Letter S- Squares, Soap Experiments, and Sharing!

One of the art project we did was square art pictures for our alphabet book.  We worked on our cutting skills but cutting squares from strips of paper.  We then glued them onto our papers.  They had a very mosaic look, and they turned out great.

We did a few puppet shows with the great puppets we had made the week before.

We made friendship bracelets.  Each child was given a bag of one color of beads.  They were told they could make a bracelet with just one color or they could share their beads with each other and make bracelets with all different colors.  We talked about how sharing can be fun and make things better, like a more color bracelet.

Some of the quieter kids did not choose to share that much, but the point is that they are practicing communicating with one another.

We love doing show and tell and talking to our friends about what we brought to show them.

We did a soap experiment where we put black pepper flakes in water.  We dropped a little bit of dish soap onto the pepper flakes and watch the pepper move quickly to the sides of the dish.  We talked about why this happens.  Adding soap to the water causes the surface tension of the water to be lowered and the water wants to spread out. The pepper is then carried to the outer edge of the plate as if by magic.

We did another soap experiment where we put a bar of Ivory soap into the microwave and saw what happened.  The soap expanded into a large mass.  This is because Ivory soap has a lot of whipped air inside and when it is heated up, the water and air inside vaporize and cause the soap to expand.    Pretty Cool!

We played with play dough and made letter S's and snakes.

We have been working hard writing letters and drawing pictures in our notebooks.  We drew pictures of something that we like to share with our friends.

We each pulled an S action word out of a bag and then did the action together.

These are some of the fun Letter-S action words that we did!

We played with a parachute and each took turns going under the parachute one at a time.

We sang the song "Sharing, Sharing is so fun to do, you give some of yours to me and I'll give some to you"  to the tune of Row Row Your Boat.

We did a sharing activity with packaging peanuts and toothpicks.  Some of the kids got a bad of  packaging peanuts and some got a bag of just toothpicks.  They were told to try to build something with just what they had.  After a few seconds of trying to build something, I suggested they share what they had with their friends.  Once they shared their toothpicks and packaging peanuts with each other, they were able to build something.  This was a lot like our marshmallow men activity, we just focused it more on sharing.

Letter M- Marbles, ME! and Music

We worked on so much this first week of preschool and we had so much fun!  Thank you for letting your child come and play and work with us at preschool.  It is truly enjoyable to have them here!

We made some very beautiful marble paintings.  

We learned how to put the marbles in the paint and spoon them out onto our boards.  We discovered that when we rolled our marbles around, the paints mixed and created other colors.  Red and blue make purple,  blue and yellow make green and yellow and red make orange.

It was quite enjoyable for the kids to create artwork by rolling marbles around in paint.  Each painting was unique and beautiful.  These paintings are going to go in our Alphabet books that we will be making and compiling throughout the school year and we will all get ours at the end of the school year.

We worked on puzzles and the letter names and sounds.  We are all working on putting our work back onto the shelves after we are finished.

This activity is sensory matching.  The children matched the sounds of containers when shaken.  They shake one container and then find the container that has the matching sound when shaken.     The balloons are also sensory matchers.  The balloons have different substances in them like flour, beans, rice, noodles etc.  They have to feel the balloons to find the matching textures.


We used magnifying glasses to discover insects and all the different kinds.

We worked with magnets, discovering what magnets stick to and what they don't.

We worked on shape block patterns.

One of our favorite things to do in Preschool is scooping, measuring and pouring. We are learning measurement and cooking skills and also cooperation with our friends as we take turns using tools.  We also learned how a funnel is very useful for helping us get our materials into a small mouth container. 

We made letter M's out of our pretzel snacks. Yummmmmm

One of the books we read this week was "I like Myself"  by Karen Beaumont.  It's a cute book about a little girl who likes herself no matter how silly she might look.  

We also read "All By Myself"  By Aliki and "If You Give a Moose a Muffin"  by Laura Joffe Numeroff  and "Stand Tall Molly Lou Melon"  by Patty Lovell

We have been working so hard on writing the letter M, learning the M sound and also drawing pictures in our notebooks. We each drew a self portrait of ourselves.

We sang "Monkey in the Middle"  The monkey in the middle dances while the other kids sing the song.

Working on our marble paintings.

Working on more puzzles.

Working on our number recognition.

We played musical chairs.  Instead of one of the children getting "Out"  we played a version where they crammed onto the chairs instead.  This helped them to make friends and laugh and have fun.

Here we are drawing and writing and practicing our writing skills in our notebooks.

We traced ourselves and decorated our giant self posters.  We worked so hard on making our posters look like ourselves.  All the kids were encouraged to draw things that they like such as football or princesses.   We hung up the posters and looked at how different all of them were.  We talked about how each one of us is different on the outside and we might like different things, but we are all the same on the inside.  We all have bones and blood and we all feed sad sometimes, or tired or scared.  We also all can feel happy and friendly and be good friends to one another.

We get plenty of opportunities to cut paper and make crafts.

 We had a few puppet shows on how it's important to obey the rules.  The kids are doing a great job and obeying the preschool rules and listening to what they are supposed to be doing!

We acted out the nursery rhyme,  Little Miss Muffet.  One of the children pretended to be Little Miss Muffet as she sat on her tuffet.  One (or two) of  the other children acted as the spider and sat down beside her and frightened Miss Muffet away.  The children laughed and squealed through this process.  They did such a great job acting!

We all really enjoyed building our marshmallow castles.  Some of us built marshmallow men too!

One of our activities during circle time was to circle the Letter M in words that were written on the board.  We are learning to recognize the sounds of the letters in words.

We enjoy creating shapes with the velcro sticks.  These sticks can be made easily with popsicle sticks and some sticky back velcro circles.   They are a great activity for anytime and anywhere if you ever want to make some at home for your child.

We built marble mazes and engineered some of our own marble ramps.  I had these handy dandy corner braces from some packaging and they worked perfectly for our experiment.  We worked so hard to get our marble all the way across the room with the ramps.

We made music with musical instruments and we sang "Three Blind Mice"  and "The Muffin Man"  we turned on a CD of music and shook our shakers to the beat of the music.

We worked really hard on our puppets.  We practiced cutting and gluing and designing our creations.

We read a map of the backyard to find a treasure.   We followed each part of the map and even went down the slide on our adventure.  We found the treasure and shared our prize.

We made some lovely ME Puppets.  The children were instructed to make their puppet look like themselves.  Each puppet turned out unique and fun!  I love seeing the kids be creative.  The puppets are drying over this weekend and we will use them next week for a puppet show before they are sent home.  To help your child's literacy skills even more at home try to take the time to help your child create a puppet show.  Write down the puppet show that you create together and then replay it!