Last week of April...

Rain, rain go away... come again after we dry out!!!
Between the rain and the wind I'm beginning to feel that either I need to get going and build my "ark" or I just may blow to "Oz".  I know we haven't had it nearly as bad as all the people who are experiencing all the tornadoes... so I probably shouldn't complain... but I so want my yard to dry out so we can play on the grass and on the playground.  The children are getting antsy... very antsy... to play on the playground. Our property slopes to the backyard playground so we have a very muddy situation back there...  :(

This week we finally got preschool in all five days.  We worked on the letter Ww this week.  The children enjoyed the Ww activities we did.  Below is our letter book and some pages we did from Confessions of a Homeschooler that we used for some of our letter Ww activities.

We talked about the concept of long and short.  We used several objects, including ourselves, to determine what was long and what was short.  We then categorized strips of paper into two groups... long or short.

 We also did an activity sheet in which we colored the long item.

 We also did this long and short activity sheet.

 This week we were introduced to the number 14.  We did a lot of counting and the following activity paper.

You can get this one here.

And we reviewed the numbers 9 - 14 using a page I created.  You can download it here.

We completed our bird theme this week. 
We talked about owls and made two owls.  A paper bag owl and we waterpainted an owl.

We talked about the flamingo.  They enjoyed trying to sleep on one leg and try to scoop some shrimp with our imaginary beak... we found our necks weren't long enough!  We also talked about the parts of the flamingo that were long.  We then fingerpainted a flamingo.

We had to talk about our countries bird... the bald eagle.  We made a bald eagle with paper pieces and our hands.

And our last bird we talked about was the ostrich.  We learned a fingerplay about the ostrich and colored an ostrich.

We also through in a bird patterning paper for some more concept practice.

We also played with some floor puzzles this week as our cooperative activity.  I placed the children in groups and they had to work together to make the puzzle.

Hope you enjoyed our week.

Third Week of April

I thought this week we would get on track and get a lot done... but it didn't happen.  My youngest son, age 9, was hit in the head at a batting cage with a 50 mph ball.  When he arrived home with my older boys that took him, I almost burst into tears.  The helmet helped some... but the ball caught him just above the eyebrow and just under the lip of the helmet.  I took Monday off... closed the daycare... to make sure he was ok, got to his doctor as the ER wanted us to, and just relaxed with him.  He missed two days of school as his eye swelled so bad he couldn't see very well out of it.  Lucky for all of us... he is fine, perfectly fine.  Just a scare and so thankful because it could have been much worse.

Tuesday I opened the daycare back up.  This week went from a four day week to a three day week due to me closing on Monday.  I decided to do less curriculum and more arts and crafts for Easter.  The children were very happy with this decision and got more playtime than they typically get.  Always a bonus with children!!!  And we even had one sunny day... we have been having lots of rain and dreary where I live in Ohio.

This week we were introduced to the number 13.  These larger numbers are very difficult for some of the little ones in my group.  We did a lot of counting and making sets and completed the following activity papers... a counting and tracing page.

Our Easter projects consisted of...

I saw this on a blog and decided to give it a try (can't remember what blog I saw this on... sorry!).  We used coffee filters, washable markers, and a water bottle.  First we cut the filter to look like an egg (I did this for the children), then we drew on the egg with our markers, and then we sprayed them with water.  They look really nice hanging on our daycare window but I forgot to take a picture. 

We then made these adorable paper plate bunnies in which I inserted a picture of them to the middle of the bunny.  It takes two plates to make.  You cut out the middle of the first plate and you make the ears and bow tie out of the second.  I let them use their crayons to color the bow tie and the ears.  We put it together and glued cotton balls down.  I inserted a picture of their face and they colored the nose pink and made some whiskers.  Someone on one of my child care provider lists sent this in and I just loved the idea so we had to give it a try.

We put together a bunny puzzle.

We made an egg collage.  We took eggs and did a little coloring with crayons and used our dot markers to fill in the egg which turned out like a crayon resist.  We cut out the eggs and glued them onto a piece of construction paper.

We matched and colored Easter eggs.

We did a cut and paste Easter egg and basket which was good for them because they need practice cutting things that aren't a straight line.

