H is for Happy Haunted Halloween

For Halloween in Preschool everyone was invited to dress up.

We started out introducing the letter Hh by painting some haunted houses with water colors.

Then on the black paper we added some spooky ghosts.

For our snack we made Haunted Houses

Or Gingerbread Houses made out of chocolate gram crackers.

I gave each person their own bowl of frosting.

Not economical, but more sanitary :).

This was great for their imaginations and fine motor skills!

And they surprisingly didn't eat very much candy,

well at least at school!

They all turned out fantastic,

M. was really proud of her house.

For Math we did a witches brew and sorted and counted our candies. We used monster fangs (candy corn), baby ghosts (mini marshmallows), and pumpkins (candy pumpkins) to sort.

We wrote down how many we had on our paper.

Which required lots of help from me, aka no pictures of that part. :)

For music time we read Ghosts in the House

By Kazuno Kohara

It's a non scary haunted house book about a witch who moves into a big house filled with ghosts.

She catches them all, washes them in the laundry, and uses them for curtains, table clothes and blankets.

For the music side of it, I turned on Halloween music and they acted out the book.  Here most of them are hanging their ghosts up to dry.

Then they lined up by the fan and let their ghosts fly through the room.

Happy Halloween everyone!

Community Helpers

Our theme for the week was Community Helpers,

which can be a pretty broad subject!

 It can mean anything from teachers, to firemen, to crossing guards.

It is basically a way to learn about different adults

children interact with,

and how that shapes what occupation

they want to have in the future.

So I love changing up the pointer sticks,

Which we use every morning as part of our circle time routine.

I found this picture on-line and printed it, and glued it to a stick.

It was fun and it changed it up a bit for them.

Day one they all fought over having girls,

because 5 out of 6 of the children in preschool are girls.

So day two I made a three more girls.

We read When I Grow Up,

By Al Yankovic

Weird Al? I know, but this book is really cute.

Its a silly book about all the things Sam could be when he grows up.

I also had a book basket filled with Community Helper books like: A Day in the Life of a Police Officer, a Doctor, a Teacher, a Construction Worker,  and a Vetranarian.

Which they could go and read when they finished their work.

For playtime,

I set up a big Community Helper neighborhood in the back yard.

Here's the construction zone:

Here is the post office:

Here is the Grocery Store:

Which doesn't look like much,

but they had the most fun lining up the play food,

and selling it, and buying it.

And here again is the fire truck

This pretend play was a really effective way for them to practice what they learned.

So even though it was a little time intensive to set up,

they used it for both days, so it was worth it!

For a Community Helper Snack,

You could try this fun idea from a Teaching Heart

For math time we went inside to practice patterning skills.

In the past I have been a little apprehensive about pattern worksheets, but this one was very engaging and cute.

{And super effective.}

This Police printable comes from Homeschool Creations,

and it is part of a whole pack!



Princess Week Wrap-up

We had a fun time having princess fun during princess week!

To finish up the week,

we headed over to the library for their Princesses and Pirates day.

It was so fun!

Everyone was invited to dress up,

so you better believe we did!

So here are some of my favorite princess posts from people I follow:

 Inspirations Surrounds always comes up with great ideas!

This time she had her children decorating princess dresses made out of play dough.

I can't even stand how much fun this looks.

The next rainy day we are totally doing this!

Go here to see how she did it.

I thought this idea from the Tutuzone was a fun one.

They used a sucker to create a fairy princess.

What a fun idea, we have all made ghosts out of suckers,

But a fairy princess would be so much more fun!

This idea is from Come Together Kids

She came up with this fun idea and created it before they went to see the movie Mirror Mirror.



The idea is that kids look at their reflection and see the crown upon their head.

This would also be a great way to talk about self worth.

Go here to see the great DIY.

This idea is from Casa Camacho

This is a really cute blog that I just started following.

She has lots of fun craft ideas, as well as practical home management ideas and printables.

Here she had a princess muffin tin tea party.

She had things like: Unicorn Calzones, and a Fruit Wand.

Go here to see the details.

Princess Week Ideas

We jumped into Princess Week early

Here are some of the fun things we did this week!

We started by talking about being a princess for a day...

Aka getting married!

We talked about how fun it is to get married,

and about how important it is!

Why not right?

Have you noticed how more and more people choose not to get married? 

I decided to keep stressing the importance of it to her, starting when she is young.

We watched my wedding video, and read a book about my wedding.

Then we made princess cup cakes.

We flipped over a cup cake pulled out the frosting, and got decorating.

It was a fun way to talk about the importance of getting married!

Next, we played Disney on Ice.

We froze some princess figurines,

And put a cookie sheet with water in the freezer.

It was a great outside activity.

To make the "ice skating rink" pink,

I just mixed some tempera paint in, and added glitter on top.

To easily get the princess ice cubes out of the tray,

I dipped the bottom of the muffin tin

into some hot water in the sink for a couple of seconds.

