Happy “B” Day!

Today was “B” day at preschool at our house, and I must admit—I have been so excited to host at our house and do activities with the children!  When they first arrived they signed in on the easel (well, Max and Joseph did…Delainey did not want to do it and is really sensitive about writing her letters so I didn’t push it.) and then we played with playdough and made things that started with “B”.  Max made 11 little balls which they had fun counting.

After playdough it was time for circle time!  Following the “Hello Song”, Delainey said an opening prayer. We reviewed our preschool rules.  Then Max held up the scripture spotlight—the story of Noah and the ark. (Ark, Boat, B-day…) After the calendar and days of the week song, Joseph took a look outside and told us it was sunny and hot.  Then he fixed the weather spinner to reflect that.  Next we talked about the letter B, learned a new nursery rhyme, “Baa Baa Black Sheep” and then it was time for Show and Tell!  Delainey showed everyone her ballerina, Max showed his Buzz Lightyear, and Joseph showed a ball.  They enjoyed each getting a turn to come up and share what they brought.

Then it was time for…SINGING TIME!  Taking Kathryn’s cue, I let them run around and dance like crazies with some instruments at first to “This Old Man” that I have on CD.  Then we did a few more wiggle songs, before singing the Wheels on the Bus and Row, Row, Row Your Boat.  We sang it slow, fast, loudly and soft. 

Next we learned a new song…well, at least it was new to me until I saw it online.  To the tune of Twinkle Twinkle Little Star, we sang:

Twinkle, twinkle traffic light

Round the corner shining bright.

Red means stop, green means go,

And yellow means go very slow.

Twinkle, twinkle traffic light

Round the corner shining bright.

I made up little hand motions…they loved going STOP with their hand, running in place for GO and then going really SLOW for yellow.  We sang this one about 3 times…the first time they repeated two lines back to me, but by the 3rd verse they sang it all the way through…I was impressed!

They worked up an appetite singing so we went to the kitchen for snack time!  I made a sample plate of “Traffic Light” Graham Crackers (Graham crackers, whip cream and m&m’s) and a “Banana Airplane” (come on, you’ve got to have a little nutrition in there) with pretzel sticks as wings and propellers, and mini marshmallows as windows.  I then gave the children their own plates where I had earlier given them all the things to make the treats…they just had to make them themselves!  Lainey ate 2 of her m&m’s right off the bat, and Max ate all of his marshmallows in one bite haha…but then they slowed down and followed Joseph’s lead in making the treats. 

Max liked flying his “airplane” around in between bites!

Zoom zoom!

Joseph picking out the correct color of m&m’s.

After snacks we went to the dining room for story time. I was a little unsure if their attention spans would last through two books, so I paraphrased “Busy Boats” a good bit.  We’ll never know how they would have done if I hadn’t, but they were super attentive for all of story time. Whew!

Next we went to the dining room table to make little sail boats out of egg cartons. I gave them each a piece of paper with a triangle outlined in dotted lines so they could practice cutting their sails.  Then they decorated both sides with crayons. (We were going to paint the inside of the egg crate but were a little behind schedule, so we skipped that part.)  Next I helped them put their straws through three holes in the sail, we stuck the straw into a tiny hole in the styrofoam, and viola!  Boats for everyone!

After our craft, we returned to the kitchen to do 2 worksheets about the letter B (I set aside 10 minutes for this, but boy, they lost interest in this fast. Maybe 5 minutes next time.)

After they had finished their worksheets we put on shoes and went around back to our little inflatable pool (that apparently has a hole in it….sad.) to talk about how boats transport people…they float!  Then they put their boats in the water to see if they floated…they did!  Max figured out that blowing them away from the edge was a better way to make them go instead of pushing them.  (His had a little capsizing accident, but survived and still floated around afterwards.)

Finally it was PLAY TIME!  They chased each other around the playground and repeatedly ran up and down the hill.  Next we went inside to sing the “Goodbye Song”, they each received a stamp, and then it was time to be picked up. 

Week 2 of RTB Preschool was a success!