Kids are funny

" I'm not allergic to girls anymore!" That was my favorite quote of the day! If he only knew how those little girls will make him do stupid stuff years from now.

Another funny moment today was before nap time Randy said to Audrey from the other side of the room " Lay down princess." Without even looking to see where he was and who he was talking to she replied " I am." I guess some of us just know our place in life. :)

Below is a book I got in the mail that I plan to start reading. I am a member of The National Associations for the Education of Young Children and periodically I get books in the mail . I was excited to get this one. It's says " The Seven Essential Life Skills That Every Child Needs." I cant wait to get started on it.

Beth and I have been working in the resource room again and we came across the train tracks. It doesnt have a lot to do with our unit right now, but there is no golden rule that everything MUST correlate . I was trying to decide whether I wanted to put it in the yard sale this weekend. I think you can see from the pictures, the answer would be a firm - NO- Keep it.

I also introduced the double sided table easel today. Watercolors !!!

Randy doing " magic" with his hillbilly wallet. :)

Geneviette lost her first tooth. She will be 5 in November. She was SO excited this morning to show everyone.

Quilts.... we made one of our art work that we plan to take to Quail Ridge tonight ( 6 pm )

This is a group picture after our practice session for tonight . Meet there on State Line Road at 5:50. We will go in at 6:00. We will be there MAYBE 15 minutes. After that you are invited to join Randy and I for ice cream cones at Mc Donalds- our treat.

Books and Rhythm Sticks

From the block center this morning I heard " Look Mia we made a community !" Sure enough, I look over there and this is what I see.

The girls were so proud of themselves!

Other experiences we had today was using our scales to measure things. We used important words like equal and more than and less than. Did you know even princesses can be scientist ?

This is a toy that has a magnet wand and the kids move the little pieces around. There are pictures to try and match but I have it out for the fine motor practice. See how Orrin has to hold it to pick up the dots ? Perfect grip for writing !

We do a lot of matching but this game also reviews shapes !

We took the rhythm sticks today. First we tapped our names . Some of our friends had one beat and others had 2 and 3.

Why do we use Rhythm sticks ?

Rhythm Stick Play: Objectives/Learning Outcomes
Playing and using rhythm sticks promotes and develops the following:

• Small motor development—using the small muscles of the hands and fingers
• Eye-hand coordination—eyes and hands working together smoothly
• Dexterity—skill and ease in using hands
• Eye tracking—eyes being able to follow an object as the object moves in space
• Directionality—the inner sense and knowledge of where things are in relation to the body
• Auditory discrimination—being able to hear and identify differences in sounds
• Listening skills—ability to follow verbal directions
• Coordination—parts of the body moving smoothly together
• Rhythm—aspects of music having to do with time; patterns of sound perceived in relationship to a recurring beat
• Beat—recurrent throb or pulse in music; important rhythmic skill to develop before the age of seven as the ability to keep a steady beat is linked to linguistic development
• Tempo—the speed of music
• Thinking processes—creative thinking and problem solving; develops memory (pattern and sequence)
• Crossing the midline—occurs when left or right arms or legs cross over the center of one’s body and promotes communication between the brain hemispheres

The next lesson we did today was learning how to take care of and " read " books". We have been having more and more books torn up and thrown on the floor after reading. Today we took time to talk about that. Sometimes we assume that kids KNOW what to do. We should never assume anything. :) So, we first talked about how to pick out a book. Even though we can't read sometimes we can tell what the book will be about by looking at the picture on the front of the book. So, we each chose a book and told what we thought it would be about. When you are reading a book ask your child before you start what they think the book is about. So we established if we like dogs that we could go through our books and find one that interest us. Next we talked about turning the pages carefully one page at a time. We also talked about the words in the book and how we can use our fingers to scan them. That one day we will be READERS too! How exciting ! When we got to the end of our books we talked about what we should do next. We always need to find the proper place to put our books even if we are in a hurry.

We had a great day. Hope yours was too!

NOTES FOR PARENTS:

Tomorrow night at 6 is our trip to the nursing home- Quail Ridge to sing . It will take 15 minutes tops.

Every day is packed full of learning

We learn so much every day. We learn how to communicate with each other . We gain confidence in our ability to get along with each other in a social setting.

Below are Emeri and Orrin. They rode the horse together through the house and when Emeri stopped she said " Now, get off and go to work." Do you see that steak in Orrins hand ? He told me he brought that incase his horse gets hungry.
Audrey teaching Cohen his ABC's .
Even boys play house. Dillion was the cook.
Problem solving ! Danny made art from this old Pork Rinds container and wanted to take it home. He rushed over to his cubby to put it away and it wouldnt fit. Kayla stood there trying to figure out how to make his art fit in his cubby. Sure, I could jump in and grab it and say " Just let me put it up here" and place it on the cubbies but why.. when there is so much to learn with them working it out together !
These blocks have set on the shelf since school started and someone may have taken them off once. I took them down and put them on the table and started building myself. Look what happened!

Sometimes kids just need a little encouragement to try something new or forgotten.

