M is for Mask (and a little V is for Valentine)

Unfortunately, my children and I got very sick the first week of February and I couldn't have preschool on the 9th. I tried rescheduling for the 11th, but we were so sick that my husband had to take off work to care for us! I had to cancel school again for the 16th, but we were finally better and held a makeup class on the afternoon of the 18th. So this day we studied the letter M, but we also did a Valentine craft at the end of class and exchanged Valentines because all the kids had been soooo looking forward to it!

We started off by mushing some Crayola Model Magic clay.

The kids colored it with whatever color marker they wanted,

and then mixed it in. We tried not to overmix it so that it would have a marbled effect!

We mushed it flat and poked eye holes to make Mardi Gras masks.

I wanted to work on some math concepts with the kids, so we did this worksheet where we measured how many mice the moose, moon and monkey were. You can print the pdf here. You just need to cut out the mouse measuring stick and number squares.

I then had the kids color and cut out some muffins. There were paper plates with numbers on them and I had the kids count out that number of muffins and put them on the plate.

Our snack was in that ziploc bag on the table and it was a big hit . . .

Monkey Munch! (You can find the recipe here)

The kids worked on weaving a Valentine mailbox and then passed out their Valentines.

Most of them didn't look this perfect, but Kynan had a little help from his mom ;)

Here are the kids modeling their masks!

G is for Groundhog

On February 2nd we learned about the letter G. We started off with an opening ceremony for our Games by parading our Olympic torches around.

The first event was a sled pull which I unfortunately didn't get pictures of. Actually, a video would have been hilarious :)

Next, we did a (pompom) snowball toss.

Then we did some hula hoop hopping.

And finally, a game of hot and cold to find the glove.

After that, we started our groundhog craft by cutting grass to be the ground element.

We were pretty hungry by that point, so we ate our snack of Golden Graham Groundhog Mound Globs (Indoor S'mores).

The kids then colored the Groundhogs (which I found here) and we assembled the craft so they could pop up out of the ground to find out if they see their shadow.

I told the story of the Three Billygoats Gruff. The kids colored this picture of the goats and drew their own troll. Here is the pdf of the Billygoat coloring page.

I loved Kynan's troll!

Next, we got gross by sticking our hands in potting soil and getting it in our cups.

We planted grass seeds so we could grow some grass.

Just before they had to go home, we had our medals ceremony and all the kids won gold! Well, chocolate gold coin medals, anyway :)

O is for Ocean

On January 26th we learned about the letter O. We started out making O shapes with our bodies.

Then I had the kids practice cutting with scissors to make the legs of an octopus.

After the legs were cut, we stuck O stickers (hole reinforcements) on the eyes, then turned them over and stuck them on the legs for suction cups!

I rolled and stapled them, then had the kids curl the tentacles around a pencil. They turned out so cute! Here is the jpg file if you would like to print this project.

Oh, my! Another great crazy pose for Christian!

We then worked on ocean scenes. They glued on sandpaper sand,

cutouts of jellyfish, sharks, and starfish, pipe cleaner seaweed, and goldfish crackers.

For snack, we spread orange marmalade flavored frosting on oatmeal cookies. Delish!

We read the book Olivia Helps With Christmas because I couldn't find our copy of Olivia or my favorite, Olivia...And the Missing Toy.

We then used cups to stamp the Olympic rings on our paper flags,

and colored "fire" for our Olympic torches. We'll use these the next week for our Olympic games when we're studying the letter G.

Q is for Quilt and I is for Igloo

January 12th I combined Q and I weeks because the elementary kids were out of school for a teacher workday on the 19th and we took off too. We started by painting puffy paint snowmen with Q-tips.



The kids had a lot of fun and ended up with snowmen that looked a bit more like blizzards with a carrot and pieces of coal swirling in them! They were really great!!

Here was my example--comparatively a little boring :)

Next, we worked on paper quilts.

We used our Q-tips again to spread the glue.

For snack, we switched to the letter I and made igloos out of marshmallows, frosting and ice cream cones.

We read the books Guess How Much I Love You and I Love You Stinkyface. And because it was just the cousins who made it to preschool that day, we had extra free time with lots of dressing up!

P is for Party

On January 5th, I first let the kids watch how the hot air popper popped popcorn for the party.

The kids said they didn't like the plain popcorn, but it was still hard to stop them from eating it! (Great crazy face, Christian! You always do your best to not look boring in the pictures!)

We started our party with a craft: paper plate penguins.

We then played "place the party hat on the person"

and "drop the puppy in the pot".

Here we are enjoying our snack of pink popcorn and punch!

We made the three little pigs and the big bad wolf as popsicle stick puppets. The pigs had pompom noses and the wolf had pipe cleaner arms.

We didn't get to it during preschool, but later Christian helped me place pennies on the new year!