We found hidden Easter eggs... or the oval shape.

We counted dots on eggs and put them on the number that corresponds with the correct number of dots.

And we waterpainted an Easter egg.  One of my children missed learning time so I decided to waterpaint with the children.  One of my little darlings said, "Miss Rose, you paint so nice.  That's why I want to be a teacher just like you.  So I can be just like you."  He has told me often he wants to be a teacher... it makes me feel so good inside... must be doing something right with him!

Thank you for taking the time to read about our week.  Hope you all have a very Happy Easter!

Second week of April...

This week we did learning time four out of the five days. The children needed a day to play, run, be outdoors, and make noise. They all benefited from being outdoors... I did too! I love "home" or family child care for that reason... we can make our schedules flexible to meet the needs of the children.

This week we learned the letter Vv.

We had fun learning about Vv and the sound of Vv. Each week we do a "letter movement" that I have taken from the "Hooked on Phonics" program and incorporated it into my curriculum. This week was V for van.

 We say the letter... "V"

We say the letter picture... "van" as we place our hands on our imaginary steering wheel

We say the letter sound... "/v/ /v/ /v/ as we pretend to steer our van

Being that I have 5 boys and 1 girl this weeks letter movement was a hit! Even the girl enjoyed it.

We continued with our letter books and did the Letter Vv Book this week. I've posted pictures of the book below.
We learned the numerals 11 and 12 this week.
This week we were counting sets of 11 and 12 and tracing the numbers.  We did a lot of counting and we also completed the following activity papers for counting/tracing.  I had the children use dot markers to help them count as some have a hard time counting the larger sets.

We also did some more counting pages that you can find here.



We learned about heavy and light.

This week we pulled out the balance scale and predicted how it would work and how it measures things.  I had several objects placed on the table that we talked about and put on the balance scale to see what would happen and if our predictions were correct.  The children then went through the daycare room looking for two toys they wanted to put on the balance scale.  They had to make predictions as to what would happen and then see if their prediction was right.  I also had to emphasize a lot that we had to pick things that would fit on the balance scale... a very hard concept for them!

And then we did an activity paper in which they had to decide if it were a heavy item or a light item and which side of the balance scale it belonged.

We continued on with our bird theme this week.

We talked a lot about the development of an egg with both a bird and a chick this week.  We sequenced the development and colored a bird hatching.

We also talked about how animals can be born from an egg and how animals can be born alive.  This was a little tricky until they realized that animals born alive have hair.  We did the following sorting activity.

We talked about where a bird will lay her eggs and why.  We had fun making a nest.  We colored a nest template brown and then glued crinkle strips to make the nest.

We also talked about the different kinds of food birds eat.  The children seemed to know a lot about this.  We made cheerio bird feeders using chenille wire and stringing cheerios.  I saw this on a few blogs but can't remember which ones... sorry, I just love looking at every one's ideas and gaining new ones for my program. The children just loved this and are so excited about feeding the birds... only wish the birds could be as excited!  :( 

We talked about the smallest bird... the hummingbird and learned all about it.  The children were very interested in how quick the bird is for his tiny size.  We made darting hummingbirds by coloring in an outline of the bird, putting some red glitter on the throat area and stapled to a drinking straw.  Very fun to dart around the room.

Our last bird for the week was the woodpecker.  The children actually knew quite a bit of information on this bird.  They had fun playing and watching the friction bird I made that I got the idea from here. You will need to watch the video to see how it works.  I've also included the template of the woodpecker I used that I got from http://www.clipartof.com/ and you can get it here.  Below is a picture of mine and it in use with some of the children.  This was easy for some and hard for others but eveyone had fun with it.

Lastly, we made a woodpecker everyone could make peck easily.  We colored a woodpecker template, made a tree with a half sheet of brown construction paper and colored holes black and made some brown lines to resemble a tree, and used a brad to put them together so the bird pecks.

I took some photo's of the children enjoying themselves outdoors.  I think getting children outdoors is so very important and we go outside at least once, if not, twice a day.

I hope you have enjoyed our week as much as I enjoyed sharing it with you!