Summer

Dramatic Play
We continued our Ice Cream Shop we started last week.

 
Blocks
We had out the Duplo Legos, one of the kids' favorite toys.

Art
Day 1, I had out green paper, pencils, and scissors and asked them to make leaves for our tree. It was great cutting practice for them! They could just cut, or draw their own leaf, and a couple asked me to draw their leaf for them to cut.

Day 2, we painted with watercolors.

Small Manipulatives
We had our counting file folder games out again.
 
Counting ice cream sundaes, with a numbered cherry to add to the sundae with the matching number of candies.

Pom pom shape mats

Writing
I added the colored pens to their regular writing supplies

Outside
Another rainy week!! So we had to play inside again :(

Large Group
We read The Day Before Summer Vacation and talked about fun things they like to do in the hot summer. Then, we reviewed all the seasons. We sing them each day with our weather song, but it's good to review! We then had journal writing time for them to write some of their favorite things to do in each season.

Day 2, we read a Tree For All Seasons, and focused on the summer tree, and the green leaves they added to our tree. We then made our 4 seasons books. Each page was just a blank tree to start.
For summer, they painted green leaves.
For fall, we painted fall colored tissue paper on with starch.
For winter, we painted with "snow paint" which is glue, shaving cream, and glitter.
For spring, we glued on split peas to be leaf buds.

Small Group
We stuck to the summer ice cream theme.

My group had ice cream cones and we matched the rhymes.

Miss Kim's group had ice cream cones with capital and small letters. They put the cones in ABC order, then added the matching ice cream on top.

Spring

I had hoped for the sunny side of spring, to show warmth as a sign of spring, but we got rain instead. It's also a great sign of spring! Just a cold one.

Dramatic Play
Flower Shop!
 
Since Easter only gave them 2 days to play, we did an extra day of the flower shop. Plus, flowers fir the spring theme perfectly.

Day 2, I changed it into the Ice Cream Shop. They'll only get 1 day during this theme, so it will carry into our two days learning about summer. I have some play ice cream cones and treats, but I also added empty boxes of cones and Dilly Bars and ice cream cartons. They're reinforced with packing tape, but if they ever fell apart, I guess I'd make the sacrifice and eat more ice cream for more empty boxes and cartons.
 
It was a huge hit! We had tons of employees, running around, dishing up ice cream and running the cash register. They were not thrilled when I let them know part of their job was also clearing the tables when customers were done. They had just finished clearing out all the treats for the customers, and the table was piled high, but they did it! It was constantly busy, serving and cleaning up.

Blocks
Day 1 was the doll house

Day 2 was the farm and animals


Art
Day 1 was spring sponge painting on blue paper. Their pictures reminded me of warm and sunny days! They made so many, every flat surface in our room was filled with drying pictures.

Day 2 was feathers and glue. They made lots of interesting creations.


Small Manipulatives
Number bird nests with marbles from here

Flower, heart, and star links

Number folder games


Writing
Flower and bug stickers

Snack
Popcorn! We sang Popcorn Popping as it popped, and talked about spring blossoms.

Outside
On Thursday, we went out in the clouds, hoping to have time to play and plant flowers in front of the play house. My kids had helped me prep it the day before by turning the dirt and building a rock border. Once we started, the rain came! Luckily, it just sprinkled for a bit. We planted some different varieties of zinnias. The kids got to choose their seeds, dig their hole, then plant their seeds. We would have watered them, but the rain was enough. Most of the kids waited in the play house or on its porch as we planted, to stay out of the rain. I was glad each child got a turn to plant, and we got back inside before the rain picked up harder.

***As a side note, this area will soon be grass, hallelujah! As you've all noticed our dying grass up front, we are digging that up to level out, as we also level this area and the west side yard. As soon as that's done and the new sprinkler system is in, we will plant grass seed. That will mean that the play house area will be closed off a bit while it's growing. But when you all return next year, it should be beautiful! It has been put off all spring with all of the rain, but this Saturday is the day it all gets dug up! There will be a few transformations out back this summer too, so stay tuned! I wouldn't let my husband make the whole yard off limits at once, so the leveling and sprinklers and new grass out front will have to wait until summer. Thanks for your patience with the ugliness of our yard this spring.

