Slap Jack

We played this game, and I just had to share. I had some alphabet card print offs, that had a few extra J's with them. We just played Slap Jack, where you turn the cards over one at a time, and try to slap the J's first. Whoever slaps the J first gets to keep the J, and whoever has the most in the end wins. My kids were having SO much fun with it. They were laughing their heads off! And I liked it because we could play it with any letter we were learning...just make extra copies of that one letter. :)
Happy Slapping!

E is for Elephant

We started out this day by playing Alphabet Bingo. I loved this board because it let you put your own letters on it, and that way I could put just the ones we have learned.
Sorry that I don't have a link. I googled "Alphabet Bingo" images, and this was there. I had to copy and paste it into a folder. When I went to the site I couldn't find it. Sorry.

We wrote the letter E

I cut up a picture of an elephant for a puzzle, and this is how they had to figure out what we were learning about next.

Then we did a "Board Discussion" about elephants.

And the messiest part of the day...finger painting elephants. The Body of the elephant is a hand print, and then you finger paint on the rest. They LOVED it! As they were painting my oldest said "This is the best day!"

Dirty hands!

Viola!

Job Chart

This isn't really for preschool, but I thought I would share it on here. I wanted to make a job chart for my kids. It turned out to be a lot more work that I thought it would be, but it was worth it. I love how it turned out!

So each girl has their own section, and as they do the items on the chart, they can turn them over. This is also great because as time goes on, I can change the jobs...hopefully someday it will say "Do the dishes!" :)

And there is also a reward system. If they do everything on the chart that day, they will get one "Mommy Dollar." After they have X amount of Mommy Dollars, they get a prize....which I haven't figured out yet. I'm thinking they could pick a toy from a prize jar...bouncy balls, and yoyo's and things like that.
You can download your own personalized money HERE.

Teeth

We had a lesson on teeth, and why they are important, and how we need to care for them. A lot of this was just a "Board Discussion," where I have them sit around the board with me and we discuss and draw...they seem to love it.

We talked a lot about how we can take care of our teeth. We talked about the dentist, and how "he" is a nice guy, and he wants to make sure our teeth are healthy. We talked about his equipment, and why it's not scary. I also took my girls to the computer and googled healthy teeth and diseased teeth...I tried not to scare them with the brown teeth, but I wanted them to see why we take care of our teeth...so there was a purpose behind it. I think this actually worked very well, because as 3 and 4 year olds, they didn't know their teeth could turn that way if they didn't take care of them.

I found some lips online and we glued pretty white teeth inside of them. (Just small rectangular shapes of white paper.)

Then we went to the kitchen, and talked about foods that are good for our teeth, and foods that are bad for our teeth. I had paper bags with happy and sad teeth, and they had to pick the right bag.

Then we brushed our teeth! :)

E is for Edgar

Edgar is our dog. We have learned all of the letters for our family, so I thought it only fitting to do a little activity for E and Edgar. So I decided that we would make Edgar some E shaped Dog treats. I have a dog cookbook that I used.

If you have a dog, here is the recipe:
Boxer Butter Puppy Poppers
2 cups whole wheat flour
1 tbs baking powder
1 Cup peanut butter
1 cup Milk

Mix peanut butter and milk in a bowl until smooth. Add in dry ingredients. Mix well. Kneed on floured surface, and then roll out with a rolling pin to 1/4 inch thickness. Cut out with cookie cutters, or just into fun shapes. Bake on a greased cookie sheet for 15-20 minutes at 375 degrees. Let cool before giving to your dog. Store left overs in an air tight container.

(Don't mind us in our pj's.)

Edgar loved them!

Food Guide Pyramid

I'll just be honest here and say that I am not a big fan of the food guide pyramid. I think it's kind of skewed on what we really should be eating and how much. But "the 4 food groups" is just as bad. In my opinion anyway.
However, it's a great way to help kids classify foods into groups. Grains, fruits, veggies, protein, dairy, and sugar/oils. So that is why I did it.

So don't laugh at my awesome pyramid making skills. It was my very best. :)
I made a pyramid, and googled images of food online, and printed them and cut them out. It took awhile. I started out with a printed out version of the food guide pyramid, and talking about which foods went where, how healthy they were, etc. Then I would show my kids a food item and ask which spot it went into, and they would put it there.

After the food pyramid I took the girl upstairs and had food all over my counters, from each food group.

Their job as to sort it into the proper bowl for that group. They did great!

And then we ate something from each group. Crackers for grains, carrots for veggies, bananas for fruit, a piece of lunch meat for protein, cheese for dairy, and chocolate for sugar/oils. It was a great little snack, and very fun! We talked a lot about healthy foods, and why it's important for us to pick healthy food for our bodies. We talked about how it's ok to eat candy sometimes, but not a lot because it's not good for our bodies. We also talked about moderation, and variety.

D is for Dinosaur

Welcome back us. We have had a busy holiday season. We kept up preschool with lots of activities, as seen in the previous post, but it was too much to blog individually so I hope you will forgive me for doing that. We introduced the Letter D.

We learned a lot about dinosaurs, and read a lot of books about them. Here is just one. I love my usborne books...and such pretty pictures. :)

For this activity we counted dinosaurs and then placed dry beans in the next box to illustrate how many dino's are in the box.

We made dinosaurs out of the letter D. Can you see the D? The girls had a lot of fun with this activity.

Other Worksheets we did:
Tracing the letter D
Words that Start with D