Pond Life!

Hello quarantined friends! I hope and pray that all of you are doing well. In some ways, it seems crazy that another week has passed, and in some ways, this past week seemed very long at our house. We kept busy at our house watching my sweet nephew whose daycare closed. 

This coming week would have been pond week in our class... A perfect time for you to find a pond with your sweet one and see what you can see! Go on a pond adventure. :)

Here are a few things that would have been in the plans! As I said before, feel no pressure to try to do any of these things... They are just here if you are looking for activities and want to work on some of the skills we would have in class. Please don't feel like anyone (including me) is doing all of these things! Trust me, some days last week, all I accomplished was keeping two rambunctious one-year-olds safe and fed while Anna played independently. I had to tell myself that this was okay too!

Mrs. Paula sent out an encouraging reminder to her parents to not feel stressed about the coming weeks... To everyone moving on to kindergarten next year, your child will be more than ready! As much as possible, continue to review letter sounds, continue to work on writing names with only the first letter as an uppercase, and continue to work on number formation/counting. Also keep in mind that some children entering kindergarten in the fall will not have had exposure to any of these skills... Just food for thought!

If you do want to jump into some fun pond life activities, here are a few we would have done. Also, I am putting portfolios together... and I have LOTS of pictures that need glued on to pages! If any of you would like to make that a family activity, that would be a HUGE help to me! I could come and deliver all the supplies (pre-cut pictures, glue sticks, and paper to put them on) to your mailbox. Just let me know! Thank you in advance!

1. Metamorphosis: Take a paper plate and either color printed pics or draw pictures of the life cycle of a frog! Here's a fun song... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JrXww4oZrsI

2. Compare and contrast: Draw a Venn diagram of how frogs and toads are alike and different. There a number of fun videos. Here is one I have used before: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rVAjUSLkDLo. 

3. Cutting: Work on cutting "pond waves" on paper... Simply draw some waves to be cut. This takes quite a bit of scissor control to cut accurately. 

4. Color words: Help your child write the color words "gray", "green", and "blue" and then take these cards to the pond or outside with you to label things they see of that color. This website has the color songs we have done all year: https://www.kindergartenworks.com/kindergarten-teaching-ideas/color-songs-videos/ 

5. Poetry: Count down with the song "Five Green and Speckled Frogs"! We have always used little frog cutouts on Popsicle sticks just for fun! Here is the poem if you want to print it and look for known words/letters: 

6. Teen Numbers: Print and cut this number puzzle (or make your own) to work on putting the teen numbers in order and identifying each one. 

7. Initial Sounds: Print and use the image below (or think of your own) to work on identifying the beginning sounds of animals/plants at a pond!

Quarantine: Week 2

Hello all! I sure am missing everyone already!

I will start off by saying if there are any specific ways I can be praying for you, please feel free to message me individually and let me know. I am trying to devote specific time for praying each day and would love to know how to pray for your families. 

Secondly, I think it is supposed to be warmer this week! I hope everyone can get outside, exercise, and explore as much as possible. That honestly is my biggest tip of the week. I will wait until next week (after the end of "spring break") to send any official activities that go along with the theme we would have done in class, but I will share a few things today!

1. There are so many ways to use outside time for learning... Get creative! Anna and I spent time hiking last week and counted acorns, listened to birds, watched crawdads, etc. You could even try making letters and numbers out of sticks or making patterns with plants!

2. Use letters and walk around outside looking for things that start with that letter and lay the letter on it. If your child is ready to write the words, give them a clipboard and a pencil to walk around and report what they see!

3. Work together to make towers as tall as possible! You could use these to work on addition... I add on five, you add on five, and together, we have 10. Have fun destroying them as well, of course. 

4. Check out this AWESOME resource: Anna and I really like these because they involve a book, a video, and an activity. Make sure to do the activity together! https://classroommagazines.scholastic.com/support/learnathome/grades-prek-k.html (There are also options for all other ages for older kiddos in your family!)

5. Continue to challenge yourself to read at least 3 books together each day.

6. Find something to help you work on 3D shapes(or review 2D if needed). Anna is working on 2D shapes! :) 

7. My mom sent me this link... www.playtolearnpreschool.us/virtual-preschool. Maybe not as great as an in-person story hour but a great option right now! Each day is also followed by a list of activity ideas like the one pictured below: 

Announcement

I am sure that all of you have heard by now that Indiana schools will be closed through May 1. I will make sure to keep you updated on anything I hear that pertains to LAP. My heart is breaking a bit (actually a lot) tonight to think of not seeing all of your kiddos' sweet smiles for that long. 

As I said in my last post, please reach out with ANYTHING that any of you may need. I am continuing to pray for each of your families, and we want you to know that we are here as your LAP family. I am available to help with absolutely anything that comes up. Please don't hesitate to ask. 

Also as stated, I will make sure to post ideas weekly of things you can be doing with your kiddos. With it being more of an extended time off than hoped, I will try to make these a little more detailed after spring break. I will post pictures and links to some of the things I had planned to do in class. 

Hoping all of you are getting lots of sweet snuggles and laughs with your kids. Give them a hug for me! I miss them all greatly. 

St. Patrick's Day (and more...)

