Pre-K Week 25: Love and Valentine's Day

Our 25th week of school this year led up to the Friday of Valentine's Day, so the theme for the week was love. The learning goals were that the students would be able to tell who they loved and who loved them. Right away, the majority of the students were able to give at least a simple answer, such as 'mommy'. Other students even gave very elaborate answers, naming off all their family members. My favorite answer was one student who made sure to include his dog in his list of loved ones.

The letter of the week was Ms. L. 

On Monday, we played a game called Hearts and Circles from 'Early Childhood Themes'. To play this game, I cut out hearts from different colored construction papering I laid down a hula hoop. I spread all the hearts out on a table, then working in groups of three student I called out instructions kind of like twister: "Put the pink heart under the circle", "Put the blue heart beside the circle", "Put the orange heart inside the circle". This was a great game because it helped the kids work on spatial/locational concepts as well as colors. 

The kids also did Love Finger Painting from http://momistabeginnings.com/a-lovely-valentine-miss-mistys-art-class/. I know I've done the same concept of finger-painting over an existing letter or picture, then removing it to have white space, but this was just too cute to pass up. For this, I die-cut the letters L O V E from scrap paper and put them on the paper with sticky tack in the Philadelphia love sign pattern. The students then finger-painted over the whole paper in red, purple, and orange paint. When it was all dry, we peeled off the letters and the kids had adorable pieces of art!!!

On Tuesday, we made Valentine's Day wreaths from the book "Art for All Seasons". For these, the kids just glued love shapes like hearts and the ASL symbol for I Love You on the rim of paper plates, then we hung them from the ceiling for decoration.

The kids also worked on Valentine's Day Preschool Packs from www.homeschoolcreations.net/2012/01/valentines-day-early-learning/.

On Wednesday, the kids made their Valentine's Day cards to their parents (from www.thingstoshareandremember.com/i-love-you-handprints/)We painted their hands pink and pressed them on the inside of a construction paper card in the shape of a heart. When it was dry, the kids glued a heart to the middle of their hands, glued on text that said I Love You, and decorated the outside.

On Thursday we made Paper Plate Valentine Mailboxes from http://centersandcircletime.blogspot.com/2011/02/valentines-fun.html. To do this, we started with a whole paper plate and a half paper plate and the kids painted both of them. When they were dry, we hole-punched holes around the outside and the kids laced the two plates together. I had written all their names out on construction paper and cut out each letter in the shape of a heart, so the kids put their names in order and glued them on the outside of their mailbox. This was such a cute holder for the kids' Valentines on Friday, but it could hardly contain them all! I think next year I will have to so tissue or shoe boxes instead.

For my valentines for the kids, I made these cute Minion Twinkie Valentines from http://www.sassydealz.com/2014/01/despicable-me-youre-one-in-minion.html. 

They were so easy and the kids loved them!

For our Valentine's Day Celebration on Friday, we decorated cookies, passed out valentines, and danced to music to end our week!

Recent Recipes - Doggie Cake, PB Sheet Cake, Football Party Recipes and More

I've been working on trying a few more recipes, and I think I'm doing pretty well! 

Recipe #162 - Sausage Biscuit Bites from PlainChicken. Although I don't have a picture of these scrumptious balls, I can give you my word that they were amazing. A few months ago I fell in love with sausage balls, and this was like a sausage ball baked in a biscuit... I couldn't get enough!

Recipe #163 - Football Cracker and Cheese Plate from babble. For Superbowl night, I made a few football-themed plates, including this cracker and cheese plate. It was cute and yummy :)

Recipe #164 - Football Field Dip Platter from PartyCity. This was my other superbowl plate - A football field dip platter. I just put three dips - queso, salsa, and guac in a 9x12 dish and added lines with ranch (I wanted to use sour cream but didn't have any). The cherry tomatoes on top were like cute little players. 

Recipe #165 - Buffalo Chicken Mac and Cheese  from TheGirlWhoAteEverything. This recipe was so so good and we ended up making it twice (not necessarily because we wanted to... it was left out on accident overnight and it was too good not to replace). We tried it with a little barbeque sauce when we reheated it and it was extra good!

Recipe #166 - Peanut Butter Sheet Cake  from TastyKitchen. This was my first sheet cake that I had ever made, and it might be one of my new favorite cakes! It was so moist and delicious (thanks to all the butter...) and the delicious peanut butter flavor!!  The frosting was more like a glaze or icing, but still yummy.

