Valentines Party!!!

Finally we were able to have our Valentine's Day class.  I want to express my gratitude for your understanding.  You never can know when these things will happen.  My very first job is as a mom and I am grateful that you all appreciate that.  Roman is good now, his gut will take time to fully heal but he'll be fine.  I have definitely gained a certain reverence for constipation and the havoc it can cause to the body.  

Anyway, we had a wonderful day.  It went by so fast.  Again, I had way too much.  Next time I'll spread the activities out better.  Here are the few pictures I got from our day together.  

Here are a couple of our circle time activities.  We sang this song and read this book.  We also watched this little video about Lambert, the sheepish Lion and talked about love.  

We ripped and cut to make a Valentine for our moms.  

We hope you liked them!

In individual instruction we made foot print hearts.  

We had centers. Then we came downstairs to make our Valentine treat.  Dipped pretzels with sprinkles.  We talked about how a pretzel is shaped like a heart.  They loved it.  

They ate them up happily!

We had a wonderful day.  We traded our valentines and headed home.  :)

2-9 : Valentines Week!

H is for heart!  We had a really fun day today. In circle time we sang songs, read books about Valentines Day and learned about the letter H.  We discussed the meaning of the word love and played several games.  One was a thumbs up or down game with cards - do you love ice cream? Do you love bumble bees?  Then the children would give me a thumbs up or down and we categorized the cards.  Here are some pictures of the rest of our day.  :)

We finished our ducks on the pond craft from last week and did a letter H writing practice sheet.  Then we made heart necklaces.  

They were so cute talking about who they were planning on giving them to.  

I told them that they could eat the broken ones and suddenly there were broken fruit loops everywhere.  Lol!

Then we went upstairs for centers.  I have changed them out.  The kids were sad to see that our cow was gone but excited at the new activities.  

I leave a few of the same centers out all the time so that they don't get overwhelmed but then replace a few to follow the theme. 

This was a fun center based on pattern differentiation.  They have to sort the patterned hearts into the right bags.  

This center is ABA and AABAA patterns.  

The kids were glad to have the kitchen and dress-ups back.  This type of "real life" play is very important.  In Montessori it is called the Practical Living area.  

In the sensory area I tried something that looked fabulous on Pinterest and turned out looking like an anatomy class experiment.  Lol!  These are supposed to be pretty frozen hands with candy inside.  

The children use warm water to thaw the hands and reveal the candy.  Yup, the ones on Pinterest looked WAY better.  Oh well!  The kids were interested.  

In individual instruction we did some cutting practice.  Please keep working on this at home along with practicing writing their name.  

After we cleaned up from centers we decorated a heart with Valentine stickers.  

This is fun but is also really good for developing fine motor skills.  

So cute!  

Remember next week is our Valentines party.  Please send valentines to share and something for your child to keep theirs in.  Thanks!

2-4 : last day of farm theme!

Q is for quack!  We learned about ducks today.  I taught the kids a new song called, 5 little ducks.  After we learned it we acted it out.  It's a great math song.  

This is our circle time board where we discuss the shape, color, number, season, and day of the week.  

These are Montessori letter cards.  The letter has the texture of sand paper.  The children take turns tracing it with their finger.  

We went to the table and discussed the habitat of a duck.  Then we painted ponds for ducks to swim in.  They weren't dry by the end so we'll finish that up next time.  

Upstairs in individual instruction we made  duck puppets.  They did a great job.  

Centers. Each one focuses on a Montessori skill - language, math, dramatic play, sensory integration, etc.  

We went to the park to play and have our snack but it was a bit too cold so we hurried back and sat around the fire to warm up.  

Another great day!

2-2 : farm theme

I decided to extend the farm theme one more week because there were just too many more things I wanted to do with them.  Also the kids are feeling some anxiety about Bessie (our cow) going away.  Lol.  Anyway here are some snapshots of our day.   I'm afraid I didn't get very many today. 

It was cold outside so we started our day with playdough instead of outside.  

After everyone arrived we had circle time, music and story time. 

Then we went over to the table for a little discussion and experiment.  We discussed milk and then tasted 3 different colors of milk, decided which one we liked most and made a graph.  

Then upstairs to centers.  

In individual instruction we made toilet paper roll cows.  Cutting with scissors is something they all need to work on.  If you could have them practice at home that would be great!

We put on some farm themed puppet shows today.  :)