Large Group
Day 1, We read B is for Bunny, which is a springtime alphabet book. We learned about baby birds and farm animals, blossoms and flowers, flying kites rain. Lots of spring fun!
Then we sang Popcorn Popping and Rain is Falling. We made popcorn blossoms for our class tree, gluing popcorn onto pink blossoms. It now looks like spring in here!

Day 2, we read Grow Flower Grow. We had planted our flowers out in front of the play house. We now learned what they needed to grow, and the book taught us it wasn't pizza and spaghetti! We then planted seeds in our pots to take home. They are zinnias, same as in front of the play house, and I hope yours will grow well at home!

Small Group
My group practiced beginning sounds with this page from The Measured Mom. I was so impressed by how well they did! I was more focused on the sound, than the letter it made, but many also knew the corresponding letter. After we figured out the sound, I told them the letter that made the sound, and they found the sticker for their page.

Miss Kim's group kept working on numbers and counting. These pages also came from The Measured Mom. They had lego stacking flower pages, where they build towers with that number of blocks. And they did these flower clip pages. Once they counted and clipped the right number, Miss Kim traded them for a new page to count.

Happy Easter!

Dramatic Play
We welcomed in spring with a Flower Shop. It's pretty simple, with lots of silk flowers from Dollar Tree. I had used pots with foam blocks in them in the past, but they just broke the foam into pieces and made a mess. So I set this up without them, and decided to add if needed, but they did just fine so I never added them.
They made bouquets for each other, for their mom's and grandma's, and they even built vases out of the blocks in the block center, so we had some beautiful displays over there.


Blocks
Day 1, I had the gymnastics mat out for some large motor play. I also had a bunch of balloons left over from my son's birthday party, so I put them all down there. They were a huge hit. They loved playing "don't let the balloon hit the ground" and passing them together. After one got stuck to the ceiling, we learned about static, and had lots of kids rubbing balloons on their hair in front of the mirror, and sticking them to the walls.

Day 2, I had out the ABC capital/small letter matching eggs, plus an item to go inside each letter. They had fun matching them, filling them, and then hiding them from each other. In fact, I just found a few more setting up our summer stuff, 2 weeks later :)


Art
Marble painting! I used egg shaped paper. They'd put it in the tray, then scoop a marble out of the paint with the spoon, and roll the tray around so the marble could paint their paper. They loved it.

Potato stamps. They're about the shape of an easter egg, so they're perfect for easter pictures. Some had simple designs carved in them, while a few were plain. Most kids didn't just stamp, and smeared them all over their papers.


Small Manipulatives
Easter/Spring magnets

1-10 Easter puzzle from here

E is for Easter mat with flat marbles


Writing
Easter stickers


Snack
We made egg salad to eat on crackers. They each got to peel a boiled egg. It was time-consuming, but it's a great fine motor skill! Then they got to take turns mashing them, and we stirred in mayo and salt. They each got some on their plates to dip their cracker in. All the kids tried it, and more than half liked it and ate it all! That's pretty successful for 4 year olds.

Outside
The sensory table was filled with macaroni and plastic eggs. The eggs somehow became bombs buried in the orchard too. Most remained eggs, but you gotta love their imaginations.
They also just enjoyed the spring weather, playing on the swingset, sandbox, and playhouse.

Large Group
We learned lots of fun new Easter songs. I found this version of Peter Cottontail on youtube to teach them, and all these other videos were there too, so we tried some more. We did the Bunny Hokey Pokey, 10 Little Bunnies, and B-U-N-N-Y. We all loved how fun and active the songs were.

Day 1, we read the book, Best Easter Eggs Ever, and we dyed our boiled eggs using plants. We actually put them in before we read and sang, to give them more time. We used beets, spinach, and grape juice. The grape juice worked the best, spinach the least. It was a fun experiment.

Day 2, we read The Old Lady Who Swallowed a Chick. We then used peeps and other Easter marshmallow candies to make towers with toothpicks. It was a fun engineering project.

Small Group
Miss Kim's group learned more about letter E, capital and small. They used dot markers and these pages to stamp the letter Es. Many of them came home stamped everywhere :) Before you worry, most of the kids followed directions and got the Es. They just can't resist those markers, and proceeded to stamp the rest of their papers. It's preschool, so no biggie!

