I've been meaning to share this item from our preschool graduation because it's absolutely the most precious thing ever. These paper chains are waiting to go on stage. I couldn't find a picture of them onstage, but use your imagination.... Each class has a long paper chain being held up by three pained dowel rods. Each teacher wrote a prayer for each child on a strip and a separate prayer on a separate strip for their family. These were organized and grouped by child with a white link in between.
We carried them in with the kids as they walked in for graduation and then they sat on stage behind the kids during most of the program. After the program they were taken to the hallway so the families could take their child's links home. I cut out the ribbon like room labels on my silhouette.
There are literally hundreds of prayers written out specifically for each little friend and their family. It made for a really cute onstage decoration, a neat way to minister to the attendees at our graduation (many were surprised to learn that each link held a handwritten prayer from the teachers- we love our kiddos!) and a sweet memento to take home and save forever.
We went to a friend's birthday party last week and we took a really fun gift. Our little buddy likes to play restaurant and loves when we loan him our sensory bins. We combined the two and made an ice-cream parlor kit.
He loved it! Like, really loved it!
Most of the items came from the dollar store or hobby lobby. If I was doing this for preschool or my own kids, I could have reused things from home and it would have been cheaper to put together.
Here's what we included (and approximate prices in case you're figuring out if this will be affordable for your kiddos)
1 large bag of white pom poms (Hobby Lobby {HL} $2.99)
2 medium bags of brown pom poms (HL .99 each) -I had wanted pink too, but had to put some back- I was going over budget)
2 small bags tiny multi colored pom poms for sprinkles (99 cents each HL)
2 bananas ($3.00 each from HL in the floral arranging area)
ice-cream scooper (25 cents from goodwill)
1 package (2 in pkg) of baked potato dishes for banana split containers (Dollar Tree {DT} 1$)
1 pack (3 in pack) little blue bowls (DT 1$)
1 pack multi colored baby silverware (DT $1)
1 birthday shot glass (DT 1$)
1 large bowl to hold ice-cream (DT -wedding area 1$)
1 bunch of fake flowers (DT 1$)
plastic salt and pepper shakers for sprinkles container (DT $1)
Red pom poms and plastic jar- from home added at last minute for cherries)
frame from IKEA $1
menu cards- I made myself at home using Word.
If I was making this for preschool, I would not let them pour out the tiny pom poms. It was time consuming to pick them all out to reset.
Other than the free for all with colored M&Ms at the party I think the icecream was the most popular item! At one point the birthday boy was missing and he was found up in his room playing ice-cream parlor.
We hatched butterflies at preschool again this spring. I've talked about hatching butterflies before (here, here, and here) but I wanted to share a new craft. (Here are my plans from butterfly day.)
The kids so enjoy this activity.
This year we got to write about them in our preschool journals.
Here's the craft. We painted the kid's first hand green with blue fingers for legs and stamped that a few times on a large paper. The on the other hand, we painted the hand red and the pointer and ring finger a purplish brown color. The eyes and nose were added later. I think they turned our super cute.
One of my all time favorite favorite books is The Giant Jam Sandwich. It's one of those books I've probably read 300 times. I have found newer copies at yard sales, but I like my copy. It's mine from when I was little and it's not in great shape.
Anyway. I love it and I read it to my preschoolers. Then we made butter.
Last year, I asked the parent helper to bring homemade bread in because I knew she'd love to. This year I asked the parent helper to bring bread and let her decide what I meant. We ended up with store bought bread and it worked all the same. I brought the jam. I have a large batch of two years ago low sugar (blah) strawberry jam to use up.
The kids made butter in baby food jars. This is the third year I've done it this way and it works well. The glass jars are becoming harder to find, but I have a large hoard in my basement. I used them for applesauce in the fall at preschool too. I really have to clean them well, my grandpa used to store nails in them.
About 2T heavy whipping cream and a dash of salt are placed in a baby food jar along with a marble. The lid is attached securely and I wrap a paper towel around the whole thing and the kids shake the jar. And shake and shake and shake. I played some shaking and jumping songs to help keep them moving. There's always someone who pops the top up and it leaks, but otherwise it's pretty easy.
They shake until they can't hear the marble. They brought it to me and many had to be sent back for more shaking. They get a little tired. It takes about 5 minutes of kid shaking. Some of the kids end up with a whipped butter, but if they shake through that, it really does resemble a traditional butter. This year we did have one jar break. That marble popped right on out. I've never had that happen before but I assume there was an issue with the jar prior to our shaking.
Bee's teacher retired this year. Everyone should get the pleasure of spending the year with a teacher like her!
She loves Bee and I think Bee was her favorite, but I suspect every child in her class felt the same thing.
I pretty much want to be her when I grow up!
Perhaps some of her kindness and gentleness rubbed off on Bee...
I'm saving this note for a long day!
This came in return.
(I love you because you are special)
preschool journals again... and finally. I was sharing them sort of along the way and then I'd get behind and have to group them. Now here's the last chunk of preschool journals. You can see the others here.
N- We traced our phone numbers.
O: My O became __________
P: Me in my pajamas. There was a lightly traced body outline and the kids completed this on pajama party day.
Q: We had like two snow days and or something and missed the Q days. We didn't have a Q journal page. Oops.
R: Our robot- from robot day.
S- Spots on S
T: tracing letters
U- They signed their name under the table, upside down.
V: My favorite vegetable
and then there was this one....
W: Worm observation from W for worm day
X: X marks the spot.
Y: What is yellow?
Z: My favorite Zoo animal.
this was not the only zoo dinosaur....
At Easter, we did an Easter Egg:
Many of the kids liked to do extra work in their journals:
This funny girl drew lots of similar pictures and always had her brother wearing a dress... I asked about it and she just laughed and laughed....
another poor brother in a dress.
When we hatched our caterpillars, the kids made observations in their journals.
And on silly sock day they drew their socks:
The last week of school, the wonderful complete journals were sent home. Hopefully they'll be a treasured item that's saved for years and years.
