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A sparkly floor, two animals jumping and a bowl of milk in the sky: MONDAY MOON DAY

Our first Moon Day Play Day was a happy one. Read on to find out why the floor was sparkly (and why yours might be as well!), who the two jumping animals are and who thought there was a bowl of milk in the sky. I’m not sure if they noticed but there was a lot of practice in waiting for turns with parts of the project today. Well done, friends! We also had delightful regular play happening in our time together including another impromptu concert! It was special to have future preschoolers visit today…they definitely added a sweetness to our morning.

(Ms Kristin is very excited about the sparkly moon coming her way)

There are clear plastic ornaments in the Tub Table to make full and half moons.

What did you get to shake on your paper after you painted it with glue? Glitter to turn them into shiny full moons. That’s why the floor (and tables, chairs and we) are sparkly! Annelise and Essie delivered glue paint (watered down glue) so we could cover the back of a paper plate.

Then we took turns at the glitter tub to cover all the glue.

Then Mr Petr punched a hole in each moon and Ms Mara helped tie the red string on.

We hung them on the fence to dry…some friends are tall enough to reach on their own!

Who thought there was a bowl of milk in the sky? Little Kitten in the book, Little Kitten’s First Full Moon by Kevin Henkes. For almost the entire book she tried to get to the bowl of milk in the sky when really it was the first full moon she’d seen (they only come once a month, you know!).

We read the story inside and then some friends acted it out on the playground. The higher up they were, the more like the Little Kitten in the tree. In our book, Little Kitten felt scared when she was in the tree but none of our preschooler kittens were.

We had two books today and both had jumping animals! What did the kitten jump off of and what did the cow jump over? The kitten jumped off of the top step of her porch and the cow jumped over the moon.

During our Goodbye Time we looked at pictures in The Neighborhood Mother Goose for Hey Diddle Diddle and Wee Willie Winkie. Ms Kristin made a big mistake because she thought there would be a moon on the Wee Willie Winkie page…and there isn’t! And, that’s like real life when we don’t see the moon even though it is night.

(SIDE NOTE: At our school you can get up and move to a new spot any time you want to! If you can’t see, if you’re crowded or in this case, if you want to go sit by your dear teacher friend. )

Fun Fact:

_{The pages for Hey Diddle Diddle had been hiding in plain sight all morning-on the moon project table!}

_{Some friends said they had indeed noticed it during the morning}

_{(it’s right behind the group of children on a plexiglass stand).}

FLASHBACK FRIDAY: sugar cookies in 2015

This week’s Flashback Friday is from a summer Play Day in July 2015. This definitely doesn’t feel this long ago…I remember it like yesterday! Even Mr Micah was there as a big kid helping out. You don’t see our pictures, but Ms Brenda and I were the teachers then too!

From July 8, 2015:

Today was the first of four summer “play days” at preschool. These days are for last year’s preschool friends, giving us another chance to be together as a 2014-1015 school family. The tricky thing is that they were from different classes, so the first thing we did was figure out who was from what class (red, purple, green and orange…the two blue friends are my kids who were at their own schools last year). These friends had seen each other’s photos all year long on our picture boards and I had fun watching them together.

July 8 is National Sugar Cookie day (who knew!)

First we had work time inside: doing what we do during preschool, plus playing on a skateboard….that was new and had me think it might be a good thing to have more often! We also made cookies out of play dough, snipped yarn to be sprinkles, mixed glue and food coloring in pastry bags for our cookie project, all with a generous amount of giggling.

After circle time we went outside and wrote a recipe for sugar cookies, one of my favorite things to listen to.

Next came the flour, Kleenex and baseball bats. We loosely twisted the Kleenex around a small pile of flour to use as balls. There was also a complete free for all with throwing flour at each other. I was too busy getting doused with flour to take pictures so some after shots will have to do:

We stayed outside and decorated mini sugar cookies, 12 shades of frosting, two kinds of sprinkles and a vague boundary on how many cookies to use. Some made extras to take home, some didn’t eat any at all.

We finished our day inside with water drinks, clean up, and getting all the pillows and cushions we could find for song and story time…it was a sweet play day indeed.

A dog named Moose, a jumping bear and melting hay bales: THURSDAY TEDDY BEAR DAY

The day went quickly and easily as we played together and did some Teddy Bear things.

What did the bear do when they went to bed? Jumped on the bed! We talked about this and more while adding color to our Teddy Bear rhyme pictures. In a project like this*, we take it as opportunity to talk about colors and connections to their own lives…does your body jump? Do you have a bed? Have you ever used a light switch?

This friend turned some of the bears into pigs!

“I’m making them green because that’s what you can do when you are coloring.”

*“like this” means a worksheet or some craft that takes very little creativity or critical thinking. Just like adults who color for relaxation, we nurture this as a relaxing time to add color (never suggesting one stays in lines or anything like that) and slow down.

