One more to go!

We are working towards the last week of school for Pirate Pete Preschool and have been enjoying a lot of fun this past week using our imaginations and preparing for graduation.  The teachers have been given the freedom to base their ideas for these last two weeks around the idea of imagination and they have come up with some terrific lessons.

The children in the morning started out this week making some telescopes to hunt down 'space trash' and asteroids in the room.  The children love hunting for and collecting things and this was a perfectly fun way to start out our week after they enjoyed the space activities we have been doing the past month.

After finding the astroids and 'space trash' around the room, we counting the collection and moved on to another numbers game where the children rolled a die that marked planets and stars.  

Based on what appeared on the top when a die was rolled, the children placed either a star or a planet onto our picture of outer space.  Each planet in our solar system was represented so should a child land on the planet symbol, they chose a planet to match up with the ones laid out on our solar system.

After imagining a trip to outer space, we talked about one of the best imagineers around; Mickey Mouse!  The children were given a shadow of Mickey and his face, feet, gloves and shorts to cut out.  They created their own puzzle out of these objects and glued the pieces they cut onto Mickey's shadow.

We did take a break from imagining to talk about those we love as we just came off Mother's Day on Monday.  Both the morning and afternoon preschoolers made tissue paper flowers for those they love.  We allow the children to decide if these 'gifts' are for their mothers or the grandmothers, fathers or siblings.  

 The children colored these coffee filters with various markers then watched them turn a tie-dye affect when run under water and squeezed.  Once we attached a pipe cleaner stem, the children were ready to share these fast drying flowers with someone they loved.

Then, we made booklets about someone the children loved.  They chose the person then talked about things they liked about that person with their teacher in order to help put the book in the words of the preschoolers.  These are always some of our favorite things to make and always have been mine as a parent to read.

Back to the land of imagination, we created hand print castles using our ink pads.  The morning and afternoon children were instructed to draw triangles at the top of each finger tip tower then were able to add doors or other windows using shapes we have been talking about this week like squares and rectangles.

Both morning and afternoon groups also did some planting this week as we talked about Jack and the Bean Stalk and other stories that go with planting and gardening.

The morning students had a note go home about how to take care of the seeds they planted and the afternoon children added a castle and clouds to the stick to see if the grass they planted will grow as quickly as Jack's bean stalk did in the story.

Speaking of fairy tales, we worked on wizard and princess hats as the children decorated them to wear during dramatic play.  We added decorations to magic wands and some of the children practiced 'spells' with their teachers.

We talked about other fairy tales and nursery rhymes like Humpty Dumpty in the afternoon then the children worked on their cutting by cutting out the pieces of Humpty Dumpty and putting him bak together again using band aids.

They then turned paper bags into castles that can stand up to allow for characters at home to go in and out of the castles when they get home.  The children added doors and windows while again remembering to name the shapes they were using as they reviewed the hand stamp castle they made earlier in the week.

The afternoon talked about the story of Dumbo then played with our Ele-Fun to get some wiggles out for large motor activity fun.  The purpose of this game is to catch butterflies as they fly out of the elephant's nose with nets.  Since we only have so many nets to capture butterflies, we broke the class up into two groups, while one played with the Ele-Fun, the other built castles with our large blocks.

The afternoon children heard the story of the Gingerbread Man and then decorated their own paper gingerbread men followed by designing their own houses and castles using gram crackers (because no one really likes gingerbread, right?)  

While the children had help from their teachers they did the decorating and added icing as the 'cement' to keep their creations together! Who says you can't have a little winter fun on a warm day?

The afternoon group finished out the week by reading a story about Dragons while the morning group read about monsters and created their own monster after going on a monster egg hunt around the room.

These children matched words with Disney images and reviewed the seasons from our topics earlier in the semester by asking the children to draw clothes and/or accessories for Lego characters according to their favorite seasons.

Some children drew snow suits because they love playing in the snow in the winter, others love spring and all the rain so they drew umbrellas.  A few students added in swim suits in order to show their love of summer!

After the Dragon story the afternoon children created their own dragons using a template created by the teachers followed by a fire breathing dragon right before we headed home.  

All along this week we have been also practicing our songs for graduation.  These were sent home last week and texted to the parents with links to help you know the beat of the songs.  Please let us know if you need additional copies or links sent out again.

What's Coming Up?

• This is our last week of preschool!  As we end the year and hold graduation on Friday, May 22nd, please remember to request additional parking passes PRIOR to that day.  Things are too crazy to pass those out that morning.

• Also, don't forget it was requested you send treats to pass on Wednesday so we can have everything set before your arrival on Friday.  Click here to see the AM invitation and here to see the PM invitation for details on times and parking.

• Some parents have asked for additional photos to be emailed out via Shutterfly from the semester.  These will start to be sent out but can only be sent a few at a time so you should receive emails from me throughout the week.  Electronic versions of your scrapbooks will be sent out after graduation in case you would like to order additional copies for your family after you see your hard copy on Friday.

Whew!  What a year!