Bear Biscuits

This weeks theme is Bears. I thought we would take a break from the fall. So we made our snacks today. Each child got a Pillsbury biscuit to start with. They spread it out on a cookie sheet. Then they got another biscuit that the tore in half. Half was shaped into the head the other half was made into arms and legs. You could also do ears, but with this group it would have been complicated. It would work better with older kids, to do the ears. Once the bears were made I let them sprinkle sugar and cinnamon mixture onto their bears, making them brown in color. I put them in the oven to bake. While they baked we talked about the color brown, letter B, and number 7. We did the usual with these items. We sang 3 brown bears, 3 brown Bears, the mommy cooked with a big brown pot, the daddy's porridge was to hot, the baby always cries a lot, 3 brown bears, to the tune of 3 blind mice. I read Brown Bear, Brown Bear, by Bill Marten Jr. and then A Kiss For Little Bear, by Else Holmelund Minarik. Once we were done reading the bears were ready to come out of the oven. I made a special honey butter spread (1/2 cup butter, 4 tablespoons honey mixed together). I actually spread it on for them, very messy and sticky. After everyone was cleaned up we went outside to play Bear and cave. I pretended to be a cave going on all fours, but feet instead of knees and they crawl under like they are going through a cave. They love it. At the end of our time I pretended to be a bear that was going to eat them up, it is fall and I have to fatten my self up for hibirnation. That was my story. They ran from me screaming M came up with a teleportation system that would let them escape only to be brought to another location with a different type of bear. It was great. I was planning to sing Teddy Bear Teddy Bear, but we rean out of time, maybe tomorrow.

Bears

I thought for a change of pace this week we would work on Bears and other favorite stuffed toys. Today we worked on the color brown. I read the book You're All My Favorites, By Sam McBratney. I highly recommend this book for any family with three children for sure, but it is a good book no matter what. After we read the story we made Bear puppets. I had shapes cut out that we used to make it. I had an example, but they did not have to follow it. We had one large brown circle for the head, 2 small circles for the ears, 2 smaller yet black circles for the eyes, and a black triangle for a nose. We looked at each shape and talked about what shae it was. An after thought would be to talk about the fact that there were 3 different size circles. Next time. Once their bear was made we glued a craft stick to it and we had a puppet. The kids seemed to like it.

More Pumpkins

There sure are a lot of things that you can do with pumpkins. Yesterday we cut out bread in the shape of a pumpkin. I used food coloring and made cream cheese orange. I had the kids spread cream cheese on the bread. Then I had them use 2 raisins for the eyes, a candy corn for a nose, and 5 cheerios for a mouth. They sort of ate it. Routine was a little different.
Today we worked on 6, orange, triangle, and the letter o. We sang the "5 Little Pumpkins"song, I'm a little Pumpkin, and added a new one "Mr. Pumpkin". The words are: Mr. Pumpkin, Mr. Pumpkin, eyes so round, eye so round, Halloween is coming, Halloween is coming, To my town, To my town. To the tune Frere Jacques. Then I read 2 stories. They were Pumpkins, by Melvin and Gilda Berger (M and AP thought the last name was hilarious. AP said mom that's just like Burger King) and Pumpkin Fever, Charan Simon. The second book ended in pumpkin pie which was a great lead into our sense of smell lesson. I had brown circles that I called the pie crust. I put cinnamon and ginger into 5 cups for each child. The spread glue all over their brown circle. I gave them theri spice mixture and had them sprinkle it over the brown circle to make a pumpkin pie. S and AR both tried to eat it. AP thought she would try it too, but quickly decided that she did not like the way cinnamon and ginger taste without anything else. S on the other hand may have eaten the brown circle and all if I had not stopped him. He really liked it. I had them all smell it and told them that it was to smell and not to eat. S asked "eat" and I had to remind him that it was not to eat it was just to smell. Everyone was a little cranky while I let them have free play so I had them catch a "bumble Bee"(we are just pretending) and we sang "I'm bringing home a baby bumblebee". Then we sang a few other songs just to change things up a bit. When they went back to play they seemed to get a long better. AR was the last one left wanting more songs, she loves to have me sing to her, even though I am tone deaf and can't really carry a tune. I still sing to them though.

