Five for Friday and a FREEBIE!!!

I officially started counting down the days left until the end of the school year...last week!!!  Seven days to go with the kids (They don't come to school on Friday)!  Then a week of home visits, and another week of paperwork and packing up my classroom, and the school year will be over!

I keep telling myself that I need to give as much energy and excitement to the happenings going on in our classroom as I did at the beginning of the year, but every day this gets harder and harder to do...

{One}  Last week, for one of our small groups, we taught the kids how to make a flower.  We discussed what shapes flowers can be in, and then let them have at it.  Then, we cut out the shape of their flower (as you can see, they're all different) and glued them onto a stem that we cut based on how tall they are.  We are going to glue something on the back that says "  This is how tall your child was in preschool 2013-2014" and take these to their families when we go on home visits.  Rather than do a Mother's Day gift - since we're not in school for Father's Day - this is their end of the year gift for their family.

We added the flowers to our bulletin board to make a backdrop for families to take pictures on the last day of school, as we are inviting them in that afternoon for a slide show and memory book project.

{Two}  This week, we read Dinosaurs Love Underpants and I planned a few activities that went along with the dinosaur theme, which the boys in my classroom absolutely LOVED!  I saved this unit for the end of the year because it is one of my favorites and I wanted to have some engaging activities that still kept the children interested in school.  The story gets them laughing every time, and I couldn't help but laugh too!  

I created this Dinosaur Number Match 1-10 activity specifically for this unit, which you can pick up FREE on TpT.  

The kids counted the number of dinosaurs, found the clothespin with the number written on it, and clipped it to the correct number on the card.  If you download the activity, please rate it and follow me on TpT.  I'm a fairly new seller, and would really appreciate the support!

{Three}  We have toy dinosaurs that have been in our classroom all year, and the kids love to play with them, especially the boys.  For this art activity, the kids dipped the dinosaur's feet into paint and walked or stomped a trail on the paper.  I had kids that never go over to the art table try this activity several times!

{Four}  Why read this story if we weren't going to decorate our own pair of underpants?  I found this Underpants Writing Activity on TpT last year when I taught kindergarten, and it's still FREE!  It's also easy to adjust to any grade level.  We just painted them with watercolor, and I wrote down what their favorite part of the story was, so we could hang our underpants out in the hall for everyone to see!!!  The kids got a good laugh out of that one!

{Five}  The last few weeks, we've been making cosmic suncatchers, which I found on the blog Babble Dabble Do.  We quickly found out it takes approximately 3-4 days for them to dry, so you either need to do them several at a time over a few weeks (we only had 5 lids) or ask for donations before doing this activity.  Also, 2-3 drops of food coloring is plenty!  The color does spread while the glue is drying, so you don't need much, but they turned out pretty cosmic, I would say.

Hop on over to Farley at Doodle Bugs Teaching to check out all of the other blogs participating in Five for Friday.  Thanks for reading!

Spring is Here!!!

It's been a while...a few months actually...but I'm back to blogging.  We've been doing some exciting things in preschool, and with all of the breaks, snow days (we had somewhere around 14 this year! yikes!) and evaluations going on around here, I have realized the school year is almost over.  Our little tykes have 5 weeks left of school and then they will be moving on to the Big School!

To get on to business and F-U-N, it's time for: 

{ONE} Our class went on a nature walk this week to see if we could find all of the signs of Spring.  Children noticed baby trees and flowers popping up out of the ground, the buds on the trees and bushes, the sun and clouds in the sky, they heard the birds chirping, and felt the wind blowing.  

During our walk, we collected branches, sticks, pine cones, seeds, rocks, and wood chips to put into our discovery tub.  Then today, I added bugs to the tub for the kids to explore when they get back to school as a surprise!  

{TWO} Last week, when we came back from Spring Break, we did a writing piece with the kiddos.  We asked the children to think about something they did over Spring Break, and they were actually excited to write about it!  I couldn't wait to hear their stories!!!  This one says, "I'm playing with my sister with Barbies!"

Since this is preschool, I encourage them to say their sentence to me and I write it down on a sticky note to type up later.  We say each word and I say something like, "What do you hear at the beginning of 'sister?'"  Then, I ask, "What else do you hear when you say the word 'sister?'"  Often, they write down the first sound and last sound in the word.  I am thrilled they feel confident enough to write letters now...you should have seen their writing a month ago!

{THREE} The last few weeks, we've been talking about rain and rainbows.  This week, the children painted stripes of the colors of the rainbow on a sponge and then painted sponge paint rainbows!  We had to get the sponge started so they could see the colors, but they turned out pretty cool...even the ones that were a little more free form.  That's what preschool's all about!

{FOUR} To continue with the rainbow theme, at small groups, we talked about the 10 second rule.  The kids picked out a strip of paper from each color of the rainbow, then put some glue at each end and then made an arch on a large piece of construction paper.  Then, they layered the strips to make a process based rainbow!  

The 10 second rule was to have them count to 10 when holding the strips down to make sure the strips stayed glued on...we encouraged them to count aloud, so they also practiced counting at the same time!

{FIVE} I've been doing this for a few years now, and love it every time I do it.  I tell the kids we're going to paint a handprint rainbow, and that they get to pick which color they would like to get their hand painted (or they can pass if they want).  Some children were more involved than others, but all of them loved the rainbow when it was finished!

The clouds above the rainbow were done with puffy paint.  We put glue, shaving cream, and white and black paint into a bowl for the kids to mix together and paint with their hands!  The kids that like shaving cream, but usually don't like to paint LOVED this activity!

I enjoy participating in the Doodle Bugs Five for Friday linky party because I get to find new blogs, and see what other teachers are doing in their classrooms.  So, go ahead and hop on over to visit and take a look!