We had a licensing inspection today! It was unannounced and went really well. I usually post the form on the door or table for you all to see. DHS has went to a paperless system now . There is a website you can go to but as of right now it does not look functional. I will tell you that there were no violations - which is our goal every time!

Monday Monday...

Today has been a hectic day. I know the parents noticed the VOLUME level in our room today was UP LOUD! Wow... very loud. The whole day has been like that . Is it possible to love your job but still look forward to the end of the day on some days? :)

Today we talked a lot about fall and our community. We have community in our classroom, in your home and in our town. It actually goes farther than that to a global community, but the kids aren't quite ready for that yet.

This Thursday is when we meet at Quail Ridge Nursing Home and sing songs for the residents there. They will be eating and it will be loud - we may not even be noticed. But I am sure there are some residents there that havent seen a preschooler in a very long time and they are sure to bring back some good memories to them. We will meet at 5:50 in the parking lot and go in together as a group. We are singing 5 or 6 standard songs that the kids have known forever. Why are we doing this you ask? We are talking about communities and how communities have all kinds of homes. This is one they probably rarely see. We will be in there 15- 20 minutes - tops! :) PLEASE dont leave me and Randy there alone...

There isnt a lot to blog about today. It was a fairly normal day... and we survived.

Happy Friday!

Blogging our day a little early today since I am leaving at noon to head south to speak at a conference. Today we wrapped up our unit on feelings and emotions. We've talked about how to control OUR emotions a little better but today we talked about what to do when people around us have strong emotions. Interesting conversations... and funny . :)

Today is FRIDAY FLICKS!

DANCE PARTY ! ( Um..... please excuse that nice little cord laying on the floor that is SCREAMING safety hazard. gah... )

I am sure the kids have told you about our calm down song. I encourage you to use this one at home !

Happy Friday everyone. See you on Monday!

feelings mural

Today we practiced our scissor cutting skills . I placed magazines on the table and scissors and asked them to cut out faces that showed emotions. As I sat and cut with them ( modeling is always a great way to teach children ) I noticed how almost ALL expressions in magazines are happy. Anyway, we cut them out. I reminded the kids that their thumb goes on top and to point the scissors away from their body. We also discussed other rules like - we don't just walk around with scissors and scissors are only for cutting paper.

After cutting out our " faces " we glued them on a large sheet of paper.

If you want to work with your child at home on how to use scissors - here is a great short video for you.

Some of our other fun during the day. The kids are really getting into the chalk board. I love their drawings !

Kayla helping clean up the sand .

It was a great day. This afternoon we will be making our own snacks and carry them outside to eat. TRAIL MIX ~

Whoa is me Wednesday !

JUST KIDDING! We have had a great day!

We continued to talk about feelings and emotions today. We read the book again called " When Sophie gets angry, really really angry." We read many of our books over and over again. Sometimes it takes a second or third read to see everything in the book that we need to see. For instance, in this book when Sophie gets angry she runs and run to a tree and climbs it to be by herself. One of the children today said " That is like our loft ! When you want to be by yourself you can go there. " It is a wonderful feeling when you see the children starting to comprehend our books on a different level and comparing it to things in their every day environment. Above this paragraph you see a graph. I tell the children " a graph is used to compare things." We compared three areas in our play space that make us happy. After asking each child and writing their name we talked about most and least. We counted and talked about numbers. Then, we finished by writing a sentence to summarize what we found out on the graph. For instance on the group pictured above - More children are happy in the block center. Writing things like this with the children helps them understand that written words have meaning.

We all enjoy reading !

Did I ever tell you I got the certificate in being recognized as a three star facility ? The state of Arkansas is using an evaluation and rating system much like hotels do . There are MANY steps and much more paperwork and certain scores have to be made on certain things. If you would like more info on the Better Beginnings program you can look HERE. Since we were already quality approved we come in at a three star and have one year for verification. I have already went through most of that process. It is VERY indepth. If anyone knows a newspaper editor - this would make a wonderful article depicting preschool in Siloam Springs. :) ( Maybe during Arkansas Children's Week in April. )

I love listening to the kids play pretend.

Our fall trees we made drying on the wall.

Today you will see in your cubby a manuscript page. I mainly did this to get a better understanding of where each child is in the writing process. Some aren't yet to the stage of holding their marker right ( tripod grip ). If they are fisting it and they are one year out from kindergarten - it's time to help me at home and start practicing some writing. If they are three - no worries. Also, when practicing at home, please use an uppercase letter for the first letter and lower case for the rest of the name. In the old days we taught children using all upper case or BIG letters. Not anymore ! :)

Enjoying making our fall trees with our fingertips.

I had planned to put out sign up sheets for parent teacher conferences next Monday - Wednesday. As I wrote it on the journal this morning I changed my mind. Since the remodel ( or forever ) we had ended up with TONS of JUNK.... we have planned a yard sale for October 2nd across from Gates and need that time to get ready. I will plan to have our conferences the first week in October. ( And.... plan to come buy our JUNK. )