A Good Impression

Yesterday, I had a mom come and visit my classroom, along with her son. She asked if he could stay in the room for a bit. He got to experience snack, story time and computer time. He got along well with the other kids and was well behaved. His mom came back as we were working on our morning project. He was sad to leave, and had to be coaxed.

Today, they came back. Apparently his mother had tried to visit another preschool and he threw a fit. He wanted to come visit Ms. Desiree! He started singing a song we did that day and refused to visit the other school. He got to do calendar time and snack time again. I haven't heard back from them, but I did get some nice comments about it from my boss. Apparently I made a good impression on the kid. That really made my day that he wanted to come see me so much!

Winter Activities

Today we did something really neat! I mixed together shaving cream and glue, then let the kids play with it. After it was well played with, I gave them a sheet of blue construction paper, then they "painted" the mixture onto the paper. When it dried, it looked like clouds! I really liked the end result. The kids loved it! Since we talk about the weather every day, I wanted to take that discussion further by making clouds.

We also played Winter Bingo. I found the game online, and it generated different cards to print. The kids really enjoyed playing it. We also took turns being the caller, which they also liked. It was a fun game and I will definitely play it more in the future!

Games, Games, Games!

I have recently acquired some games for my classroom. Friday, while I was at Walgreens, I found a LeapFrog game that involved matching up words and pictures. It has three different levels for different ages, it also worked on rhyming and phonetics. The kids really enjoyed working with it yesterday, and I think they'll enjoy the other levels of it as well!

Yesterday afternoon, I ventured over to Target in search of some board and also computer games. I found CandyLand and Memory. I know I really loved those games as a kid and look forward to introducing them to my students. I also found some computer games on sale. One is a Pooh game that includes all sorts of learning activities. The other game is a Blue's Clues game that also has lots of learning activities.

Unfortunately, we had a snow day today, so I will have to wait to try them out until tomorrow!

New Activities!

I found out today that my class is going to start receiving time in the computer lab every day. We went there during our scheduled time, and each of the kids was working on a different game. It was neat to see their reactions to their successes (and frustrations) with their games! I'd really like to try and find some more computer games for them to play.

This month is Learn Spanish month, so each day I have been working with the kids on saying words in Spanish. For the most part, I've stuck to counting, colors, and months of the year. They're doing really well at picking up these words! I am excited about teaching them more Spanish words (as well as learning them myself!)

I also tried some neat projects that have gotten several compliments from other teachers. I took a coffee creamer can, cut a sheet of paper to fit it, then dumped some marbles in the can. Finally, I put some paint in the can, then put the lid on. I held the lid, and each kid got a chance to hold and shake the can. When we pulled the paper out, it had a neat design! Unfortunately, after the first one, there was paint on the inside of the can, which stuck to the back of the next paper. Oh well, I dried it on a paper towel, then decided to mount it on construction paper. Then it hid the paint on the back, plus it looked really cool! Hooray!

Back in the Saddle Again

After two weeks off, today was my first day back at the preschool. I was told by several people that I was missed during my time away. It was great to see the kids again, and fun to hear about their holidays! I had decided to have them do a snowman craft today, and I let them cut out their own circles for the snowmen! I supervised, and showed them where they needed to cut, but I was very impressed with how well they did! They are definitely getting better at their fine-motor coordination. Now if I could just get them to color in the lines......

Our afternoon project was a Diwali lamp. This was in celebration of how they celebrate New Year's in India. I love the idea of integrating different cultures into our projects! They colored the lamps, I cut them out, then helped them use a glue stick to glue it to a sheet of construction paper. These turned out really cute!

All in all, it was a great day and I'm glad to be back. I'm also exhausted, although I know I'll get back in the groove soon!