Put Me in the Zoo

 Today we read Put Me in the Zoo.  Then we put some dots on our faces with face paint.

The kids loved it!  It was a lot of fun.

Fun With Milk

We have been doing a farm unit this week.  The kids have been loving it.  We talked today about cows and milk!  We used whipping cream to make butter.  We finger painted a cow picture with pudding and we let the kids make a mess with a glass of milk.  Definitely very messy, but oh so fun!  I just hope they don't do it at the dinner table.  The kids loved it!

String Art

Super easy and fun, as long as the kids are willing to get messy!  Take some white glue and water it down a bit.  Have the kids pieces of string into the glue and then use their fingers to squeeze the excess off the string.  Then they can make a picture with the string!  It's fun and easy art!

Rock Pets for Earth Day

We made these cute little guys yesterday.  We celebrated Earth Day yesterday due to an Easter party today.  The kids loved painting them and were so excited to take them  home!

Chick Keepsake

First of all, sorry about the bad picture.  I took it with my cellphone.  I forgot my camera today and I was hurrying quick to catch a picture of these cuties!  I found the template on Kaboose.  They have some great ideas on here for Easter.  I may be doing a few more of their projectes between now and Sunday!

Volcano

I think, this one might be my very favorite page yet.  Although, the W page is going to be way cute too.  And of course, we had to make volcano's out of baking soda and vinegar.  The kids really enjoyed the V week.

T is for......

Turkey!!

Plant a Garden

I'm skipping around a bit.  I have a lot of posts that I would love to do, but I can't seem to keep up with my life!!  Thanks for sticking around even when I only post once a week :). 

It's warm where we live.  We've been in the 70's for the past week.  It's been wonderful.  We've been talking about spring and how things grow.  Last week we planted veggies.  The kids loved it.  The cute planter sticks came from Oriental Trader.

Of course, the on the day we planted veggies, the wind was howling and it was the only cold day in the week.  So we rolled with it and planted inside.  The mess was colossal!!!  But the kids loved it.  In fact the next day we planted flowers, but I don't have any pictures. That was a little crazy!  I just know that I am done with potting soil for a few weeks!

Race Car Painting

 Again, not another new idea, but a fun oldie.  Let the kids paint with matchbox cars and trucks!  It will provide hours of entertainment.  A slightly messy kind of entertainment, but fun anyway!

Toilet Paper Roll Race car

 Do you ever see something and think, "Wow, that's totally cute, I'm so gonna make it!"?  And then you think afterward, "What was I thinking?".  That was totally this craft.  Holy schamolie!! Making these with 18 preschoolers was hard.  I won't lie, it was REALLY hard, but the boys totally loved it!  This one was made by my 6-year-old that night.  He totally loved it, but I had to help even him.

I won't repost it, because the great idea can be found here.

Jello, Salt & Sugar

 Everyday things, found right in your home, make for the best craft supplies.  This was a few months ago.  Tyson needed to decorate a flag for a school project.  I forgot about picking stuff up over the Christmas break and the night before he went back, we were racking our brains to figure out what to do.

We've used Jell-o at preschool before and the kids loved it.  So I broke out the Jell-o and the rock salt.  The Jell-o bled a bit into the rock salt, so we used sugar to put a light coat over the top of the salt.  It looked really cool and it smelled great too!

Restaurant

For R week we had a day where we did one center as Restaurant.  It was so much fun. We made up a menu for the kids and slipped it into a page protector so that the kids could circle what they wanted to have with a dry erase marker.  We had half of the kids be the servers and the other half the customers and then we switched.  We let the servers wear aprons and chef hats, because essentially they were being both!

On our menu we had ritz crackers, vanilla wafers,  marshmallows, licorice, bannana's, cheese sticks, carrot sticks and chocolate chip cookies.  We gave the kids a menue and let them circle what they wanted and while they waited, they colored a placemat at their seat.

It was a lot of fun.  I didn't get many pictures because it was cRaZy!!!  The kids loved it!

Fun with Shaving Cream

This is not a new idea by any means.  It is an oldie, but a goodie.  Kids love to stick their hands in the foamy shaving cream and draw and write.  It's a great way to encourage writing their names.

It is however, soooo messy!  But that is what makes it half the fun!

Plus, my sister swears that it cleans table tops really well!

R is for Rabbitt

Another alphabet page for our book!

It Feels...

This is another 5-senses activity.  We did 10 different materials, ranging from feathers to sandpaper and everything in between.  We had the kids feel each piece of material and then had them glue them onto the hands.  We asked the kids to describe the material and what if felt like to them.  I LOVE the answers that we got from some of the kids.  My own little girl, had some that made me crack up.  The sandpaper felt like Poppa's face, the fake leather felt like a couch and one of them felt like her dog Brody.  It was fun to hear their answers.

