with a duct tape snake at circle time, we welcomed cooper,  a real snake, back to the classroom.

after brainstorming some snake habitat facts, we drew pictures.

i guess it had been a while since we drew pictures at the same time with the same goal in mind.  i was amazed at the work.  after drawing their snake habitat, we added a little green duct tape snake.

and trust that i spend quite a bit of time before hand reminding preschoolers of the development of drawing…scribbling is good. and valid. and real.

we also had a fake snake who got to swim in paint and then dance around our paper.

good snake goodness.

can preschoolers bring toys from home?  yes.

can they play with them during the day?  yes.

what if they don’t want to share?  well….it depends.  some toys are their “lovies” and we don’t expect them to be shared.  but when it is another toy, we invite the preschooler to share it or save it in their cubby. both options are just as good.  children are allowed to save their own things in their cubbies and great effort goes into helping them feel empowered in that choice.

but let me tell you there is a lot of sharing that goes on.   one of our main goals as a preschool is to ease the transition from home to preschool, from parent to teacher.  quite simply, if bringing something from home can assist in that transition, that’s an easy thing!  plus, there are some pretty interesting toys out there that we get to see. : )

thanks to technology, i could provide more accurate information on our donated styrofoam planets.

we’ve been enjoying our letters from our pen pals.

looking at the writing was fascinating to us.

 

then it was time to write our pen pals back.

they asked us what we like to do at home and we had a lot of ideas.

we looked at their blog together and then wrote a group letter…full of love.

finding out that most of our pen pals speak chinese and that ms. wendi is learning chinese, we tried “google translate.”

now THAT was a good time.  i highly recommend it.  especially if you turn on the audio feature.

pastor renee works upstairs and a couple days a week she brings her baby with her.  i snuck up to get him for show and tell one day.  i even hid him under a blanket and gave clues.

there was no letter of the week this week so we could bring anything.  after we figured out the first letter sound, we put a sticky note on the item.

then this sweet baby fell asleep and took a nap at circle time while we ate snack.

and oh, joy.  two new babies in our extended school family.

mr rob’s new baby, daphne.

mara’s new brother, jude.

these baby moments bring such wonder and joy to our classroom.  thank you, families!