Every Day is a Circus!

We started out this week flying on a trapeze, taming lions and riding elephants; all through virtual activities of course!  It sure got the children ready to talk about playing carnival games and doing exciting things at the circus.

We quickly moved on to build our circus tent and 'pop' some 'popcorn bags' by shaking out the tent rapidly then slowly throughout the activity.

Once the 'tent' was 'up' we made elephant marching sounds on the rug using rhythm sticks to parade elephants and eventually lots of other animals into our circus.  Some ran in quickly while others stomped slowly as we called out a variety of animals and talked about how they might prance into or out of our circus tent.

No circus is complete without popcorn so we assembled our popcorn complete with butter (yellow paint).  Some children added lots of butter to their buckets while others said they just wanted a little bit.

We got word this week there were some clowns who got lost on their way to the circus and we needed to help them find their way back by bending pipe cleaners along zig zag and wavy lines to show them the way home.  This works the same muscles writing does but seems more like a game which helps encourage more children to participate in this type of curricular activity.

Carnival games are always a fun part about going to a circus so we played them a lot this week as well.  We bean bag tossed into buckets and threw bags to knock down towers of colorful barrels, and crawled through fiery hoops like lions and tigers!

We needed to help the ring masters and lion tamers collect and sort the various circus animals that escaped this week during math time so we sorted, counted and made patterns with various colored animal figures and we also built animal bodies out of geometric shapes as well.

We learned about lion manes this week and created our very own lions using forks instead of paint brushes to create the furry strokes on paper.  

We dug through the color filled small motor skills bins to seek out the 'cotton candy' pom pom balls hidden inside before moving on to paint clown faces with our hand prints and triangle hats with circle tops.  

What's Coming Up?

Monday, March 12th (TOMORROW) will open preschool registration for the 2018-2019 school year.  We will once again have one section of preschool which will mean this is going to be your one and only chance to be in our program.  The times for next year will be the same as this year (9:30 - 11:55) and will still run Monday, Wednesday, Friday.  

• Current preschool families will only need to turn in a check for their fall semester tuition and update paperwork since we have all other documents on file already at school.  New families will need to submit registration forms, tuition checks AND a copy of the child's physical, immunization records and birth certificates.
  
• Remember we fill up very quickly so the sooner you turn in materials the better.

This coming week we will be looking for Leprechauns in our preschool as we talk about shamrocks and rainbows and pots of gold for St. Patrick's Day.  Be ready to hear stories of visits from little creatures from magical lands!