Recipe #167 - Doggie-Safe Cake from BrownEyedBaker. I saved my best recent recipe for last. Our dog, Lily's birthday was at the end of January. It also happened to be two days after the two-year mark of our adoption of her. We had never celebrated her birthday OR anniversary before, and since this was her 10th birthday we thought it would be the perfect excuse to make up for what we missed! We threw her a little doggie birthday party, where I made this dog and people-friendly cake with nonfat cream cheese frosting. Lily LOVED it! We only gave her a little the first night because she can have a sensitive stomach and we were still concerned about how she would react, but by the next day we realized all seemed good and let her finish it over a few days. Her favorite part was the cream cheese frosting... she was like a little kid licking it off before eating the cake!

My favorite part by far was the photo shoot. Here are some of the best pictures!

This one's one of my favorite! She has crazy eyes :)

"Are you sure I can eat it?"

"OK! I EAT ALL THE CAKE!"

This picture's my favorite because I happened to catch her at just the right time to make it look like she's a crazy mean dog who devoured the cake. Really she took these tiny lady-like bites and licked off all her crumbs and frosting from her mouth before taking the next bite.

Rest of Christmas Gifts - For Friends and Family: Bucket List, Florida Nail Art, Teacher Toolbox, Picture Canvases, Starbucks Gift

I know it's the middle of February, but I still have a few Christmas gifts that I haven't gotten around to posting about yet!

We'll start with my roommate... she's moving away at the end of the school year, so I went with a Florida love theme.

First I made this Florida Bucket List Frame just like the one I made for my brother for Christmas back in 2011 (you can see that post here). Some of the things on the bucket list include Kennedy Space Center, Disney, and wedding crafts!

 

The other thing I made for roomie was this Florida Nail Art inspired by OurMiniFamily.


To make this, I started by painting a plaque. I then traced the shape of Florida onto the wood. I didn't actually make any pen marks on the wood, I just made an indent. Then I nailed in little nails around the shape, and added a heart around West Palm Beach (where roomie is from).

Next I used crochet string around the state between the heart and the outline of the state. Finally, I added a quote:
"Where we love is home - home that our feet may leave, but never our hearts." - Oliver Wendell Holmes
(Sorry I don't have a picture with the quote... it was messier than I would have liked).

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

For my mom, I made this Teacher Toolbox that I had made for myself back in September. I love it so much and it keeps me so organized that I just had to pass it along! Of course, I did it in purple, my mom's favorite color.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

For my dad's Christmas present, I made him this Triathlon Picture Canvas inspired by this picture on tumblr.  To do this, I just used different pictures from his triathlons mixed with photoshop to have them fit into the letters. When I finished all the digital stuff, I sent the finished project to WalMart to have it printed on a canvas (it was on sale that week... I think it was $11 for the 11x8 canvas!)

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

For my brother and his new wife, I used their wedding pictures to make a few things. 

First, I put together all of the pictures from their wedding, including pictures and videos from all the guests, the professional pictures, and my pictures, with music on a Wedding Picture DVD. Picture DVDs are one of my favorite gifts to make, and I might over-use them :-/ 

I also made them a First Dance Lyrics Canvas, inspired by this picture on blogspot. To do this, I just used one of their beautiful professional pictures and photoshopped in the lyrics to their first dance song - 'Home' by Phillip Phillips. I really like how this turned out!  

 -----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The final gift that I have yet to post about is this Starbucks Hot Cocoa Gift from SaucySprinkles. To do this, I put a Starbucks gift card inside a Starbucks cold cup with brown and white tissue paper made to look like coffee with whipped cream. I also added red tinsel to look like a cherry. I packaged it together with three hot chocolate mixes.  This was for my classroom assistant.

PreK Week 23 - Around the World

This week in Pre-K we had an 'Around the World' theme, ending with learning about China on Friday, which was Chinese New Years.

 We also tied in Ms. j from the letter people curriculum; she talks about different sounds. How did I tie in sounds and around the world you ask? I talked about how people all talk, but we speak in different languages in different parts of the world. We then learned how to say 'hello' in a different language each day.

 On Monday, I introduced the concept of the world and different places in the world instead of focusing on one country. The kids did two art projects that day.

First, they made these adorable Cereal Box Suitcases from Pinterest. It was a lot of work on my part getting all the paper cut to the right size, but the kids had fun gluing down the paper and stamping them. I added Velcro to the top so it can stay closed and the kids can actually put their projects from this week in it to take home.