Fabric stores are great to look for material for this project.  A remnant can go a long way when your talking about 1 inch pieces.  Also look at the craft supplies and hardware stores.  We used sponges and Brillo pads, the possibilities are endless.

It Smells Like......

I wish I had a better picture to share with  you.  This is another way fun activity that takes A LOT of work, but the kids love it.

The paper says, mmmmmm...smells good!  It has a picture to represent these scents;
cherry, strawberry, tangerine, lime, peppermint, cinnamon, licorice, rootbeer, chocolate, banana, peach, and grape.

We used the candy flavoring oils to make our scents.  What we did was dab a little bit of each scent on a piece of cotton, which we then glued to the paper, next to the picture that represented it. I had the kids smell each cotton ball to try and decide where it went.

The kids loved it.  The only thing about this activity is that you need to stress to the kids, DON'T TOUCH YOUR FACE!  There is alwasy one who doesn't listen and touches their eyes.  It hurts like the dickens when they do it, but you can pretty much expect one of them to do it.

Green Eggs & Ham and Sneetches

Today we ate Green Eggs and Ham.  I thought the kids would enjoy this version a little bit better than real green eggs!  It is a small scoop of lime sherbet with whip cream sprayed around it.  We also gave them vanilla wafers as pretend ham.  They loved it!

 We also had Sam juice. (green kool-aid)

 We watched this video, and made Star Belly sneetches belts.  I just googled star clip art and found a big enough template.  Had the kids color them and then attached them to a strip of poster board that we had cut into strips.  I hole punched to holes in the back and laced them with string to make a tie in the back, that way they could take them on and off.

After our snack of Green Eggs & Ham we sent outside and had Sneetch races.  We had them run, skip, jump and twirl.  It was a lot of fun!

There's a Wocket in my Pocket craft

This is so cute!  I had to hurry and share.  I will also share our Green Eggs and Ham stuff this afternoon if I get a chance.  I cut two pockets out of construction paper and stapled them together.  My kids LOVE to use the stapler, but you could just glue it or use glue dots.  I found the wockets at Southern Plate (the cupcakes are way cute too) and printed them off.  Leave an opening at the bottom of the pocket and attach the wocket to a straw with some tape.  Then the kids can slide the wocket in and out of the pocket.  Add a cute little tag and your done! 

I was having a hard time coming up with an idea for this book.  I saw the wockets and knew I had to make them.  Hope this is helpful to someone!

Happy Birthday Dr. Suess!!

March 2nd is Dr. Suess's birthday!  It makes for a fun week at preschool!  I just wanted to share some great sights, full of great Dr. Suess themed ideas!

Click on the above link to visit ObSEUSSed!  This girl defiently loves her Cat in The Hat!

Visit Oopsey Daisy for a ton of fun party ideas and activities.  These could easily be adapted to a classroom setting.  She also has a fun Dr. Suess Matching game available for a free download!



Fun in First Grade has a bunch of ideas!  These are geared to twoards 1st grad and above, but I was able to get some inspiration and find a few ideas that I could make work for my kiddo's.

2 Teaching Mommies has this huge unit full of fun ideas!

Counting and pattern cards by Our Little Monkeys.

Visit A to Z teacher stuff for loads of ideas. 

Available for all grade levels.

Early moments has some great coloring pages.

Erica Bohrer's First Grade has a great page full of links.

One Extra Degree, has some fun links & ideas!

Oh and visit Seussville. 

Lot's of goodies available here!

If you know of other sights, please share! 

Yummy or Yucky

This is perhaps my favorite day of preschool!

We provide the kids a variety of food and let them taste

it and see if it's yummy or yucky!

This guy gave us some great faces!

Apparently limes are yucky!

This girlie loved everything we gave her.

Every single thing, she did last year to.

He was our only spitter!  It was the cooking chocolate.

We just had a piece of paper that we divided in to two columns.  One side said Yummy and the other said Yucky.  Add some cute clip art and wala, cute, cute take home sheet. I wish I had a scanner, I would scan it for you, but I don't, sorry.  Then we had pictures of the foods that we gave to the kids.  They were color copies that we had pre-cut so that they could just glue them on. 

This is a huge project. It takes a lot of prep on the teachers part and it is time consuming the day of, but so worth it!

Here is the foods that we had for them to try:

Tootsie rolls, marshmallows, pretzel, peanut butter and cheese crackers, salt and vinegar chips, regular potato chips, popcorn, sugar cubes, lemons, limes, bitter chocolate, goldfish, jelly beans, popcorn, pickles, apples, oranges, almonds, Hershey's bar, red licorice and back licorice.  The possibilities are of course endless, but have fun with it.  It is one of the funnest days.