transportation day

I don't know why I can't seems to get all my preschool things photographed and written about.  I have some fun things from dinosaur week and jungle week.   I did get some pictures taken of this week though.  It was transportation theme.  It ended up being one of the better weeks so far.  The kids were really good and into our circle time, so that's what made the difference.  Sometimes I'm so excited about a week and then they are busy playing with each others shoelaces and hiding under the table (or licking the wall as I had at the beginning of the year) to participate.

This book is really cute.  It's called Alphabeep and my library had three copies, so it must be a popular one.  It's an ABC book and I pulled out of my bag the corresponding vehicle with each letter. Lou had most of them at home in his car collection.  A few we went without although if I had called around to the boys in class I probably could have collected them all.  My book had page S missing and I didn't realize it until late the night before I read it.  Oops.

The art project today was a fast one. The kids had cut out pieces to glue together to assemble the stop light.  If I had chosen the craft I think I would have had the kids paint with cars to make tracks.  Lou and I have been slowly sneaking new hot wheel cars into the big room at preschool and the boys love it. There is some coveting going on with the new cars though.

We talked about how most land vehicles have wheels and tested out some items to see what rolled.  We tested about a dozen items and sorted them.  We decided that round things rolled best.  If we had had more time, I would have done the same with what floats and what sinks.

Right after the story, we make a graph about how you might like to go home from school that day.  We have picture cards of the kids with velcro on the back.  They have been great for using to make graphs on our flannel board.  The most kids wanted to ride a train home.  There was lots of good questioning with the graph.  I know there were a lot of choices for them here, but there were so many fun ways to get home.

This is one of the activities we had out for their time after snack.  It is from prekinders.

Another after snack table activity.  This one is from 1+1+1=1 preschool packs.

We are really buckling down on working with Lou on his letters, so this one will get used a home this month.  Also from 1+1+1=1.

Another one that Lou will be working on at home this month too.  Same source as the last two.

This was fun.  It was the way I opened circle time. The felt scene is all sewn together and then the little boats, cars, trains, and planes were passed out to the kids.  They sorted them into land, sea or air.  Some kids were trying to be funny and put them in the wrong places, but for the sake of sorting, I asked everyone choose the right spots.  After snack, I let them be funny and put them wherever. 

The March box came out today.  I love this color themed box with eye spy cards.  The idea for a color themed box came from Counting Coconuts.

I wasn't sure how the kids would do with a grid game.  I made myself up the large one as an example.  I gave them each a blue sheet and then had them take it home to play there too.  I rolled the number cube and then we covered up that many boxes.  If nothing else this was an exercise in following directions and they got to hear good math words.  A few kids are pretty advanced with their math and were able to answer a lot of questions about how many all together, how many boxes were left, etc.  We used cheerios as little tires for covering the boxes.  At home, I used centimeter cubes. I wanted to use colored wheel pasta, but didn't come across that idea until too late.  These graphics are from prekinders.

I'm all for having to make things for preschool.  I get to use them at school, Lou uses them at home, Bee plays school with them and then they usually take a trip to the nature center for my early arrivals too.  They get a lot of use.

I'm linking up at some of these fine parties.