My group learned about measuring weight with a balance scale, and the words heavier and lighter. I had small eggs filled with different objects. They would hold 2 and guess which was heavier and lighter, then weigh them. After they each had a few turns doing that, they then added eggs to each side until they could get them to balance. They really liked this activity!

Transportation

Dramatic Play

Week 1, was a rocket ship. The kids dressed up in space suits, and a Miles from Tomorrowland suit, and blasted off into space! They also used rocket packs to explore space. They had fun counting down, blasting off, and searching for aliens in space.




Week 2, was an airport. I made a cardboard plane for the outside, then had all the chairs lined up inside. I used a broken laptop for the pilot's controls. I added some broken phones and headphones as well. There was also a tray of snacks on the plane, for the flight attendants to hand out. The ticket counter had a phone and cash register, plus a world map and airline tickets. There was a waiting area, suitcases, purses, and a carseat and baby too. We couldn't leave out air traffic control, so I added our construction vest and "light sticks" made from paper towel rolls, so our pilot knew when to take off and land. We had so much fun playing, and all the roles were filled. We flew to fun places like Canada, Australia, Virginia, Zootopia, and Pizza World.

 

 
 

Blocks

Construction Site
My boy has been waiting all year to get all of his tractors out and have them downstairs. I had planned on it only being 1 day, but it stayed out 2 since they liked it so much!


The second week, the airport spilled into the block area, so the blocks areas spilled into the small manipulative areas, with the car rug and airport toys.


Art

We painted with cars.
 
We painted wooden vehicles. I forgot to get a picture! They came from Wal Mart and the kids got to choose from airplanes, shuttles, cars, buses, or helicopters. I was relieved they all found something they liked, and there were no hurt feelings!

We played with vehicle file folder games, since blocks spilled into small manipulatives, and our chairs were gone from art for the airport.

We drove cars in shaving cream. This worked perfectly for a day we didn't have chairs around the table. The ran around and around the table, driving their cars and making tracks.

Small Manipulatives

We had a felt mat with construction and emergency vehicles.

Thomas the train matching game
 
The Little Engine that Could felt board story
 
ABC trains

Puzzles: construction site, neighborhood, fire engine, outer space.

Vehicle shadow matching folder games.

Writing

Stamps made from transportation stickers on milk lids

Glow in the dark space stickers


Transportation stickers

Snack

Graham cracker traffic lights
 
Banana airplanes
 
Outside
I made cars from diaper boxes. I forgot pics again. They're just spray painted, and have wheels on the sides. Then elastic shoulder straps. They discovered these were perfect for playing Rescue Bots and Transformers, because they could go inside to "transform," then get out and run around to be a robot.

We also had a few rainy, inside days where we played parachute.

Large Group

Day 1, we read Go Dogs Go and talked about different forms of transportation. We played an ABC matching game. I used cards with different types of trucks and cars, and they had capital or small letters written on them. This was a great practice, since during dinosaur week, we had matched the letter dinosaurs, and the letter eggs. We reviewed the matching letters, then they each got a card with a letter on it and had to find their partner with their matching letter (capital or small). They had a lot of fun and while I thought we'd only go through half of the alphabet that day, they wanted to keep going, and we went through it all!

Day 2, we worked on beginning sounds, and found the beginning sounds of different vehicles. Then we sorted them by the letter they started with.

Day 3, we read about airplanes, then decorated and put together our own styrofoam airplanes. They flew them around the room while they waited for their friends to finish, then we took them outside to fly.

Day 4, we read about boats, then made foil boats. We put them in water, and tried to see how many Fisher Price little people we could stack on them until they sunk. Afterwards, we talked about the features of the boats who held the most without sinking, and they got to make more. Instead of taking turns and going one at a time, they were able to just build and test their boats as they were ready. They really like this activity! I was impressed by how little help they needed.

Small Group

Week 1, Miss Kim was gone, so we just worked together as a whole group to do a transportation sorting worksheet. This is one of the only times you'll see me mention a worksheet! I just never use them. I liked that this one gave them good cutting practice, and then they sorted the vehicles by where they go: land, air or water.

Week 2, Miss Kim's group worked on letter recognition. I had a box lid with a parking lot drawn with a letter in each spot. They chose a letter card, then had to drive their car to the spot with the matching letter. They also worked on tracing their names.

My group practiced patterns with different vehicles. They are great at extending patterns, and some are making their own.