Rr Robot day- preschool style

Robot day was so much fun!   We have so much fun at preschool anyway, and my pre-K class is really delightful, but this was an extra enjoyable day.  We spent most of the time building our robots, but here's a little game we sent out on the table at arrival.  I found these robot erasers at Target last summer and picked them up in anticipation.  The kids ended up stacking and sorting the erasers in stead.

We also had out the bolt toy.

We read one robot book, If I had a Robot by Dan Yaccarino. 

We did the same craft from last, red rectangle robots.

Then I divided the kiddos up and explained the procedures with the materials and supplies.  My co-teacher, the parents, and I brought in boxes and recycled type materials, water bottle lids, plastic bowls, paper towel tubes, yarn, ribbon, stickers, etc.  All the teachers had stayed after one day and wrapped the boxes and pringles cans in bulletin board paper of various colors.

Our leader for the day brought both her mom and dad, so with my co-teacher, we were able to have 3 teams of robot builders.  This freed me up to deliver supplies and assist when needed.

We went through a lot of packing tape while they built and built.

In the end, we ended up with three pretty cool robots.

I had hoped to get to the Rr journal page at the end of class, but for whatever reason we didn't.  I used it the next morning though and they all drew their robots.

Here is one of the other classes robots... Take a look again out ours... then theirs.  Hmmmm.  There's have a certain prettiness that our don't. 

We didn't have this snack this year, but here's the snack I took for Lou's leader day last year on Rr day.  It's two boxes of raisins, a juice box, an applesauce, and two pretzel rods.  It was more food than the kids needed and more costly than a preschool snack should be, but it was too cute!

Rr Robot snack and Lou's leader day

Recently, it was Rr robot day and it was Lou's leader day. I was so pumped because I had seen a fun robot snack and knew immediately what I wanted to make. The mom who was the leader in my classroom saw it too and they brought the same thing.   Pinterest!  It's two little boxes of raisins, a juice box, an applesauce, and two pretzle sticks wrapped in plastic wrap.  I didn't glue it all together, we just stacked them when we got there.

Lou gave his teachers a little treat, dried apples.

I made up these little bag tags using an image I found on pinterest and then messed around with it a bunch. 

Here was the craft, red rectangle robots.  I talked about process verse product a little the other day.  Process art is something I feel pretty strongly about for little ones, but I also think kiddos can get a good bit of pride from a nice looking finished work.  I sat with the kids during this art project while I gave them the directions; to make some kind of red rectangle robot, the rest was up to them.  Here are a few of them:

My favorite was the vacuum robot, of course after Lou's red robot on the right.

Lou loves leader day!  He loves leading the class in the morning routine.

The pledge is his favorite part.  I hear him say it in the car anytime we drive by a flag.  We live in a patriotic neighborhood.  There's a lot of pledging in the car.

Lou has two of the sweetest teachers.  Here he is sharing his huskie dog and his raccoon during his show and tell. 

These robots are not something my class did or even Lou's class.  The third class in our hallway made these adorable recycled robots.  I really want to make them next year.  They turned out so cute.  Another reason for me to start hoarding!

I've got some sewing projects coming up soon to share, I just haven't had as much time to sit and work on my blog lately.  Lately, I'd rather spend that time doing the things I like to blog about!

Rr rainbow day- preschool style

Rr Rainbow day was the middle of the winter so we didn't have sunshine, let alone a rainbow.  I didn't  get a chance to get to everything I had ready.  I didn't even get a chance to read either book I had ready.  It was math day, so we focused on some some fun math activities.  What Makes a Rainbow is a little bit of a little kid book, but it's cute. 

Then we did some addition practice with partners. We talked about what two things God uses to make a rainbow- rain and sun.  I paired the kids up specifically with partners that would complement them.  One partner was the rain drops (blue glass beads) and the other was the sun (yellow/orange pom poms).  I had several sentence strips ready with different addition problems.  We went through them very slowly, first having the rain drop friend add the correct number of raindrops, then having the sunshine friend check,  then the sunshine friend added the correct number of sun-rays and then the raindrop friend checked their work. Then we added the pieces all together and decided on an answer. I filled in the answers as we came up with them.  This was a fun activity and really could be used with many levels.  We are very much at the 'intro' to math facts level. 

  Then, we played a rainbow number bingo.  A few weeks ago we did some informal early assessments with the kids and checked their ability to recognize different numbers and letters.  I used that information to see which numbers each child needed to work on.  I made each child's sheet with the numbers they needed.  Overall, I ended up with 24 different colors/numbers to use on the sheets.  A child that needed to work on 4, say got a few 4s on their paper in a few colors.  None of our friends were not able to recognize the number 1, so I simply didn't include it.  A child that got them all right simply got an assortment of the larger numbers.  If I was doing this activity with a much smaller number I could have had them help program their own sheets prior to playing.  This would have let us practice the skill (number recognition) twice. 

We also worked on this activity with partners.  I paired them up with partners paying attention to make sure each group had a partner who could write bigger numbers.   The kids took their sheet and a cup of skittles (for touching, not eating) and worked somewhere around the room.  They laid the skittles out on the different bands of the rainbow, then counted, and recorded the number.  Of course I gave them a few clean ones to eat later. 

We didn't have time to get to this rainbow rhymes activity, but I'm saving it and hope to get to it another day.   It's a class book based on an idea in a Mailbox magazine.

The inside reads, "Rainbow Rhyme by ______.   My favorite color of the rainbow is ______.  It's the color of ____, you see, and the color of ______.  Yippee!"   I was planning to help them complete the written part and have them draw and color an appropriate picture to match.   I love yellow, and all kitchens should be yellow.

We also signed and sang along to Signing Times, Colors of the Rainbow.  It's from the series Signing Times, which is what we used with out own kids when we were signing a lot.  In the song they name the colors (switching blue and purple for rhyming reasons) and list an item or two that was that color.  First, I said how they were switching the colors in the song (and switched them on my paper rainbow on the flannel board), then we practiced all the signed we would be using. Finally, we sang along with the song.

I brought Bee's rainbow prism along, but there wasn't a bit of sunshine.  I didn't even get it out.

I set out this 'roses' on shapes activity for a few friends to work on at arrival time.   I don't think anyone played with this, but I had picked up a package of clearance roses for 10 cents and wanted to use them.

Last year I did some other things on a rainbow day with the younger class, but I apparently didn't get it posted here, because I can't find it anywhere.  I'll have to search for it later.

thumb print reindeer

Just a short today. We didn't make this, but it's construction looks easy enough. Bee received this little thumb print reindeer tag on a little bag of 'reindeer feed' (oatmeal and glitter) as a little favor from her school Christmas party.  I love how simple and sweet it is.  

 If we had a brown ink pad I think we'd make a bunch up. But, I'm not going shopping this week if I have any control over the situation!  I went out Saturday and was in the most frustrating traffic mess.  Even Bee's road rage was coming out!  She threatened to get out and spank every one of the driver's bottoms if they didn't move!