Days #5 & #6: Summer Breezes & Bouncing Balls

It was our turn to do Preschool this week, and we had a wild and crazy time! It was so fun to see every child's little personality and how they all interact!

Day #5
Our letter of the week was C, and our word was Caring.

On Tuesday we talked about Summer Breezes, which we extrapolated into talking about wind in general. We started off by blowing crepe paper in front of our faces, making our own "wind".

Then we made some plastic bag kites, and the kids had a fantastic time running around the garage watching their kites fly. I think this portion of the day ended when several people all bonked into each other . . .

After flying our kites, we did a little art project of glueing scrap paper to a picture of a kite. Wow, do these kids love glue! Some of them got really into putting lots of little pieces of paper onto their sheet and others just got into putting lots of glue on their pieces of paper! This was a popular project, for sure.

Day #6
Today we talked about bouncing balls, which was a fun topic. But before getting into the balls, we talked some more about the letter C and the word "Caring." All the kids got to pretend that they had fallen or were otherwise in need of help, and I showed them how I cared about them and wanted to help them feel better. They were pretty good at feigning pain, which I'm sure is not shocking to any of us :).

One of the things we did to talk about balls was to do a felt board story about a family who lost their ball. Wow, the kids LOVED the felt board story -- thanks for the great idea, Natalie! They also seemed glad that the parents "cared" about the kids enough to help them find their ball. Here's a picture of the kids watching the story (tongues were out just for the picture; what a bunch of fuddy-duddies we've got!). I hope none of you ever see the figure people I made for the felt board; they are truly heinous, and I'm lucky they didn't scare the poor children.

Since we were talking about balls, we decided to decorate paper grocery bags and then make them into "balls". The kids really liked coloring the bags and even got creative with the crayons, sticking them between their toes (Mason pictured below).

We then did a little science experiment with our "balls" and tested whether our right or left legs kicked them further, whether we could throw them or kick them further, and if it was hard or easy to balance them on our heads. Good job little scientists!

And at the end of the day, the kids were super excited to have toy time, even though they spent part of it just resting (I think all of our balling wore them out).

All in all, we had a great week! And . . . I'm really going to enjoy the next four weeks, 'cause this teaching is a lot of work!