Pass the Pumpkin

This week we are working on O (for orange), 6, triangle, and the color orange. I read the story Pumpkin Harvest, by Calvin Harris. It summarized a lot of the things we have been talking about such as pumpkins, leaves, scarecrows, and jack-o-lanterns. It was a wonderful way to review things. I went over our new items to work on this week. Some we have done before so even AR knows what a triangle is. "We sang 5 Little Pumpkins", and added a new song "I'm a little Pumpkin" sang to the tune of "I'm a little Tea Pot". The words are: I'm A little pumpkin , orange and round, here is my stem, there is the ground, When I get all cut up, don't you shout, just open me up, and scoop me out! I read another story called "Oh My, Pumpkin Pie!", by Charles Ghigna. It is about all the shapes, colors, and textures pumpkins come in. At the end it has different things you can do with a pumpkin (i.e. roast the seeds, make pie). Then we played a game to help them learn their colors. It is called pass the pumpkin, it was hard for them to understand at first, but they got it in the end. You need a plastic pumpkin with different colored crayons inside. You have them pass the pumpkin until the music stops then they take out the crayon and say what color it is. The game continues. Each time S and AR would get the pumpkin they owuld try to take out a crayon, but were easily reminded to pass it. It was cute. The older 3 helped the younger 2 with the colors. S likes to say the color green, or at least that was the color of the day yesterday. Finally I had printed out coloring pages of a Jack-O-Lantern for each of the kids to color. M loves white pumpkins, so he left his white and colored the sky around it adding a moon. AP tried to copy her big brother, but had a little twist. The other 3 colored all different colors everywhere, very normal for the age they are at.

Scarecrows

So this morning I wasn't really sure what I would do with the kids, we were busy all weekend and I hadn't done any research. After I got all the kids that nap down for their naps, AP and I went out to rake the leaves. As I was raking the leaves I decided that it would be great to have the kids jump in them. I know how my my kids love to do it and we hadn't had the chance yet this year. AP and I raked a big pile into the front yard. As we were finishing up and I was thinking about what we would do, I thought, hey we should make a scare crow with M's old clothes. So I got the stuff out to do that. While I was wrapping rubber bands around the legs and arms of the clothing I was trying to come up with a book and I remember we had a book called, The Little Old Lady Who Was Not Afraid of Anything, by Linda Williams. It has all the parts for a scarecrow in it and in the end is made into a scarecrow. I thought this was the perfect lead into my scarecrow activity. So they ate snack and I read the story. When the story was all over I asked them what we would need to make a scarecrow. AP piped up leaves, G said shoes, M said a shirt and AR said pants. S said something, but I was not exactly sure what it was:0)I told them we had to stay out of the road, I am a bit nervous taking all 5 out there at the same time. They jumped in the leaves. Once they were a bit bored with that we stuffed the shirts and pants with leaves. We put our scarecrows together, we made 2, and I had the kids sit down for the picture. M immediately said can we take them apart. I think they had even more fun taking the leaves out of the scarecrow. Once the scarecrow was empty they all went back to jumping in the leaves with me occasionally reraking them into a pile. They did this for at least 25 minutes and they were all happy. I wrote the blog this way to show how crazy my thought process can be, but it was fun.

5 Little pumpkins

Friday we read the story Halloween Play By Laura Numeroff. I put together a box that has a flap to keep the kiddos from looking into it. In that box I placed items that are around during fall (apple, small gourd that looked like a pumpkin, leaf, acron, and pine cone). I gave the children instructions to keep the items in the box, but they should touch the items. I made sure they knew there was more then one item in the box. I went around the table and allowed them to take their time feeling the items in the box. Once everyone had a turn I had them take turns guessing what was in the box. As they guessed right I pulled the items out. Back track I also told them the items were fall items to help them guess alittle. Everyone seemed to enjoy this activity. We dissussed what each item was, we even found a little worm that had been inside an acron. AR loves acorns, so she talked about the ones she had in her pocket from the park the night before. We talked about orange, 5 (we have been counting in Spanish), P, and the rectangle. We ended with a flannel board song/story of the 5 Little Pumpkins, which they all loved so much we did it twice.

