Saturday, March 26, 2011

Fourth Week of March...

Another week... I'm glad to say my plate is feeling a little lighter! I have my assessments done but I held off giving them out because conferences would have been tough this week, so next week they will be out. And I'm done with my dreaded taxes!!! Finished up last night. I don't know about other home daycare providers but this is the one area I have the greatest challenge keeping up with. I have to be with the children all day (10 to 11 hours a day) and quiet time is devoted to daily sheets for the parents and getting some of my planning done. Something has got to give though because every January I'm faced with twelve file folders full of sign in/out sheets, receipts, sticky notes, copies of payements, etc that take hours and hours and hours to go through and input on my computer. I even purchased "Minute Menu" to do my bookwork on... thinking it had to be easier than my spreadsheets and then I could keep up... NOT! I am planning to get caught up with this year this coming week and try to close out each week. We shall see what happens...

This week we worked on Letter Tt. As I have been doing all year... we completed a Letter Tt Book. Here it is.







We also continued with our Weather Books this week.

We began with page seven... seven snowflakes. We talked all about snow while creating this page.



We did a science experiment to simulate frost. We took a can and filled it in layers with rock salt and ice and observed the can. Here are a few pictures of our can.



We made a frost picture by coloring and pasting a snowman on purple paper and then using epsom salt and a water mixture (half and half) we painted over our picture. They turned out great but a photo didn't do it justice.


We also decided which things were needed to make the snowman.


Used the process of elimination to know which snowman Marty made.


And tried to draw the missing things on the snowman.




Page 8 was mittens. We talked about when we would wear mittens and the difference between mittens and gloves.


We did a mitten number recognition and counting paper.


A mitten match.


And things we'd wear in the winter.


We also found two things that are the same.


Page 9 was leaves.
We talked about how the wind can move leaves as we completed this page.



We did the poem... Leaves.


Leaves are floating sofly down

They make a carpet on the ground

When swish! The wind comes whirling by

And sends them dancing to the sky

And we experimented with air. I filled a balloon and let it go. Of course, it buzzed all over the room and the children screamed with glee! We had to do it numerous times and each time was like the first!

We tried to blow different toys in the room. We even called in buddies to help when we couldn't do it ourselves. We found that the heavier an object was the harder it was to get it to move.





And we made pinwheels. We couldn't get them to work very well while blowing so we brought out the hair dryer and put it on a cool setting and boy did they spin! The children really loved these!


And we finished our last page... the number 10 page with 10 kites.


We traced diamonds... the shape of some kites.


We pasted kite tails on kites and colored.


And we drew the missing things on the kites.


We also had a song that went with this book. It went to the tune... We Wish You A Merry Christmas

Oh, here on the number one page, oh here on the number one page, oh here on the number one page we see one big sun.

Oh, here on the number two page, oh here on the number two page, oh here on the number two page we see two sun hats.

And it continues with:

three fluffy clouds, four warm sweaters, five raindrops, six umbrella, seven snowflakes, eight mittens, nine floating leaves, and ten flying kites.

Lastly, we talked about near and far this week.
We moved objects near someone and far from someone. We moved objects near to an object and then far from an object.


We did an activity sheet on near and far.



Hope you enjoyed our week!

3 comments:

  1. tax time for childcare providers is the talk with the net work of providers i know . we all hate it . say each year we going to keep up am going until hum march ,may if lucky and then .
    i use minute menu and it great to record all income and it great if i used it better for exspends and miles and time share . so stick with it .
    ABCJESSHOUSE

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  2. ABCJESSHOUSE...I have been using Minute Menu the last four years. I like the program and my tax preparer loves it. She almost is ready to purchase it for all her providers (she does many)just because of the ease of the forms and getting the info into the tax form. I most likely will stick with it... hopefully this year will be the year I can keep up!

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