we think that even without us telling you, you will know if this person likes bananas:

and we think you will know if THIS person likes bananas:

we learned about the “no” symbol and i drew some signs that i thought would be familiar to the preschoolers.  turns out, no one knew what the “no smoking” sign was until i told them.  and this was a chance to show that even grown ups might not know how to draw a dog.

then using our paper supplies, we colored our bananas (“kindergarten style”) and showed if we liked them or not…no words needed!

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following our banana work, we sang “apples and bananas” and did some vowel work.  wow, that song gets silly.  our preK afternoon class also read “going on a bear hunt” before we went on a vowel hunt.  but we read it “chapter book” style which felt really grown up.  i drew a book on our calendar to help make sure we didn’t forget to read “chapter 2.”

watch out kindergarten, it’s only october and these kids know their vowels!

when we have a letter of the week, there are always new things related to that letter around the room.  this week we had beads in the playdough to sort by color.

and when the beads are mixed up on the tray, it takes some careful work to sort them out again!

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i bought a set of cardboard letters that we’ll decorate as a class each week.  this week we glued beads on!  this means gluing over and under the beads.  once dry, the big letters get tucked in the ceiling tiles above our circle time rug.

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we had bean bags to toss into a box or at the big “B” drawn on the chalkboard.

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there was ball drawing freehand style and with our spin art machine:

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i found a bag of teeny tiny baskets at the thrift shop (SCORE!!) and they are the perfect size for one bead.  this was a fun and tiny activity.  i was very aware of my own finger muscles…maybe that is a sign of my aging (i turned 39 this week)?

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we also offered precut ball shaped papers, paper to cut (as always) and someone brought us lots of stickers!

we had a ball of a time. : )

just like every year, the season changed!  here in our corner of the world, we are blessed by being able to see the seasons change by watching the leaves.  while we still have quite a few green leaves, they are starting to turn yellow and orange, red and brown.

fake leaves, tongs and scissors fill our tub table with the task of “getting the leaves off the stems.”  hanging some of the leaves from a string attached to our ceiling provides a different angle to work from.

happy fall, all!  (and as one preschool said, “you can also say ‘autumn.'”)

remember all that paint from our golden letter paintings?  well, this week they got cut up into butterfly wings.

then there was stacking in sequential order biggest to smallest.  when a line of glue was made along the center each time and folded just so and let to dry, we had beautiful butterflies by the end of the day!

at that point we did some thinking about butterfly gender and chose “boy” or “girl” to add to the graph.

b is for butterfly!

we did “golden letter” paintings on everyone’s first day of school.  this is the whole “masking tape on posterboard in the shape of their first initials, then painting on top of it, then peeling off the tape.”

however, there was so much paint on these that before we pulled the tape off we put another piece of paper to make a print of it (and get some extra paint off).  once dry, we had 43 pieces of randomly painted paper to use eric carle style at some other time!  goodness, i prefer that to construction paper!