Body awareness

I didn't have a chance to post yesterday. I am the coach of M's soccer team and we have practice on Thursdays, sometimes it gets a little crazy getting all the kids ready and fed. Anyway, we worked on body awareness. I started by having them point to different body part that I know they already know. We sang the song "Head shoulders knees and toes". Then we talked about knuckles and finger prints. I showed the kids where their knuckles are and then we talked about how everyone has different fingerprints. To tie in the pumpkins we were about to create I had them sing "5 Little Pumpkins". I taped a yellow half sheet of paper down for each of them to paint. I explained to them that we would use the orange paint and a paint brush to paint our knuckles. We would then place out knuckles on the paper like you were using a stamp. The older 3 again got it the younger 2 needed help, I expected that. After the had placed a few pumpkins on the paper. I took out the green paint and explained that they would make pumpkin stems with their finger print. It went well overall. The pictures turned out cute. It was a little crazy so I was unable to get pictures. I will post one later today.

Jack-O-Lanterns Part 2

What a beautiful day it turned out to be?! I had other things planned for today, but since it has been cloudy for a few days I thought we would all enjoy the sunshine. We sang 5 Little Pumpkins as well as the Itsy Bitsy Spider. We went over our routine letter, number, shape, and color. I passed out their bags showed them the example of mine. I showed them how to crumple the newspaper and put it into the bags to stuff them. I tied all of them up with a green piece of yarn leaving some bag on top to look like a stem. I put glue in a pie tin in the middle of the table and gave them a Q-tip to dip in the glue , They spread glue onto their shapes that we talked very breifly about. I wish it wasn't so chaotic at times so that I would have more oppertuntity to show them the shapes and talk more about their attributes, but I take what I can get:0) They glued their traingle eyes, rectangle nose, and oval mouth onto their pumpkin bags. The uniqueness shows when they are finished as the eyes are not where they would be on a face, as well as the nose and the mouth. It makes it fun for them to do. The older 3 did have theirs where you would normally put them. I loved to watch them do it. On a side note AR and S were really cute on the way to pick up M. They were pretending to sneeze by saying "achoo" at eachother. They went back and forth for a good 5 minutes and then started to cough and sneeze, in between were fits of laughter. I love watchig the 2 of them grow together. I hope they continue to be as good of friends. At the playground they happily played together almost as if no one else was there. I feel blessed to not only watch my 3 children grow and thrieve, but to also watch S and G. It is sometimes like having a big family, but I get to send 2 home:0)

Part 1 of the Jack- o - Lantern

To start the day off I gave each of the kids a sponge in the shape of the first letter in their name. They all got to look at them. We talked about what letter it was and the fact that it was part of their name. Next I showed them the finished product of what we were making. I explained that we were going to paint the bags orange with our letter sponges. I placed slightly watered down orange tempra paint in 3 pie tins in the middle of the table for them to share. There is something to be said about children who are held back by the fact that they don't like to get paint on their hands. S and G were almost completely clean. My girls were not so clean. AP was putting her sponge in the paint and squeezing it through her hands covering them completely with paint and AR followed suit rather quickly. This was an innocent gesture on their part, I see the error of my ways, but I yelled at them both. It really wasn't worth me yelling about, though I know both of them know how I feel about paint being all over everything and that I prefer for them to not paint themselves (they do it often enough). So today didn't go as well as I planned it to go. We finished painting the bags. I was hoping, while we read the story The Littlest Pumpkin and talked about out P, 5, Orange, and rectangle, that the paint would have dried on their bags, but it didn't. No biggie there we will finish it tomorrow. The story was about 18 pumpkins at a pumpkin stand. One was hoping to be picked and turned into a Jack - o - Lantern. I asked if they knew what a Jack - o - Lantern was. I explained it to them as a pumpkin with a face carved in it. I know there is much more behind it then that (including that it was originally not a pumpkin at all), but for little kid sake I just used that as a way to explain it. Tomorrow we will finish making our Paper bag Jack-O-Lanterns. I will have pictures of the finished product then.

