This was our last week of preschool and the week of Mother's Day. In honor of all people we love we took time each day to focus on a different family member. On Monday we worked on making things to share with grandparents. We talked about family trees and how we are related to grandparents. Then we talked about things we like to do with grandparents or people of that age group we might spend time with at home or in our neighborhood.
We made medals for people in our lives to show our thanks for how great they are and created lots of other projects like necklaces or bracelets for the older ladies in our lives.
We acquired a few boxes this week when a shipment of storage containers for supplies arrived and the children enjoyed spending their free time in them turning them from houses to caves to space ships!
Then it was back to work in the afternoon on Monday where we assembled our family trees with blue and pink people to represent the males and females in our families. 
We learned that most of us do not live with grandparents and how special grandparent hugs are to receive and how much they might like a hug back in the mail. The children laid on the floor with outstretched arms and teachers traced them and helped the kids cut out their 'hug' to be sent to grandma or grandpa. We hope they get mailed out.
The afternoon children also made their grandparents with our people colored paper adding white cotton balls to them for hair, beards and mustaches.
We made picture frames and artwork for our families and some parents might even want to mount a photo of their child at this age onto the center too.
After painting we made our own ice cream cone math game with rainbow pom pons and ice cream cones with numbers written on them. Each child had to 'scoop' the correct amount of ice cream onto their grandparent's sweet treat.
We traced our hand prints and added words of love onto them after cutting them out. Some children made two hands connect while others worked on one and decided that was enough.
Wednesday this week was a focus on Father's Day since most dads do not get much attention from school with the holiday in June. We made cards and used father's day apps on our iPads to work on fine motor skills.
We made a few other art project to send home to dad or any other father figure in our children's lives. We worked on cutting a lot this week with many of our crafts and writing skills as well with these projects.
The afternoon did their fair share of word recognition and practiced sounding out the letters of family members like father, mother, mom, dad, grandpa, grandma, brother and sister. After looking at these words at the tables we practiced the words in a large motor activity as we jumped from hula hoop to hula hoop testing our memory of these words.
The children were given clay to build something for dad or another father figure in their lives and then painted their handy work. Some pressed the clay flat and made a hand print while others rolled it into balls and painted them that way.
We talked about lots of father's favorite pass times and learned many like to fish. So we did a little experimenting around the room and looked for items to try to float in water. We discussed some toys and items like costumes and puppets and electronics cannot go in water but plastic and wood and other materials of the sort are welcome objects for this experiment. If you are looking for something to do this summer, we recommend this outside.
We went fishing this week as well as we made fishing poles to collect fish around the room and put them into buckets.
The last thing the afternoon preschoolers did this week was make some Father's Day ties to wear or ask dad to wear around Father's Day. We were not able to have afternoon preschool on Friday so Mom's we apologize we missed Mother's Day but hope to squeeze in a few projects for you on our lat day of preschool tomorrow to make up for it.
On Friday we were lucky enough to see Pirate Pete in the morning just after the children arrived at school. Most were excited to see him though a few still not sure of real vs. pretend characters were a little nervous. However when it was time to wave good-bye everyone was willing to wave!
The morning preschoolers learned that many moms love flowers so we made quite a few examples of flowers to send home. We made hand printed paint flowers, tissue paper flowers and paper petals on spoons in a pot flowers. The best part, these can last forever!
After all that hard work we broke up the extended morning by playing musical chairs and worked on our graduation songs. We hope you checked out the links from the last blog post and have played them at home to sing them and practice too.
In our extended time on Friday, the morning children were able to meet some of the afternoon teachers and made a few extra gifts for mom. We worked on fine motor skills and broke up paper to place inside a heart and drew and painted a few other items as well before our escort out to our way home.
Thank you AM parents for your patience on Friday, the children were wonderful and made our extra time together a pleasant experience filled with laughs and fun!
What's Coming Up?
Our last full day of preschool will be Monday, May 15th as we talk about the many places we can go...this summer, in kindergarten, preschool next year, when we grow up, around the world..anything! That's the magic of Dr. Seuss!
Please remember to bring the treats to pass for our party on Monday so we can have everything set up before your arrival for graduation.
Morning preschool graduation is at 9:30 AM so please arrive by 9:25AM and afternoon graduation is at 12:15 so please arrive by 12:15 PM.
