Preschool Day 2

And what a day it was! To start off, I wasn't as prepared as I should have been. It's been a crazy week and my alarm didn't go off this morning, so I was rushing around like crazy trying to get things together. Add in a child pouting in the bedroom for 20 minutes (mine, of course) , a pants-wetting incident (also my child), and a bloody nose sustained from a collision while riding our cardboard box train, and it was quite the day!

On to the details:
QUESTION OF THE DAY: Have you ever been on a boat?

CENTERS:
White-board/Chalkboard
Blocks
Puzzles--different ones from last time

I found this packet of 36 school bus cutouts at the dollar store and figured I could use them to fit in with the Vehicles theme (cars trucks, buses etc) that we are doing this week. I wrote the alphabet out, one letter on each bus and then scattered the buses around on the walls all over the house. After talking about the questions of the day, I told them that the alphabet got all mixed up and we needed to put it back in the correct order. We sang the ABC's song once and then I started with "A". I would write an "A" on the white-board and then they would have to hunt around till they found the bus that matched. Then we connected all the busses so that it made one long bus and then sang the ABC's again as I pointed to each letter. Now if only "X" had come at the beginning of the alphabet, everyone would have enjoyed the game. (Rylee wanted to find "X" first and my explanation that we needed to go in order prompted her pouting episode) Why is it that your own kids are always worst when it's your turn?

The we did the classic "Sink or Float" game. I got out our plastic toy boat the kids play with in the bathtub and had the kids take turns pulling items out of a bag and guessing wheather or not it would make to boat sink or float. Then they would put the object in the boat (sitting in a tupperware of water) and see if they were correct. Then they would put a sticker on the side of the paper that showed what happened. I have done this game a couple of times when I did a similar preschool with my boys and it is always a huge hit! Although the kids usually get pretty wet. Something about the temptation of water is just too much to resist!

Then we had some OUTSIDE PLAY TIME and SNACK. I found the idea to make these JELLO boats and had to try them. The kids loved them! We also had crackers and grapes.


Then we read a BOOK-- I Love Trains

My husband brought home some boxes from work and I folded the flaps inside and lined them all up to make a train. The kids would take turns being the conductor and caboose while we sang a song my mom used to sing to us "Choo Choo the Big Train is Coming Down the Track". Then at the end of the song, the kids thought it was fun to tip the cars off the track. Shortly after this picture was taken was when the collision happened. 2 little boys were trading places in the train when one's head hit the other's nose and it started bleeding pretty good. But he was such a trooper!! He hardly cried and before long he was back playing again.

After that, we took the train apart and made them into cars--cutting out circles for the headlights and a rectangle for the license plate. Then I poked holes and tied yarn to make straps so they could "wear" their cars. They all decorated licence plates with stickers and then we were headed outside to have races when it was time to go. A couple kids stuck around for a race, though. I wish we'd had more time because I was going to play "Red Light Green Light" with them in their cars. Oh well!

Here's Rylee in her car. She is saying "zoom" hence the funny face.