Kids in the kitchen

P, 5, orange, oh my, along with a little pumpkin pie! Today we worked on the letter P, number 5, the color orange, and the rectangular shape. We counted to five and reviewed the Spanish word for orange, which reminds me that I should count with them in Spanish too (mental note for tomorrow). We sang the "p" sound song. Then I read the story Piggie Pie!, by Margie Palatini. I love this story and so does M. Our book, though it is only 4 years old looks tattered and worn. I love this book, because it lends itself to great animation when read out loud. Even S was able to last through this book and it takes about 10 minutes to read. We talked about how the pigs dressed up to trick the witch named Gritch. We also discussed what would happen at the end, but you will have to read the book to find out:0) Next we read Dora's Perfect Pumpkin, by Kirsten Larsen. This is a book about Dora and Boots finding the perfect pumpkin for Abulea to make a pumpkin pie. We talked about the fact that pumpkins are orange. It also has red tomatoes and yellow peppers, so we had to talk about that too. It is always good to practice our color words. Finally we did the best part of today for me and for the kids. We made pumpkin pudding. It takes vanilla pudding, pumpkin, and cinnamon. I passed out a bowl and a spoon to each child. I gave them strict instruction to make sure they waited for all the directions (in kiddie language of course). I told them that each of them would get to put 3?4 of a cup of pudding into their bowl. That would be 3 scoops, becasue we were using a measuring cup that was 1/4 of a cup (alittle math even if they are young), then they would put 2 tsp. of pumpkin, and finally 1/8 tsp. of cinnamon. I told them that while everyone was getting their ingrediants in that they needed to wait until everyone had theirs. Finally they were all able to mix it up. I hleped S first since he is the youngest, then I went to Anya and then to Grace. This gave them time to try to mis it up themselves. Then I finished it for them. It might have been a surprise if they didn't have it mixed all the way and they got a bunch of pumpkin or cinnamon. S didn't care for the pudding all that much. M had it gone in a flash, say it has pumpkin in it and he is there. G took awhile to eat hers, but she seemed to really enjoy it. AP tried dipping pretzels in it, but left many uneaten pretzels, so I would say she didn't like it. AR was just happy to do it all. I tasted it and thought it was good. If you are doing with with more then one kid you just want to really stress the directions, going over them before you give them any materials to make a mess with. S was even able to wait, which honestly surprised me considering the temptation I was placing before him. Tomorrow is another awesome craft in my opinion. I hope it goes over well with the kids.

Web page

I was going to post this web address, but I forgot to on Friday so here it is http://www.preschoolrainbow.org/preschool-fall.htm . I have used it for some of a good chunk of the things I have done, but I also wade through many others. Give it a try to find something you might like to try with your kiddos.

At the Car Wash

It was another exciting day at our house. We started by reading a book called Toy Boat, by Randall de Se've and Loren Long. It is about a lost toy boat. M was feeling the pain of a lost toy, I could see it on his face. Then we read, On My Boat, by Robert B. Noyed and Cynthia Klingel. I held off for snack until after the boat stories. We made sail boats out of apples and cheese. You cut the apple in slices, stick a tooth pick in it, and poke a trianle of cheese on it. I have posted a picture for you to see. It was great. They loved the fact that they could eat the apple with the tooth pick then. All of them ate apples and cheese for a snack, even though some of them may not have, had we not made boats:0) I thought it was really cute. While they were eating snack I read Go, Go, Cars (no author listed). It is a very simple book about different cars. Which lead us to "The Car Wash". There is no reason to have a car washed if it is not dirty. I gave each of the kids a sheet of paper, put some paint out in a pie tin, gave them a match box car, and let them paint with them. I had 2 colors after a few minutes they switched to a different color. I showed them how to do it before I gave them any supplies so that they had an idea. Once they coverd their paper with cartracks they went over to the tub of really soapy water (I wanted to make sure there were lots of suds for them) and washed their cars. I had towels on the table and on the floor. I also set out old tooth brushes to let them scrub the cars well. S, M, and AP went back and made another picture and washed again. S gave the soap bubbles a try (yuck)!! He thought so too. The boys got bored eventually and went out in the living room to play with the Geo Tracks, but the girls were much to busy cleaning. I was able to clean up as we went along.