U is for Umbrella

 

 The kids were thrilled to be back in school.  New Fish kept clapping her hands and saying: "I just love love love preschool."  We talked about weather and the letter U today.  We read out of The Berenstein Bears Big Book of Nature, Razzle Dazzle Ruby, The Snowy Day, Under, and Cloudy With A Chance Of Meatballs.

For music time we sang Rain Rain Go Away, Sally Go Round The Sun, It's Raining It's Pouring, and Once There Was A Snowman.  We listened to the Yellow Umbrella Book, one of my favorites because it's just images set to music.  The kids always love it.

We looked at pictures of all different kinds of weather and tried to discuss them in depth.  For example when we looked at rain we did a little game to think of all the ways rain helps us.  When we did tornadoes and hurricanes we talked about weather safety.

Since we all have had some runny noses from the cold weather we practiced blowing our noses and throwing away the tissues and washing hands if needed.  We also talked about putting our arms over our mouth if we need to cough or sneeze.  Nobody was sick- just a household skill that is necessary.

 We did file folder games to practice counting, sequencing, pattern making and sorting by hot vers. cold.  I used some of the printables available here.We also introduced graphs for the first time and the kids have a weather graph they are going to make over the next few weeks.  We did some pre-writting tracing activities to help them work on their small motor skills.

 We did the absolute coolest science experiment together that was great for their little fine motor skills as well.  We did a cloud illustration.  I got the instructions here.  We just filled jars partway with water and put a shaving cream "cloud" on top.  Then we dripped liquid watercolors onto the clouds (you could use food colored water too) and when the clouds got too wet it would "rain" in the jar.  It was awesome.  We did it again as soon as Red Fish got home from school. 

We traced the letter U in fingerpaint.  We will definitely do this again with another letter. It was very well received and the kinesthetic things with the letters seem to really help them remember.

 

Next we did a weather themed art project with rain, snow, sun and clouds based on a project Red Fish did in preschool.  We painted two of the panels on a sheet of paper folded in fourths.  The the kids glued on doilies for snow, paper and glitter for sun, cotton balls for clouds and finger painted rain drops.  It was a messy day today.

We almost ran out of time to play with our sensory bin because we had so many projects.  We will have to make sure they have more time next week because they absolutely love this new medium.  We used dried peas this time and it had a Noah's ark/jungle theme.  The kids like the way the peas feel so much they ended up pulling out all of the toys and just using the scoops and funnels for the most part.  I have a feeling the girls will be using this bin a lot!

Red Fish has been doing a lot of math and science at home lately.  She has been learning about water and plants and put celery in blue water last week to watch it soak up into the stalk.  We are trying it this week with white flowers.  Hopefully we will have a rainbow of flowers soon.