Preschool Wrap up

We are done teaching preschool, for now!  We are hosting again next month, but won't be teaching again until May.  It was very fun, although it is much more difficult to engage and entertain preschool's than you would think.

Our last meeting of December was holiday themed and we celebrated with cookies, crafts, books and a potluck.

I was pretty surprised at how well the kids did decorating cookies, I was sure that some of them (Colin) would ignore the decorations, eat the cookie, and then eat the decorations, but everyone seemed to like decorating!  (And then eating them of course!)

Kari brough some hanukkah crafts and activities for the kids.  Colin realy liked the Yamaka, so much that he kept it while he did his Christmas crafts, too!

Our next activity was deocrating Christmas ornaments.  We added puff balls to plastic ornaments.  It's so fun to see the different kids approach activites so differently! Colin tends to do a few and lose interests, some kids, like Marlo, shoved balls into the ornament until you couldn't fit another one in!  They came out pretty cute.

After our crafts, we had a book exchange with our friends.  What kid doesn't like opening presents?

We are really enjoying our preschool group and I'm so glad Colin has this opportunity to interact with kids his age.  I am looking forward to our next month.  I have a pretty solid outline already, but I know May will be here before I know it!

Daddy Teaches Preschool

Last week we hosted our second preschool class.  Daddy taught this time!

Our theme wasn't quite as tight, but it still went over realy well!

We asked the kids to each bring a dry food good for a small food drive.  I tried talking to Colin about sharing food and hunger before class but it's hard to say if he got any of it. You never know, so it's never too early to start talking about principles that are important to your family!

When the kids arrived we had our snack and dove into circle time.

Gavin did awesome.  He worked hard to engage the kids and keep things upbeat and fun.  In circle time, we talked about the wather and Gavin read "Don't Spill the Milk".

After circle itme, we headed to the kitchen for some 'cooking' practice, complete with hats!

We mixed salt, flour, and water to make salt dough!

Afterwards, we made a few handprints, more on that in a later post!

Our next activity was cheerio treading.  We threaded fruit loops onto a pipe cleaner.  Some of the kids really got into this activity.  Colin not so much.  He ate a handful of fruit loops, put one on his pipe cleaner and was pretty much done.

Someone else thought it was a candy necklace!  

It was so fun watching the kids focus on an activity so carefuly!

We ended with some walking/jumping/crawling and closing circle time.  The kids seemed to have a great time and hopefully they all learned a little something too.

Preschool at the Griffins

Last week we hosted the Ladera Learners at our house for the first time.  I am scheduled to host May and have already started planning, so I had to be a lot quicker getting ready in two weeks for December!

Circle Time Board

Preschool Tables

For our first week, I decided I wanted to do a preschooler friendly service project.  I contacted the Ronald McDonald house about their pop top houses.  They were so wonderful and mailed them to me to avoid an extra drive to Orange.  We prefolded all of the houses so they would be ready for the kids.  Sadly, I was too busy to get pictures of the kids doing the activity, but it was a hit!  Most of the kids dumped the pop tops and did it several times!   We hope to keep this going at our house, although we don't really drink soda anymore.  

Since we had the little houses, I went with house/home as a theme.  Our sancks were little houses! :)

Snack time is always popular!  After snack, we did our craft/ activity.  We cut out family members and houses out of felt.  Each child picked out the members of their household and stuck them on the house.  It was really interesting to see how the kids view their families.  For example, most of the kids with a baby sibling put the baby with mommy.  (The exception being Colin, who put the baby with daddy.)  We actually had so much fun with the felt, that I think we are going to get Colin a little felt board for Christmas.  

We made a patch of playdoh for Colin birthday party and it was fun and the kids really enjoyed it so I decided to make up a second patch for the party.  I didn't like how the first one smelled, so I added lavendar essential oil to the second patch.  It came out awesome! The kids had a good time laying with it.

We closed with Three Bill Goats Fluff and our circle time songs.

It took a lot more energy than I had anticipated, but the kids did great and we had so much fun!

How the heck did I forget to write about Halloween??

We love Halloween!  It's been my favorite holiday for years.

It's also why Gavin says are family is officially in the running for cheesiest family.

First, there's the family themed costumes.

Then, there's the Halloween Cards. :)

What can I say?  I only have a very few years before my kids refuse to participate in either of those.

We had such a fun Halloween!

Colin had a costume parade at preschool.

Then in the evening, Mommy and Colin carved pumpkins.

After dinner (our normal Halloween Speciality of Baked Pumpkin Ziti!) we went trick or treating with Desmond the pirate.

Halloween looks a lot different around here, but it was so much fun!!  I can't wait for future Halloweens.