Where did Ms Kristin put some animal crackers during Circle Time? On the big dry erase board! We were trying to decide which animal cracker shape was supposed to be a bear. We used the consensus model which means we needed 100% agreement on BEAR or NOT A BEAR. Our plan was that if even one person thought it could be a bear, we kept it in the “QUESTION MARK” section.

The mystery widened with every cracker shape!

At the end, there were three animal cracker shapes left there. Then we read the package and discovered that the company doesn’t list what the different shapes are supposed to represent. What a mystery! A very yummy mystery! With no trans fat or cholesterol!

When we were eating outside, we found one more shape-not a bear, though!

What is the funny thing about who brought the gummy bears? Grandma Bonnie bought them for us but she wasn’t at preschool so we said thank you really loudly in the classroom. Then when we were outside eating our snack and playing, Grandma Bonnie stopped by!

Along with the 3 gummy bears each, we had our animal crackers and watermelon (Ms Kristin forgot she bought another watermelon last week so we had extra!) with water play on the side.

What happened to the hay bales? One friend called all the friends over when he discovered that the hay bales had melted away! Another friend thought they had died. We all agreed that the hay bales were different.

I can see how “melted away” makes sense!

Ms Kristin knew the true story: Since the hay bales were almost all the way squished and getting loose, Grandpa Kelven put them all in his truck. It was a big job because they were falling apart! Then he took them home to put on his and Ms Brenda’s garden! We have the perfect circle to remind us of where they used to be. Thank you, Grandpa Kelven!

Who came to visit at the end of the day? Henry’s dog named Moose (middle name is Tiger)! Moose is 8 years old and very friendly. Henry walked him around so we could let Moose sniff our hands. We found out that he is an omnivore and likes to go on the white chair at his house. He sleeps in a brown bed in mom’s room and drinks water.

This is when they are saying either “woof” or “bark”…ha ha ha

We needed a lot of body parts to sing thank you…I used all my limbs and head to sing thank you (a hand for Henry, a hand for Moose, a foot for Emmet, a foot for Eleanor and a head for Ms Leah). We do thank you very much!

A cave, a lost watch and eating bears: MONDAY – TEDDY BEAR DAY

We had a full house for another summer Play Day exploring teddy bears. Read on to find out about the cave, the lost watch and eating bears!

What did we turn the Sound Tunnel into? A bear cave! At one point I counted 14 bears inside. It also made a perfect stage for an impromptu band.

What did you play inside? Our summer preschool days are an hour shorter than during the school year but we get a lot done. There were games played, cars found, robots built, songs played on lap harps and ukulele.

One of these friends had their very first day at preschool today.

We have a card game based on the book The Little Mouse, the Red Ripe Strawberry and the Big Hungry Bear. There were friends looking for the matching illustrations between the cards and the books.

What did Sophia lose because her cats played with it? Her new watch! We got out a favorite cat book to see if we could find cats climbing up on furniture…oh yes, we did! Then hooray! Her daddy texted Ms Kristin to report that he found the watch in a basket! Silly kitties!

What color did you make your bears? We brought out the marker baskets and added color to the drawings of a teddy bear doing all sorts of things. You can print your own copy if you want to color one as well:

Who brought our snack today? Grandma Bonnie! She brought us Teddy Grahams and gummy bears! That’s kind of a joke snack….what did you eat for snack today? Teddy bears! What?!?!? Thank you, Grandma Bonnie.

Mr Petr got our hoses hooked up for play before and after our picnic snack. Thank you, Mr Petr!

Who is baby Jonathan? CPR/FIRST AID/AED

We named our adult mannequin Chad (not pictured) and our baby mannequins were all named Jonathan (our instructor unknowingly named him after my little brother).

After a morning of in person training I’m re-certified in Adult and Pediatric CPR/First Aid/AED for another two years. While I’m grateful that in almost 30 years of preschool I’ve never had to utilize these skills at preschool, I am glad to feel more ready if needed. I highly recommend the American Red Cross classes in Wichita. Ms Jimenez is phenomenal.

I took this picture with my preschool friends in mind. Items clockwise:

Jonathan the pretend baby. The plastic over the face is to keep my germs off of the doll. There is a button on the diaper that turns it on and when CPR is done properly there are lights above it that turn green.
The little circle thing is the rubber band that held a roll of gauze.
A “Fisher Price” looking practice AED. It teaches us how to attach the pads, evaluate the heart rate and administer a shock if needed.
A real face shield to use when administering breaths. This keeps germs away from each other. The blue circle is a valve that lets the air through.
The pile of white things is gauze and bandages. We practiced putting pressure on pretend cuts and wrapping gauze over the pretend cut. We learned to do a fancy loop to tie it.
The blueish-purplish things are gloves that I wore the whole time. I learned the safest way to take them off and it was a little bit different than I always did.
The empty bag is what held the gauze, bandage, gloves and face shield. Do you see a little red cross on it? That is the logo for the American Red Cross where I took my class.