I am already missing these sweet friends. While the weeks/months ahead are uncertain for everyone, I pray that all of you are staying well, getting some time together, and feeling God's peace. I myself am praying for each of your families. If there is absolutely anything that Mrs. Andrea or I can do to be there for your families, please know we are here. Also, with uncertainty of when school will return, I will be making a blog post each week that we are out with some activities and ideas that you can do at home if you are able and are looking for things to keep your sweet one learning! The first list of ideas will be at the end of this post. :) 

I listened to the song "Give Me Faith" and thought I would share these words today... I have been praying them today: "I may be weak, but your Spirit's strong in me. My flesh may fail, but my God, You never will...Give me faith to trust what you say, that You're good, and Your love is great." Praying each of us can rest in knowing that our God will never fail, even when times seem uncertain!

As far as last week, we enjoyed another fun week in our class! We combined a couple of themes, focusing on how God wants us to all show kindness to one another as friends and also doing some fun St. Patrick's Day activities. We truly have so many sweet friends in our class! 

We read a variety of books this week, both St. Patrick's Day and friendship-themed. We played several fun shamrock games to practice/write our numbers as well as work on letter sounds and rhyming. Everyone is really progressing with all of those skills! To go along with our St. Patrick's Day theme, we made Fruit Loop rainbows and even made a green "explosion" in our class!

We learned through several crafts this week as well! Everyone made a shamrock mosaic that listed ways they are a good friend. We worked on our colors by finger printing rainbows and worked on addition by adding gold!

We added in some gross motor fun with our letter rainbow and leprechaun scavenger hunt! We stomped and jumped on each colored letter, focusing on the color pattern of the rainbow as well as saying the letters we stepped on. One of the highlights of our week was definitely going on our leprechaun scavenger hunt... He sure was a sneaky little guy! 

I sure hope to see these sweet smiles again soon. 

Make sure to enjoy some time together with this week officially being "spring break". However, here are some ideas for this week you might could do at home!

1. Go on a letter or number search in your yard. (I am doing this with my daughter using Easter eggs for early egg hunting!)

2. Make a rainbow using chalk together and see if your child can remember the order of the colors of the rainbow. Maybe add in jumping on the colors, writing the color words, and writing each number as you count the colors.  

3. Challenge yourself to read 3 books together each day! Use this time to have good book talks... Make predictions, ask questions together, work on making inferences, look for letters and words your child knows, etc.  This is also a great time to pull out our class reading folders to work with the poems!

4. Make a note/card to send to a friend you know and have your child write as much of it as possible and help you address it and write their name and return address. (We have been working to learn these.)

5. Continue the "Follow Jesus" theme together, choosing another character in the New Testament who Jesus called. Here is a link to the fantastic website that the preschool follows: https://www.nhckidstime.com/copy-of-sprouts-parent-resources We didn't do the stories for the last two weeks of March. 

Shamrock letter and number work...

Don't we all work better in firefighter gear? :)

Look who found all the letter shamrocks on our letter hunt!!

We are becoming addition experts! These mats are easy to draw for at-home practice!

Check out our new poem in poetry folders.

Such hard workers!

Jumping on letters/numbers is a great way

to work on academic skills/gross motor 

development at the same time!

Green day!

We love show and tell!

Birthday girl :)

We loved the sunshine!

Green explosion!

We had a blast on our leprechaun hunt!

Read Across America Week

Read Across America week was a blast! From silly socks to wacky clothes and more, we had so much fun!

We enjoyed reading lots of great Dr. Seuss books this week, including The Cat in the Hat, Oh The Places You'll Go, One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish; I Wish I Had Duck Feet, The Foot Book, There's a Wocket in my Pocket, and Green Eggs and Ham.  We were so thankful for our awesome guest reader, Mrs. Karla (aka Jack's grandma) who came in to read to us and share her love for reading. We also had time to read independently and with partners. We hope that every child in our class is developing a true love for reading. 

One of our main focuses this week was rhyming. We have truly become rhyming experts! We played rhyming games and created rhyming hats to match the Cat in the Hat's. See if your child can read the "Green Eggs and Ham" poem to you in his or her rhyming folder! We also continued working on addition this week with our fish addition book to go along with One Fish, Two Fish. Of course, we also continued to review color words (this week by making fish patterns).

We had fun with lots of other activities! After reading Oh the Places You'll Go, we talked about what we want to be when we grow up. Check out the hot air balloons hanging on our bulletin board to see what your child said. To go along with The Foot Book, we made foot puppets and then measured them with different items. We also had fun independently drawing and painting a Thing 1 (or 2 or 3 or 10) to take home, as well as a plate with green eggs and ham to work on our independent cutting skills. 

We continued our "Follow Jesus" theme for March... This week talking about the calling of the first four disciples (and reviewing who John the Baptist was).

We continue to be amazed by the great readers in our class! We hope that after this Read Across America week, everyone is reminded of how important it is to read! This week, see if your child can...
1. Help you read a rhyming book by having them fill in the rhyming word. 
2. Count with you to 100. 
3. Look for numbers they know on signs as you drive. 
4. Add together two small piles of snack food to make an addition sentence. 
5. Tell you your cell phone number. We have been working hard every week to memorize our mom's number in case of an emergency!

Wacky Wednesday!

Writing letters and making rhyming words

Green eggs and ham

We used cups and cards to stack into

hats like the Cat in the Hat.

We love working with Mrs. Andrea!

Wacky monsters for a wacky day!

These girls are writing full sentences!! Wow!!

We tried green eggs!! Apparently a lot of us like eggs!!

Look at that concentration. :) 

Tracing and measuring our feet 

Oh the places you'll go!

We truly are such hard workers.

His giggle! Thing 1,000,000,000!

We have a true artist on our hands!

We love to rhyme!

Who doesn't love play dough?

We LOVED hearing from Mrs. Karla!!

Another fun Freddie adventure!

Hat day! We are the best class!