Pat & Oscar's Field Trip

We were so lucky to get to go on a field trip to Pat & Oscar's today. Jennie Rowen, our newest mom, scheduled it. The children were able to help make a pizza, have a tour of behind-the-scenes, and eat the pizza they made. It was way beyond what I imagined. We are sad that the Pat & Oscar's in San Marcos is the only one remaining. It's an awesome place and their food is yummmy!

Afterwards we went to an awesome park in San Marcos which I think was called Lakeview. The children played on the playground for a while until the water fountain came on.

A couple of the moms took of around when the children started getting in the water.  We went down the trail a bit and fed the ducks. Then we had a nice walk around the pond/lake. It was a great day!

Teddy Bears & Q is for Quiet

Each child brought a stuffed animal today to share for sharing time. We started the class by putting our apples on the trees and sharing our stuffed animal. Each child had a turn being up in front of the class. When we were finished, I introduced our letter of the week, Q.

I showed them a picture of capital Q and then one of lower case q. On the back of my easel I have a white board, so I turned it around and drew the two for them as well so that they could see how they were written. Lucy raised her hand and asked "Can I try too?" When I said yes, all of the other children decided they wanted to give it a shot - even those who have had very little practice with writing gave it a try.

Our theme for the day was being Quiet. I read a book about a little boy who knew how to be very loud, but he also knew that sometimes it was important to be very quiet.

We made a craft of heart flowers since we learned about hearts yesterday. I am not sure it hurts to include the "social" drama in our blog, so I'll include it here... We were making our craft when I heard Lucy tell Matthew, "I want to marry you. Do you want to marry me?" Matthew shrugged his shoulders and replied, "Sure, I guess." Then Lucy kept talking about how she and Matthew were going to get married when they grew up. Ethan didn't say anything, but he also wasn't listening to my instructions very well, even when I was speaking slowly and directly to him. Then Ethan said, "I don't want you to marry Matthew, I want to be Matthew's friend." So, I interrupted, "Ethan, it would be perfectly fine if they got married. That way, you would get to stay friends with Matthew and Lucy." A couple of minutes later I heard Lucy talking again about how Matthew and she were going to get married, then Ethan said "I'm going to marry Lydia!" then he asked Lydia "Lydia, do you wanna get married?" and she said "Sure."

Preschool drama - So classic.

After craft time I sent the children out on the patio to play while I fixed the snack. I think I waited too long because the children seemed pretty grumpy. We went out on the lawn and sat on a Q for Quilt, then had snack time. While we ate I read a few stories about teddy bears. After the story we played a couple of little games. In one game, the children pretended to tuck their stuffed animal in the quilt for "bedtime." When it was time to wake up, we each grabbed a part of the blanket and tossed the animals up and down until they all fell off. Then we all sat back down on the blanket and did a "getting to know you" game with the stuffed animals. They each took a turn introducing themselves to each others stuffed animals. It was cute. Lucy was a little upset she couldn't keep Ethan's horse, but after she found the other little stuffed animal, a pony, that she brought, she was happy again.

 Snack time on the quilt.

Lydia Perez was visiting our class today. It was great to have her.

Overall, it was a really mellow day. Partially because I lost my voice and was half-whispering the entire lesson.

Flannelboard story about a girl who wanted to sleep with too many stuffed animals.

Q Week - HEARTS!

Our lesson was about hearts today. Last year I had the Valentines day party, so I had to restrain myself from just doing another party - Erin has that one, so stay tuned!

I did, however, have to make heart-shaped cookies. One of the stories I had in my lesson was about heart-shaped cookies. After I read it, I asked the kids if they wanted to have some heart-shaped cookies. WOW, they were excited.

I didn't get to the craft, a few of the stories, or the letter Q. I figure I would just finish all of that up tomorrow. That's the cool thing about Joy school, it's OK to just not get to things if the children seem like they are being creative and enjoying themselves. We decided to finish our snack as a picnic outside.

When they found out they were going to get to have cookies like in the story.

 


  



Day 29: Hibernation

After reviewing our letter "P" and our word of the week, "Positive", we learned all about hibernation.  I got 4 storybooks about hibernation from the library and the kids loved them.  They helped explain what it means better than I could.  :)  

We did some fingerplays, and then played a cute game from the book.  I would tell the kids to go to sleep and everyone would pretend to sleep.  Then I'd say "Wake up mice!!" and the kids would have to pretend to be mice.  This game was SO cute-the kids were SO into it!  I ended up repeating some animals just to keep the game going!

We took a break and had a snack.  Peanut butter and jelly triangles with tortilla chips.  I know now that Matthew does not like peanut butter and jelly.  Sorry Matthew!