 The kids also made 3D salt maps of the world from www.notimeforflascards.com/2011/05/salt-map.html. To do this, I just printed a simple globe on a piece of blue paper and quickly shade the land forms green so the kids would know where to put their salt mixture. I also backed the paper on leftover cereal boxes to make it stronger. The mixture was a simple mix of flour, water, salt, and food coloring mixture, and the exact recipe is on notimeforflashcards. The kids used paintbrushes and I showed them how to dab it on to make it really thick.  

 On Tuesday, we talked about Africa. We learned how to say hello, 'Jambo', which was convenient because it's a J word and we were talking about J all week. I read a book called 'Honey Honey Badger' which took place in the jungles of Africa. We happened to be able to watch a movie later in the day, so of course it was a perfect time to play 'The Lion King'. 

We made two projects, including colorful paper plate masks from "Art for All Seasons" and we beaded colorful necklaces as well.  

 On Wednesday, we talked about France and learned how to say 'Bonjour'. There wasn't much I could really tell about France, so I told the kids there's a lot of cool buildings, and they eat a lot of bread. I think that prey much sums it up! :)

We read 'Madeline', and I pointed out all of the landmarks in the book including the Eiffel Tower, the Arc de Triomphe, and the Notre Dame. I also showed the kids pictures of me in Paris in front of these same monuments so they could get a better understanding of how real they are and how large they are.

For our projects that day, the kids colored a Paper City Paris from . 

They also did Eiffel Towr Tape Painting, which I can't find the source to. All I did was put down scotch tape on pieces of white construction paper in a shape slightly resembling the Eiffel Tower. The kids painted over the tape and when it was dry we peeled it off. They loved it and I think turned out really cute. They loved pointing out that the eiffel tower looks like an A. 

 On Thursday, we talked about Italy. I read the book, 'Gaspard on Vacation' about a dog that goes to Venice with his family. The kids liked seeing the canals instead of roads. I also talked about how Italy is known for pizza and pasta.

The kids got to make their own pizzas in the toaster oven from English muffins, sauce, cheese, and pepperonis... Then we ate them for snack! 

Before they made the pizzas, I read the book, 'Pete's a Pizza', which is a cute story about a little boy whose parents try to cheer him up by making him into a pizza.  

 The kids also made their own Italian flag by color sorting on a piece of construction paper. 

 Finally, on Friday, we talked about China to celebrate the Chinese New Year. I read the story 'Tikki Tikki Timbo', and the kids made their own Chinese Dragon puppets from krokotak.com/2012/01/idea-za-godinata-an-drakona. 

They also did a Chinese anew a year preK pack from royalbaloo.com/downloads3/Chinese-new-year-packs/.

Overall, it was a very busy week but it was fun to teach about all the different places in the world!

This was our finished bulletin board: 

PreK Week 22 - 100th Day and Opposites

Week 22 was a short week that had the 100th day of school in it. During this week, we talked about opposites with the letter O. We read opposite books like "Go Dog, Go" and practiced matching our opposites with the Apple app: 'Opposites 1'. The kids were really good at knowing their opposites! 

Thursday was the 100th day of school, so we did a few things with the number 100. Our overall learning goal was that the kids would be able to recognize and name the number 100. 

The kids decorated the number 100 with 100 stickers. They also glued the number 100 down on a piece of paper and decorated it.
We also took 100th day of school pictures with the frame I used at the beginning of school.

Finally, my favorite thing we did all day was take pictures of the kids with the AgingBooth app on the iPad, and turn them all into 100 years old. The kids loved how silly they looked, and some of them were just too hilarious!!! We hung them up in a mini-display in the hallway and we get lots of compliments.

Pre-K Week 20: New Year

The first week back from winter break was one that we focused on the New Year celebrations. We worked really hard on recognizing and saying the year when asked, 'What year is it? (Which is very difficult for pre-kers to do). 

It was a short week and a lot of it was spent reviewing procedures, but we did do a few cute activities. 

First we decorated the number 2014, which the kids had a lot of fun doing. We used stickers, dot paint, markers, and some glitter.

We also made noisemakers from the book, 'Art for All Seasons'. We made these by attaching a small square of wax paper to the end of a toilet paper roll with a rubber band. I hole-punched two holes in the side of the toilet paper roll, then the kids decorated the with stickers and markers.

The noisemakers worked by the kids humming in them, kind of like a kazoo. The sound changed when they put their fingers over one or both of the holes. 

The final project we did was these hand New Year resolutions from www.freekidscrafts.com/handprint-new-year39s-resolution/. For these, we traced the kids hands and cut them out, then figured out what their new years resolution would be and wrote it on the hand. I printed off the cute poem from freekidscrafts and displayed it outside. 

This was our simple New Year's display: