the plane.  So fun!

Paper Airplanes - You gotta fly a bunch of these ...

 

The "tail" end of 3 Little Pigs week

Science - Blow It Down! - We built some pig house and then experimented to see which ones we could blow over and which ones the wolf (blow dryer) could. 

Straw Houses - We discovered that our straw houses were not very stable and that we could easily blow them over. 

 We decided a straw house would not make a good home.

 Stick Houses - Next we built stick houses.  We tried blowing these over with our own breath, and we couldn't!  But the "wolf" (blow dryer) did a great job.  It would scoot the house across the table!  Still not a very good home.

Brick Houses - Next we built our brick houses with Legos.  The kiddos got right to building and then blowing their houses.  No luck!  And when we tried the "wolf" it couldn't either!  If the kiddos had built a tall house, then the "wolf" could knock it over, but it was still all intact!  Now we have found a good, safe home!

Piggy Plates - These turned out really cute!  Ha!  I love how the various pig parts end up here and there!  For instance the triangles next to their pig's nose are the ears.  Ha!

Balloon Pigs - I let the kiddos draw pig faces on their balloon with a sharpie.  Risky, I know, but we only ended up with a marker dot on one kiddos nose.  Ha ha!  Don't know how he did that!

 

Cutting Practice -  Utilizing my paper scraps from scrapbooking, the kiddos get to practice cutting.  I always set out envelopes for the kiddos to take their bits home in.

Learning Station - Block Stack

Today we were building and counting.  The kiddos rolled the dice, counted the dots and then added that many blocks to the tower.  If their tower fell over, shout "Drat!" and then start again.  -  This went along nicely with our 3 Little Pigs theme.

The 3 Little Pigs - Week

This week we are learning with "The Three Little Pigs".  I love doing a themed week with a book!  Here are some of the activities we are doing this week...

Circle Time - We read a couple different versions of "The Three Little Pigs", I'm hoping to do some acting out later in the week.

Textured Art Activity - The kiddos created the three little pig's houses from the same building materials, well, nearly!  We used straw, sticks and sand paper (bricks).

Snack -  We ate all the fixin' for the 3 little pig's houses.
Straw:  shredded wheat
sticks:  carrot sticks
bricks:  cheeze-its

Pigge Noses - These are cute, but the plates are a bit big. I think the next time I do this, I will find something smaller.  But they were cute!

 

3 Little Pig Book - The kiddos got to make their very own piggie book.  I cut straw, sticks and bricks for them to use, they got to create the rest.

 I uses 3 X 5 cards to create the pages for the kiddo's books.  Just a quick staple on the side with some scrapbooking tape over top.

 Here are the bits I cut for their pig house.

I found a pig stamp in my farm Stampin' Up kit for the kiddos to use.

 Here they are a few pages being created...

 This kiddos loved gluing the bricks in, so he glued 3 or 4 pages of just bricks, ha!

Pig Nose - I found these at our party store!  They are pretty cute on the kiddos.  Now I just need to find a wolf nose!

Edible Stick Houses - Yummers!  Today for snack we made pretzel houses, they were tasty!  The white goo is almond bark, so as we munched it began to set up nicely and allow our stick houses to stand up.

 

Learning Station - Pancake Letters

To add to our 3 Little Pigs week, we read:




Which was fun because it gave us an excuse to make and eat pancakes today (see recipe in prior post).

For this learning station, I cut out brown circles and wrote letters on them.  Then I called out a letter and the kiddo found and flipped over that pancake, using the spatula.  One kiddo who knows his letters told me what the letter was and then flipped it over.

I think this would have been cute to have made the pancakes from craft foam.  Also words would be another great thing to put on the pancakes.

Pink Piggie Pancakes

Here is my family's favorite from scratch pancakes.  We made them piggie pancakes by adding pink food coloring and chocolate chip eyes.

Stir together:
2 cups flour
3 TBS sugar
5 tsp baking powder
1 tsp salt

In another bowl, stir together:
2 eggs
2 cups milk
1/3 cup vegetable oil
1 tsp vanilla

Mix the two bowls together, stirring with a whisk to get all the lumps out.  Then cook on a griddle at about 275 degrees.  Enjoy!

Puzzles

I love puzzles.  When the kiddos have finished their snack, I have them pull out a puzzle until everyone has finished, then we move together to another activity.  At first many of my fours were not sure how to do puzzles, so we sat on the floor together and worked through several.  This is our fourth week of preschool and they are doing a great job at putting them together themselves.

The puzzle above is a tricky one.  I had it on the bottom of the stack, but once found, the kiddos have loved it.  This puzzle requires my assistance for sure.  I don't know what they love about it, but it gets pulled out each day and used.

I like to let the puzzle work go on for a bit because I feel that it teaches great skills, such as:  patience, perseverance, team work, problem solving....  And I don't want puzzle play to become a forgotten art in this fast paced world of ours.

Learning Station - Straw Count

The kiddos rolled the die, counted the number of dots, and then counted out that many straws as they pushed them into play dough.  The sand timer is there to help them stay at the center until they have worked on it for several minutes.

Recipe - Kool-Aid Play Dough

Fabulously soft homemade play dough...

Kool-Aid Play Dough

Stir together:
2 1/2 cups flour
2 packages Kool-Aid
1/2 cup salt
1 TBS alum

Then add and stir again:
2 TBS oil

Carefully pour in:
2 cups boiling water

Stir and stir until mixed into a dough.  Sprinkle some flour on a surface and knead the play dough, adding more flour until the dough is no longer sticky.  Enjoy!

Arrr! Some more pirate booty!

Egg Carton Pirate Ships - Every good pirate needs his own sailing vessel!  So today we made these fabulous pirate ships!  I saw the idea on this blog.

For pirates I rummaged around in my craft bin and found these wooden craft sticks (from Michael's).  The kiddos painted their sails and their pirates.  They turned out pretty cute!

 

One of the kiddos even brought his ship outside when we dug for treasure.  It was a great place to put the gold coins.  I also loved how he stuck his little pirates in the sand to help dig!

 

Learning Station - Pattern Making with Duplos

For today's learning station we were working with pattern making.  I put together 3 different patterns using Duplo blocks.  The idea was that the kiddos would mimic my patterns by creating their own matching tower.   But instead they each (separately) added onto my pattern.  Ha.  That was totally fine, it was still pattern practice.

Car Mat

This car mat is one of the staples of the preschool.  It gets pulled out every day.  Along with it I have a large bin of cars.  I found this mat many years ago at a garage sale, so a great find!

Learning Station - Clothes Pin Names

Learning Station - Today's learning station helped the kiddos work on their names and letter recognition.  They each have a card with their name on it.  They were to then find the clothes pins with the correct letters for their name and clip them below the matching letter.