We played the game where you sit in a circle and you whisper something into some one's ear and then they repeat it and so on and so on.  This was hilarious because I said something like "A sleeping bear" and by the time it got to the end, it was not even CLOSE to what I had said.  Haha!

We colored some hibernating animals and then had some free play time.  :)

So Matthew is definitely the cool new kid.  :)  Ethan and Lucy were fighting over him all morning.  At one point Lucy said she was married to Matthew and that made Ethan pretty upset.  I actually had to ban marriage talk finally because they were getting SO upset about who got to be married to Matthew!  Haha! 

Unfortunately, I forgot to take pictures of the kids during our fun animal games.  But here are some of them eating and coloring:

Day 28: Boots and Mittens

We started off this week with learning the letter "P".  The kids enjoying shouting the "P" word right after I'd say it.  I'd shout "pumpkin!" and everyone would shout "pumpkin!"  We thought of tons and tons of "P" words.  Pets, pineapple, pictures, princess, peas, play, peacock, pigeon, pink, purple, paper, pancakes...etc.  Whew!

Our word this week was "Positive".  I was happy to hear that when Lucy left on Tuesday, she bumped her head and told her mom that she was not going to cry because she was going to be positive!  Yay Lucy!  Just so the parents know...I did explain that being positive meant being happy, even when things get hard, like when we get hurt.  I didn't want the kids to think that crying is unacceptable or something because sometimes things hurt really bad and it's ok to cry.  :)

We learned about boots and mittens today.  Kind of funny teaching these lessons about cold weather when it rarely gets that cold around here!  Haha

We read a book called "The Mitten" that we got from the library and then had snacks.  Then we played a boot matching game, a word game, a boot hiding game, and a snowball game.

The kids eating their "P" snacks (we had pineapple, popcorn and pickles!  And their faces look funny here because I said "Everyone say popcorn!"  Haha):

Here's Ethan playing our boot matching game:

Here's Lucy who just found my boot during our "hide the boot" game:

Here's London playing our "throw the snowball into the bucket" game:

Ethan throwing the snowball:

Lucy throwing a snowball:

And Mason having a turn:

Our word of the week:

We had some free time.  Mason and London happily played together:

Lucy found a baby to play with:

Ethan found some airplanes to play with:

Oh I have to mention a few things.  While the kids were eating their snacks, I asked them some questions just for fun.  I like asking Mason questions like these and hearing what his answers are so I tried it out on everyone.
First, I asked everyone what their favorite color is.
Mason: "Red and blue."  (They were the colors on his monster trucks that he was holding.)
London: "All colors!"
Lucy: "Pink and purple."
Ethan: "White."  (He was wearing a shirt with grey and white stripes.)
Second, I asked what everyone's favorite food is.
Mason: "Pineapple."  (We were eating pineapple for our snack.)
London: "All food!"
Lucy:  "All food!"
Ethan: "Popcorn."  (Another snack we were eating.)
Third, I asked what everyone's favorite animal is.
Mason: "Dinosaurs!"
London:  "All animals!"
Lucy: "Baby horses and baby ponies."
Ethan: "Horses."
Last, I asked everyone what they want to be when they grow up.
Mason: "A dad."
Ethan: "Clark" (That made me laugh)
Lucy: "A surfer!"
London:  "A surfer dude!"




Our kids are so cute.  :)

Letter O Week

Wendy, you can edit this post however you'd like. I took a few pictures at the beginning of class that I wanted to put up.

Jack Harris has left our little group to move on to a preschool that will work better for him. We did, however, have a new child join our group. His name is Matthew and he is 4. We all look forward to learning more about him. I will try and snag a photo of him when we go over to Erin's for school tomorrow.

I Can...

January 5, 2012 - I CAN

Playing before school


Today's lesson was all about the things "I Can do"!!!!

We started by talking about all the things the kids could do and compared them to Levi and how he could not do many things they could do. Then we all shared something we could do and I wrote it down on a slip of paper and put it in the "I CAN" jar.

Matthew said "I can sleep by myself"

Lucy said "I can snap"

Mason said "I can jump really high"

London said "I can skip"

Sadly we were missing Ethan.






We had a lesson about the letter "O" and our word for the week "Optimistic."

I read them a story about Thomas the Train and emphasized some of the things he was able to do.

Then it was time for the Hokey Pokey...just to show off all the things we could do.



Well after the first minute no one wanted to do it anymore. They just wanted to run around. I took a quick little video of the kids running in circles until they were silly!





Then I had to cover them up with the blanket to get their attention again! We spontanteously played a game to see if "I Can" be quiet or loud.

We finished the day making owls. The kids were so cute while they were making them. At first someone said it was hard and I said "You have to be optimistic. Say I can do it. I am optimistic!" The entire craft time, each time anyone glued anything thing on they shouted "I can do it! I am optimistic!" It was so funny and cute!