Fire Safety

This week is national fire safety week. One of the ways you can stay safe if there is a fire in your house is to stay low. If the room is filled with smoke you may need to crawl outside under the smoke to safety. We practiced crawling to safety by crawling through our tunnel. It was really hard to get a picture of the older kiddos! They were too fast!

We added “fire” to our block center by taping construction paper flames to our blocks. We also added water hoses to put the fire out. Out water hoses were paper towel tube with blue streamers.

It is B week. We learned b in sign language and we received another grandparent card!

Apples

Play dough, as many of you have read/heard over and over from me, is my favorite fine motor activity. Here is a great article I read recently about the benefits of play dough. http:// http://theimaginationtree.com/2012/06/benefits-of-playing-with-play-dough.html Find a play dough friendly spot at home and make a batch of play dough with your kiddos this weekend! Our tried and true recipe is:
2 cups flour
1 cup salt
1 T cream of tarter
1 T vegetable oil
2 cups water with food coloring added
Mix all ingredients together in a saucepan. Cook over medium high heat stiring constantly until it pulls away from the pan, looks dry and play dough like. Let cool. Store in a zip lock bag.
We used all of our play dough for our volcano last week so last night and this morning we made 3 new batches. Since it is Apple week we made red, yellow, and green. We added brown pipe cleaner stems and green foam leaves to play with today.

Our VIP’S mommy read some of her favorite books to us today. Her Grandma, Grandpa, and Mom also joined us for lunch! Thank you so much! We loved having you!

Apples

We had an apple taste test to see which apple was our favorite. We tried red, yellow, and green apples, and then charted which one was our favorite. The most popular was yellow! We made applesauce in our crock pot today. The children helped get the apples ready with our apple peeler, corer, slicer. They loved turning the handle! We added a little brown sugar, cinnamon and water put it on high and let it cook all afternoon. We will be enjoying some warm homemade applesauce at snack today!

Apples

We got a special visit from our Miss Wendy today!! She also brought some fun activities for us to do. We painted an apple tree using a bath poof, sorted red, yellow and green pom poms using our fine motor skills, she also taught us a new Apple song, and we showed her our Ring Around the Apple Tree song! Our VIP shared her Adventures with Norman with us!

Apples

We read Ten Apples Up On Top! By Dr. Seuss. The children loved this book and brought it to me multiple times to read today. The children drew a picture of themselves and then added circle stickers to represent apples on their heads. They then counted the stickers and told us how many apples they had on their head.

We sang “Ring around the apple tree, all full of apples, shake it, shake it, they all fall down!”

We got more Grandparent mail!!

Apples

We celebrated a Birthday today! Thank you for bringing in doughnuts for breakfast!

Our letter of the week is P. We learned it in sign language and talked about words that begin with the letter P. We talked about the lifecycle of an apple. We made an apple sensory tub, painted with apples, did apple math, and played with cinnamon play dough!

Our VIP shared her poster today!

Dinosaurs

Our VIP shared her poster with us on Monday. Today, we read one of her favorite books, we read about her adventures with Norman our class bear, and we read a letter her grandma wrote her.

We made a volcano out of all of our old play dough. We made it erupt with vinegar and baking soda! This is always one of our favorite activities! We also had a dino wash on the playground. Such a fun day! Next week is Apple week! Have a wonderful weekend 🙂

For more Volcano pictures go to our Facebook page http://www.facebook.com/plaacademy

Dinosaurs

At Circle Time we sang Dino Hokey Pokey with our plastic dinosaurs.

We made dino dough fossils. I love this dough because it makes the whole school smell like coffee! Yummy!!
After years of sticky dough I think I finally have the perfect recipe… we will see how it dries!
1 cup flour
1/2 cup salt
1/2 cup coffee grounds
1/2 to 3/4 cup cold coffee
This made 8 fossils. I made the recipe with the big kiddos first and it worked great!

Dinosaurs

We read Dini Dinosaur. The older kiddos worked with me making a dinosaur skeleton out of paper towel rolls. They did a great job… a triangle head, spikes down his back, 4 legs. We also made shape dinosaurs.

More grandparent mail… with stickers to share 🙂

                    Some Disney Love!

Dinosaurs

We read the book Fossil and talked about dinosaurs being extinct. We learned that a T-rex footprint is over 3 feet long. We drew a footprint and then measured it. We used a ruler to measure the T-rex footprint and our own foot. We used cardboard blocks and cube blocks to measure the footprint. We were able to put 30 of our shoes inside it, and all of the children fit inside the T-rex foot! We used dinosaurs in our play dough and some of the kiddos wanted to draw! We had a busy and fun day!!