Pirate Pete Preschool

Sunday, April 5, 2020

Virtual Preschool

School sure has changed in recent weeks and we are super proud to have been able to start virtual preschool with everyone. We realize it is typically only an hour three times a week but we feel it's a good chunk of time to allow our preschooler's attention spans to stay focused on us as we do a few activities together using only a digital platform.

We really appreciate the flexibility of our families as we worked through some small kinks in our first week and are excited to roll out another week of preschool e-learning. Last week felt as much like a circus to some of us teachers running circus week as the theme itself as our high school student teachers jumped in with us and gave our new platform their best efforts. This week we hope to hop right back into learning as we talk about bunnies and eggs and all things spring.

That being said, you might want to have a few things ready at home to get the most out of our lessons this week. We will be playing some games that will not need anything more than some room to move around but will also need paper and drawing supplies again if possible. If you have some rice, baggies, food coloring and a few hard boiled eggs we will be learning a fun way to do art and science all at the same time. Besides the plans listed in the links above we also ask you use either post its notes or other paper and write one letter on each of the pieces of paper. For example the name Kris would need 4 pieces of paper while the name Emily would need 5.

As our time apart progresses we hope our preschool teachers will continue to write lesson plans for our preschool families so that even if you cannot participate at the time of virtual preschool you will be able to do some of these activities on your own. We will be posting links here in this blog post as preschool teacher lesson plans are turned in. We will date them accordingly so you can know what supplies you might need to set out prior to our 9:30 start time on preschool days.

Thanks again for being amazing members of our Pirate Family! We hope everyone is safe and healthy and enjoys our attempts to keep some normalcy for all of our preschoolers! Please continue to use this blog post to stay up to date on lessons both past and present to check in for any supplies you might need from home.

Monday, April 3rd

Drawing a Bunny
Eggs & Rice
Name Hopping
Letter of the Day (Xx)

Wednesday, April 5th

Paper Egg Decorating
Zig Zag Bunny Hopping
Counting and Moving with Bunnies
Letter of the Day (Yy)

Monday, April 13th

Let's make a Kazzoo:

You will need the following

Empty Toilet Paper/Paper Towel Roll
Wax Paper/Parchment Paper
Rubber band/Hair Tye

Musical Instrument Construction:

You will need:

Water Bottle
Straws
Beans/Rice/Beads

Drawing the music we hear:

You will need paper and something to draw with

Friday, April 17th
All we will need today is paper and drawing utensils

Monday, April 20th

Earth Yoga

Earth Day Art; you will need paper and coloring tools
Magic Milk Science

Friday, May 1st

Packing for a trip!

You will need:

Various clothing items that can be put on and off on top of the clothes your child is going to wear the day of class. We will put these extra items on over those clothes so if we are wearing a t-shirt and pants, we will put our swimsuit on over that or our winter coat, etc.

Going to the Beach!

You will need:

a beach or pool bag and items ready to pack that would make sense for a trip to the beach (pool)

Beach Towel Ball Toss

You will need:

Towel
A small ball safe for tossing in the house

Baby Shark Time!

Wednesday, May 6th

The Grandpa Book by Todd Parr
Making Father's Day Cards
Making Paper Ties
Father's Day Charades

Friday, May 8th

Flower Bingo
The Berenstain Bears and the Mama’s Day Surprise
Mother's Day Cards

Wednesday, May 13th
Preschool Graduation!

Wednesday, March 18, 2020

St. Patrick's Day Ideas

This week in preschool we were going to be talking about St. Patrick's Day so I have put together some activities you might be able to do at home. Each week we are out I will share a post with activities and projects and games you can try at home to break up all the time you will be spending indoors. I hope you are able to get outside sometimes too and will try to include a few things for those occasions as well.

While we hope this time at home doesn't last too long, rest assured we are prepared to help you e-learn with your preschooler! None of this stuff is mandatory but as one mom to many other parents/caregivers sometimes we need a little help coming up with new things to do with our kiddos. Enjoy!

If you have a zip-loc bag, sharpie and either some paint or food coloring and shaving cream you can do this first activity: Mixing colors to create shamrocks. Simply draw your best shamrock on a zip-loc bag with a sharpie then squirt a bit of yellow and a bit of blue paint into the bag. Seal it up so there is no air (don't want it to pop) then give the bag to your child to rub and move the paint until it mixes to create green and then to make it more challenging, have them move that paint only into the shamrock! If you don't have paint at home you can use shaving cream and yellow and blue food coloring to do that same thing. Once you do this activity, if you have other colors at home, try mixing them in bags too! This activity is great for those of you are not fans of a 'mess' in your home.

Another way to work on science and math is to draw a variety of circles on wax paper. Make some of them large, some small and some medium all over the paper then using either an eye dropper or a straw cut in half (so it's easier to handle in preschool hands) have the child drop water into each circle and count how many drops it took to fill each one. To alter it to St. Patrick's day, just make the water yellow and have it be Leprechaun coins! See this site for details.

Our kiddos have always LOVED making Magic Milk. This works with just water as a liquid base too however the white of the milk makes the rainbow really pop!

Another game/project the children love to do is all about finding things a leprechaun loves; items that are either green or yellow! If you have small items, have your child go through them and if they can be glued down, make process art out of them. If you really are prepared for the challenge, have your child search your home for green and/or yellow items and see how big a pile they can make of these items. Pair this with the Leprechaun Trap and you are set for at least an hour!

Using a CD or DVD laying around and a flashlight from your phone or an actual flashlight you just need a white wall or sheet to make the magic of rainbows! See this site for more details!

Using anything from around the home, old shoe boxes, stickers, toys, toilet paper tubes, foil, etc. you can build your very own leprechaun trap! This is STEM learning at it's finest and always has been a classroom favorite! See this website for more crazy fun ways to build traps for more ideas on this.

Still not enough stuff to do? Check out this site for St. Pat's Day stuff or my Pinterest page for all sorts of resources.

I will post once a week after spring break should we still be out of school. Hopefully this will help with ideas of things you can do at home and if you are eager to find more in the meantime, look through past blog posts-much of what we do in preschool can be altered to do at home! Here is an older post with technology ideas. While we hope they will be helpful, technology is not meant to be the only thing children should be using during the day.

Sunday, March 15, 2020

The future of our pirates!

We talked a lot about our futures this week in preschool as we explored a variety of career options and learned a lot about different jobs people in our communities may have and how many of those jobs help us.

From scientists to engineers, architects, construction workers, surgeons, doctors, fishermen and fire fighters we had a lot to cover this week! We hope you can enjoy some of these photos showing us role playing and matching word sounds and letters to pictures representing various jobs and careers.

As we move forward this week before our scheduled spring break we hope to share activity ideas for games and small projects or experiments you can do with your child while at home until we are able to have school again. Each week we will send a variety of activity ideas based on the theme that has been scheduled in our preschool calendar. We hope this week will be our only week to do this but will keep you posted as we know things.

Role playing is very important to a child's growth and development and sometimes the latest toys or games aren't even necessary for the most growth and fun! We will share a blog post out later this week with a variety of St. Patrick's Day ideas that can revolve around leprechauns and trips over the rainbow. Hopefully instead of getting stir crazy you are able to have a bit of fun and return to your child-like self again in the process.

What's Coming Up?
As sent out last week we will be taking a break from school this week then our scheduled spring break the following week. We are unsure yet if we will have school the week of March 30th but will communicate plans to you as soon as we are instructed to do so. We hope to help you out this coming week with some St. Patrick's Day fun with another blog post later in the week with a few ideas for you. After spring break we will create another blog post for you should we not be allowed back at that time.