a silver lining of having to move furniture every friday in preparation for using the space as a church community on sunday is the wide open space we create.  if we do this at our regular end of the day clean up, we take advantage of the big room feel.

this week:  ice skating on paper plates.  by the time i got off my “skates” to get the camera, we’d moved on to a child invented technique of hands and knees skating.

mr rob would start the music, we’d skate.  he’d stop the music, we’d stop.  good times.

 

 

this valentine corner of ours isn’t necessarily unique to our classroom.  we always have our “project shelf” stocked with supplies and when a different supply is requested, it’s usually offered…but this corner feels special.

maybe it’s all the doilies.  or stickers.  or envelopes.  or having the glitter table so close.  or free access to glue while chanting a tip from the comments last week:  a dot!  a dot!  a dot does a lot!

whatever it is, our floor is covered with glitter, the tables are bumpy with dried glue, and there are oodles of creations.

families, you’re welcome (…i say while cringing a bit knowing the amount of loose glitter that must be all over the place).

 

oh, goodness, we’ve had a good time the last two days.

as we’ve been anticipating, we’re having a whole week of valentine fun.  this way everyone gets in on it.  children are invited to bring valentines.  we save them in the teacher kitchen until our “party” towards the end of the day.  after all, we needed time for our recycled yogurt tub valentine holders to dry from all the glitter and glue.

then we bring each stack of valentines to the circle and find out who brought them.

then teachers help pass them out, there are a lot of ooooohs and aaaaaaahs and thank yous and even a few i love yous.

we’ll do this every day this week and i bet it won’t get old.

 

we’re spending feb 14-18 celebrating valentine’s day, but we got a head start last friday.

 

it was q week and part of our day was quilt exploration.  earlier in the week we used some precut thrifted squares to make 9 patch quilt blocks in any fabric/color pattern desired.

this was after seeing a beautiful collection of carefully labeled quilt blocks from a preschool grandma:

thank you again, mara’s grandma!

 

by friday we kicked it up a notch.  the children were given a template for another 9 patch quilt block.  but this time there were Rs and Qs in the squares.

R meant RED and Q meant QUESTION MARK which meant I DON’T KNOW WHAT YOU’RE GOING TO CHOOSE FROM THIS PILE OF RECYCLED VALENTINES SOMEONE DONATED.

the process and the result was fun.  again i was surprised at how excited some were at doing a very concrete step-by-step project.

after both teachers and a lot of preschoolers feeling sick much of last week, we’re gearing up for a very special week.

we hung a quilt (what would i do without our dropped ceiling tiles?!?!) and added bells to the corners.

this means that when the quilt is hit, there is a quiet jingle sound.  jump, kids, jump!