Preschool: Apples

Who knew you could fill a whole week of preschool activities with just the theme of apples. McCall loved it and we did so many fun things.

• We listened to a story about apples on the computer.
• We cut an apple in half and got all the seeds out of one apple and counted them. Our one apple had 9 seeds!
• We had lots of apples for a snack throughout the week.
• McCall used a half of an apple to do some paint stamping.
• She torn up little pieces of paper to make a red, yellow, and green apple.
• She sorted uppercase A apples and lowercase a apples into baskets. Then she counted how many apples of each color she had.
• I created an apple obstacle course with chalk. First, she had to jump on and count the different colors of apples. Then she had to hop on the letters to spell apple and say each letter as she jumped on them.
• We learned about the life cycle of an apple, and she did the sequence by herself.
• She colored an apple tree and used red paint and her finger to put lots of apples in her tree.
• We measured around apples to see how big they were.
• We walked to Nona and Pop's house to see their apple tree.
• She traced the word apple in uppercase and lowercase letters.
• She looked at patterns of different colored apples to try and figure out what color apple came next in the pattern.
• She painted with apple slices.
• She glued on apple jacks to make apple jack apples.
• We taste tested a green, yellow, and red apple.
• Then to end our fun week, we made an apple pie!

Preschool: Five Senses

 Another great week of preschool exploring our 5 senses:

• Sight: We talked about how our eyes see. We read a book all about colors. McCall blended primary colors together to make secondary colors and painted with a Q-tip. She did a Skittle science experiment to see the colors bleed out to make a rainbow. She went on a color hunt. And she sorted Legos by color into a bar graph and counted how many Legos were of each color.
• Hearing: We talked about how our ears hear. We read some books with sounds especially those of animals sounds. She drew some things that she hears when she goes outside. We took turns closing our eyes and listening to how many times the other person would clap their hands. We played musical instruments.
• Smell: We talked about how our noses smell. We did an art YouTube tutorial of an ice cream cone and used Smelly markers to color with. Then I had her close her eyes and smell different things to see if she could guess what they were. She was disgusted with the smell of apple cider vinegar and had no idea what lemon juice was. She knew the smell of vanilla but couldn't remember what it was called. She called cocoa powder chocolate and knew immediately the smell of peanut butter. She also smelled some playdough before playing with it.
• Feel: We talked about how our hands, and our feet help us feel. She did fingerpainting. We read a big stack of touch and feel books. We both found things in our sensory bin to touch and feel and describe what everything it in felt like. Was it smooth? Rough? Fuzzy? And then she felt and played with slime.
• Taste: We talked about how our mouths, particularly our tongues, help us taste. We first played with pretend food and counted what we cut up. We read a food book. She drew some of her favorite foods. We tasted some sour, salty, and sweet things. Then we picked some things from the garden.
• We ended with a fun walk around our neighborhood and talked about what we saw (trees, flowers, squirrels, flowers, cars, and houses), hear (cars, birds, and a helicopter), what we could smell (some flower and some smoke), what we could feel (we touched grass, plants, and walnuts), and she even got a treat from Pops and got to taste an otter pop.
  

Preschool: All About Me

 For preschool, I am following the girl's school schedule, so we had Monday off, and then started back on Tuesday with the theme of All About Me. It was a fun week, with our focus all on our favorite little girl.

This week we:

• She drew a picture of all her favorite things: cuddling with Dad, the color blue, riding her bike, her sisters, Paw Patrol, and going over to Nona and Pop's house.
• She sorted beads into different colors, and we talked about what her favorite color was.
• She used ink to make fingerprints to see the different patterns in our fingers.
• She wrote her name small and big.
• She measured different body parts with Legos and counted how many Legos each part was.
• She did a painted hand collage.
• She colored her family.
• She counted her eyes, ears, mouth, legs, fingers, and toes.
• She looked at our family memory books.
• She created a bar graph with her favorite snacks and counted each of them.
• She colored her full body that I traced on a large paper.
• We read books and checked the weather every day.

Preschool: Alphabet

 I started preschool back up with McCall and she LOVES it! Once her sisters were in school, she asked everyday when we were going to do preschool and I finally got it all figure out and up and running. We are doing a theme a week and not very structured but a time set aside for reading, counting, cutting, doing art projects, learning about the world around us, and moving our bodies. I love this one on one time with my little girl.

This first week’s theme was the ALPHABET. We just went over the letters everyday with fun activities. Here are some of the things we did and then you get to enjoy all the fun photos later.

•           Check the weather every day (we will do this every day to start off preschool)
•           Q-tip painting the entire alphabet
•          Letter find
•           Alphabet hopscotch
•          Letter sticker collage
•          Alphabet parking lot (uppercase and lowercase matching)
•           Cutting practice
•           Playdough with letter cookie cutters
  
•           Counted the letters in her name and then used a dot marker to decorate her name
•           Read lots of ABC books
•           Letter monster
•           Nature walk and talked about what we saw and what letter it started with
•          Science watercolor letter find
•          Writing and singing the alphabet
•          Sticky note matching uppercase and lowercase letters
•          Finding all the letters in the sand

It was a great first week of preschool!