We had a wonderful week talking about space, making rockets and reading space stories. As the end of the year approaches, we are beginning to wrap things up. Can you believe there are only 5 weeks left of Funtime for this year? Time has gone so quickly...
As I was observing the kids in the dragonfly class play this morning, I was on the verge of tears remembering how much smaller they were at the beginning of the year. It's always amazing to me to see how much these little monkeys grow and change in 9 months. Of course, some of these kiddos have been with me since they were 2 and I cannot believe they will be in kindergarten in the fall!
One of their favorite questions to ask during circle time right now is "Ms. Lisa, when is graduation?" or "Ms. Lisa, when do we graduate?" I always politely answer the question, but each time my heart breaks just a little... it's such a bittersweet time for me. I get so much joy out of seeing these kiddos grow and I am so proud of them! But at the same time, I sure will miss their sweet smiling faces at Funtime in the fall! -SIGH-

At least I will have my wonderful little caterpillars and butterflies for one more year! It truly fills my bucket to watch these kiddos learn and enjoy preschool!

SPACE! What a fun theme! We started it last week with our earth day project where we made a picture of the earth from space. This week, we talked about what space meant, what was in space and how people got to space.

Monday, the dragonflies worked so hard on math and writing that we did not have time for our craft. I am so proud of how hard they are working to learn to write their names, alphabet letters and numbers.

Tuesday the caterpillars and butterflies made a rocket ship blasting off into space or sideways into space. :-) (remember, it's about the process - not the product) The kids had a great time gluing the rocket ship on their piece of space and then decorating the space with stickers. The butterflies were making theirs blast off once they were done decorating them. The butterflies worked some more on letter recognition. We have implemented a new folder system with them, when they are done with a project or worksheet, they file it in their folder. I implemented this for a number of reasons, a) we do not have enough cubbies for all the children, b) it helps with name recognition and c) it sets the framework for next year when they are in the dragonfly class, where we use this system all year.  The kiddos really took to it and some of them have started coloring pictures during free play just so they can file it!

Wednesday I began our end of the year assessments with the dragonfly class. We had 3 different learning centers, writing, math and art. The writing and math center were teacher centered, with Ms. Sedeane working on handwriting with the kids and Ms. Holly playing number bingo with them. The art center was child centered, the kids were all given instructions before we began. I was working with kiddos one on one doing assessments. I was so proud of the kids! We broke them up into 3 groups and spent 10 or so minutes at each station. They all did a great job and I was especially proud of how they handled themselves at the art center with no teacher. They did exactly what they were instructed to do and they even helped each other out and worked together.

Thursday was gym day. The caterpillars said they wanted to play red light, green light, but when it came down to it, they just wanted to run! We tried red light, green light... when they light turned red, there was no stopping them. So we just raced back and forth.
The butterflies were much the same way. I don't know if it was the hot weather, the phase of the moon or what... but all they wanted to do was run. We talked about a few games to play before we hit the gym, once there though, the  kids just ran and ran and ran. Ms. Sedeane decided to get the tunnels out for the kids to crawl through, they enjoyed that, but after a while the kids began to run and run. If only I had a speck of their energy.... :-)

Friday the dragonflies worked hard on a review of the letters X, Z and K. Then we had fun doing a circuit in the gym. Ms. Sedeane got out the basketballs for a dribbling station, soccer balls and a goal for a soccer station, hockey sticks and balls to practice shooting into the goal, field goal posts and footballs to practice throwing and a wiffle ball game. The kids had a lot of fun moving from station to station and practicing the skills.

First week of a new session

We have some new faces at Funtime - Welcome!

We managed to squeeze in a ton of fun into this short week!

On Tuesday and Wednesday, we planted sweet pea and marigold seeds into small pots. With regular water and a little sunshine, the kids should soon see sprouts poking out of the top of the soil. The dragonfly class (MWF 9:30-12) worked on writing the letter W and the butterflies (T, TH 10:15-12:15) worked on letter recognition.

Thursday was gym day and the caterpillars (T, TH 9-10) had a great time playing duck duck goose and red light, green light! The butterflies ran out some energy and then we played a quick game of 4 corners. The butterflies worked on recognizing the letter Bb and had time to paint an earth for earth day. We squirted some green and blue paint onto the back of a paper plate, the kids turned it over onto the paper and spun the plate to mix the paint together. The effect was a green and blue circle that looked like the earth from space. What fun!

Friday was gym day for the dragonflies and they had fun running races with Ms. Sedeane! Man, they are fast little monkeys... They practiced writing the letter Xx and worked on number recognition. The dragonflies also made the earth from space pictures using the same technique.

A little late... session wrap up!

As a new session begins today... I realize I have not updated the blog in a couple of weeks. With the onset of lacrosse season and my in grad school - time seems to fly by that much faster! My apologies for not getting this updated!

We have done so many fun things over the last 2 weeks. We used popcorn to make the flowers on the trees - they looked just like the ones we have been seeing around town. We glued feathers onto chicks hatching out of eggs. We played games and had fun in the gym. And of course worked on handwriting, math, letter and number recognition.

Last week, we celebrated the end of a session with Pajama and movie day. The kids had so much fun showing off their PJ's! We snuggled up on the carpet and the Dragonflies and Butterflies watched Puss in Boots. The Caterpillars watched part of The Winnie the Pooh Heffalump movie. We had popcorn and treats while we watched. It was a great way to end the session.

The Dragonflies worked on Handwriting and math on Monday and the Butterflies worked on letter and number recoginition on Tuesday.

Funtime this week

Monday the dragonflies had so much making lady bugs. We read the story The Very Lazy Ladybug. The kids used their fingers to add spots to the ladybugs wings and Ms. Sedeane and I put a brad into the wings so they would move. Ask the kids about the Lazy ladybug. We practiced number recognition as a whole group and worked on the letter Rr. The kids are doing so well with their handwriting, I am so proud of them!

Tuesday, we read  The Very Lazy Ladybug to the caterpillars and butterflies. They  made the same ladybug craft, instead of painting spots on their ladybug, they used round stickers to create the spots. It was so fun to watch them, some kids put their stickers all in a row, some scattered them and still others only used on color of stickers.

Wednesday we read The Very Hungry Caterpillar and made coffee filter butterflies, that we finished up on Friday. We continued to work on handwriting, letter, and number recognition.

Thursday was gym day. The caterpillars enjoyed playing duck, duck, goose. They are so fun to watch - they run in the biggest circle possible and forget to sit down - cracks me up! The butterflies attempted to play hot potato... but unfortunately we were having trouble using our listening ears and keeping our hands to ourselves, so gym time got cut a little short. We headed back to class, had some quiet time and a little chat about behavior.

Friday was gym day for the dragonflies. We had a ton of fun playing 4 corners and red light, green light. We had so much fun playing in the gym that we ran out of time for math. Luckily we had practiced hand writing before heading to the gym.
Please continue to work on letter and number recognition at home. We work on it everyday in class, but it is important that they practice at home as well, in order to be ready for kindergarten, they need to be able to recognize all the letters of the alphabet and their numbers up to 10!

Next week, our theme is Easter.