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!

Third Week of March...

It was a tough week! On Monday morning I realized I forgot to pay for my son's room online for him. He is externing in Pittsburg in the culinary arts field. My hubby played with the kids while I raced to my computer to pay for his room. Well the online pay feature wouldn't work, and wouldn't work, and wouldn't work. So I grabbed my phone (landline) to call the place and make the payment over the phone. So glad I did because that is when I discovered I had no phone! Regulations require a landline phone so it became priority number one. I figured the problem had to be around the desks with computers... we had moved both over the weekend to clean the carpet. After two hours of sorting through many wires I figured out the problem... hooked the fax to the wrong hook-up on the back of the printer. Grrrrrr! Two hours... it's always something so simple but takes forever to figure it out. All was good again... room was paid and phone was again working. Needless to say, most of the morning was gone and I decided to take the kids outdoors to play instead of trying to get through our learning time. So again, we had a shorter week than normal...and after our rough start on Monday it just didn't seem to be a week that flowed very well... but lucky for us we are ahead so it wasn't a big deal.

This week I decided not to start another letter and use the week to review what we've learned so far. We played several letter recognition games and did the following matching activity papers from Childcareland (some of her daily learning sheets).





We didn't do as much as I would have liked to do with our weather book... but we did complete page 6 with six umbrellas. We talked about lightening and thunder. We demonstrated lightening with a balloon and rubbing it on hair and looking at the sparks (didn't work out so well... we could hear the sparks but we couldn't see them even in a darkened room) and talked about thunder and what happens to make that loud sound. We popped a paper lunch bag to demonstrate the rushing air bumping into other air and the noise it made. The kids (I have mostly boys) really liked this because they had no idea what to expect. As a matter of fact, they are still talking about it. How funny! Here is our page six.


We also heard the story, "The Mouse and the Thunderstorm" with felt pieces. I forgot to take a picture. And we waterpainted an umbrella but again I forgot to take a picture. Like I said... just off this week!

We painted a thunderstorm. We also learned that white and black paint make gray and painted a large storm cloud. We then added a bolt of lightening.





We talked about how we wear different clothes for different weather and the reasons why we do this. Then we did a matching clothing to the appropriate weather.


Lastly, we talked about our favorite kind of weather and drew a picture of it. Here are the pictures the children drew. I think my favorite part is listening to them explain their picture to me!







We also did a lot of St. Patrick's Day activities. We made a shamrock person and a leprechaun.



And we did many concept review activities. Many of these activities came from Preschool Palace (the free printables holiday section).









We also had many opportunities this week for play and getting outdoors. So happy the weather has been pretty nice this week... and warmer. A double treat!!! We couldn't not do something else with the balloon we used for our lightening learning... so we put it to good use playing balloon volleyball. They thought this was the BOMB!!! The pictures aren't the greatest and I could have never captured the excitement in the room with a snap of a picture. Even my daughter joined in the fun (she's 18 by the way)!



Hope you enjoyed our week and hope you will stop by next week to see what we have been up to.