After they were finished playing,

I just popped everything back into the freezer,

And on the next hot day we'll pull it back out!

Thanks to Time for Play for this great activity!

Happy Princess Week!

Here are some of our other princess ideas from our unit last year:

Create Your Own Princess

Where I gave her card board cutouts,

and lots of fun materials, and she made her own princess.

I can't wait to do this again,

to see what she comes up with now!

Let them Eat Cake

We learned about Marie Antoinette,

and made and decorated a cake.



J is for Jelly Beans

Did you know that next week is National Princess Week?

We are busy around here getting all of our ideas ready!

Although we know it is a marketing scheme, we still love princesses,

and are excited to spend a week on that theme.

Meanwhile,

Here is what we did at Preschool today.

We learned all about the letter Jj,

and we focused our day around jelly beans.

This is actually the PERFECT time to learn about the letter Jj,

because all of the Jelly beans are 50-70% off at the stores.

During circle time we used our jelly bean pointers,

to work on our learning mats.

We read My "Jj" book by Jane Belk Moncure.

'

I love these books!

They are so vintage,

I was thrilled when I found the WHOLE set at my thrift store.

In the book little "J" finds things that start with the letter J,

and puts them in his box,

and often he jumped over his box while he did it.

We held the things that started with Jj and jumped over our box too.  Then in our journals we wrote down words that start with the letter Jj.

Next we had fun with Jelly beans.

Our current Math unit is to learn about patterns.

I was delighted to find this printable!

The children had a blast extending the patterns.

And making their own patterns too.

We also sorted our jelly beans,

cause why not!

I found this printable here (as part of a jellybean kit)

We used milk jug lids to match the circles.

I've been saving them up for months!!

Then it was time for snack.

I made an Amish eggless sugar dough recipe, found here.

I rolled out the dough and cut out the letter Jj.

Then I had them use....you guessed it...jelly beans

to make a pattern on their letter Jj.

Yum and fun!

The ended up throwing away most of their jelly beans.

Your welcome Mr. Dentist.

Last but not least we learned the rhyme, Jack be nimble.

I put a real candle stick down,

and they jumped over it while we said the rhyme.

Thanks Preschool Daze for the idea!



Easter Ideas Weekly Wrap-up

I love Easter time!
It is a very reflective time,
and also a wonderful time to spend time with family and friends.
I love all of the fun things to do with children around this time.

Here are some of my favorite ideas
to do with your children around Easter time.
If I would have had more time,
I would have done each and every one of these activities.

These are all from blogs that I read,
and if you don't already, you should consider reading them too!


The first idea is from Inspiration Surrounds,
When I read this idea, I was ticked pink!
Together as a family they made these cute chocolate nests.

Aren't they darling??
Go check out the post found here.
You will not be disappointed!

The next idea comes from Rokabye Butterfly
I fell in love with this blog the moment I read it's name.
She used Easter Eggs to do letter matching,
and counting.

I can't wait to make these for my Easter Quiet Time Box!
Go check out how many things she did with Easter Eggs here.

I love Almost Unschoolers blog!
She is a great homeschooling mom,
who always keeps the right perspective.
Here she did a modified Easter Egg Hunt using candy that she could tie to Bible verses of Christ.

Some of my favorite are Red Vines used for Christ being the vine, or Milky Way because he is the way. 
For all of her sweet ideas go here.

Also, there are beautifully done, new videos, of Christ's last days.


Happy Easter everyone!

Easter Egg Painting

It's so fun to dye Easter Eggs,

but they hardly get eaten (by children).

So we decided to play with our food,

To help encourage everyone to eat hard boiled eggs.

And as always, it was super simple!

We peeled the eggs after they cooled.

They loved doing this!

It was a little tricky for them, but really fun.

Then we used the accessories from our Cootie Game,

and Mr. Potato Head.

Super easy, and 4 out of 6 of them ate their whole egg.

Next, we moved on to Easter Egg Painting

This was our set-up.

First we read The Easter Egg, by Jan Brett

I love this book, it's so sweet!

Its about a little bunny village who paint eggs for the Easter Bunny,

and one little Bunny doesn't know what to paint,

So he goes to help a mother robin whose egg fell out of the tree.

And the broken empty egg from the baby robin,

is the Easter Bunny's favorite egg.

Here's some extra activities from Jan Brett's site for this book.

The children loved painting with Easter Eggs.

All we did was use half of a plastic egg

and dip it into spring colored paint.

I used cardboard boxes that come with case lot sales,

to contain the paint.

Then I cut the dried papers into egg shapes.

I thought they turned out cute!

Here's M.'s Quiet Time Box for Easter

Her favorite part was the Easter Eggs,

A few of them (3) had candy,

and the rest had small toys,

like Cinderella earrings she got from her birthday.

I also found some fun matching sheets

found here and here.

I put them in a sheet protector and had her use a dry erase marker.

Here is a fun Easter snack we did last year,

Bunny Breakfast