Practicing letters

Last week was our "Transportation theme week" and beside doing lots of fun things with my little friends like we always do, I had a writing center in the morning ready for them.I printed a cute page I found with cars on it and simply slipped it into a page protector, I had some dry erase markers and letters.This center really sparked the interested in writing practice. I usually have alphabet puzzles, sand, and other types of hands on activities for the children to learn the letters but this new idea was really a hit.Some of them  are really good at forming letters and some are still writing letter-like symbols, but I told them to do the best they can and they did. 

Polar bear craft

"Puffy paint polar bear" 

For this craft we used shaving cream, white glue, blue construction paper, wiggle eyes and black construction paper for the nose.

It is very fun to paint with this mix, at one point one little girl said "Miss Aymee, it feels like marshmallows". She started using her fingers to paint and was really engaged investigating.  

                             

Children's art

Process:  It's all about the engagement, the exploration, the experiment. Process is an open-ended experience. It's you and the media and there are no right or wrong answers. It's  go with the flow and  see what happens. It's quite possibly messy. Even TOTALLY messy! 

This week we learned all about penguins and polar bears, we had a lot of fun playing with snow, paint, numbers and books. Something that I really enjoy a lot is having art as part of our class. Here are some samples of what we did and the children's final products using their creativity  and not a pattern. Enjoy!

Literacy in the classroom

Story time is one of my favorite activities of the day. Having all of my little friends sitting in front of me, waiting to see what new story we are about to read is priceless. I love asking them questions about the story, and listen to their very clever answers. Today we read  "The mitten" by Jan Brett  in Spanish is "El miton" and the children were laughing so hard imaging all the little creatures getting inside a mitten. We pretended to be the animals in the story by getting one by one under a white bed sheet that I placed on the floor. One of the kids was pretending to be the bear at the end of the story, so when he sneezed all of the kids ran out  in all directions from under the  bed sheet. It was so funny! Later I saw two of them retelling the story to each other. What a fun day!

Fun pics from last month

 Learning and growing together is so wonderful. At My Happy Preschool we learned through play and hands on activities all the time. Look at our pics!

Cutting skills

How exciting is to begin a new year with new ideas and lots of fun things to share with my little friends. Today I had a cutting center inviting children to come and see what I was doing. The first reaction of course was "OHH"  Can I try? I love when children are interested in trying new things, and get curious about it. At the beginning it was hard to learn how to fold the paper, and then trying to cut through several layers, but at the end they did great and the most amazing. thing was that every single paper snowflake was different just like they are different and special. 
 " I did it all by my self " said one of the girls when her mom arrived to pick her up. What a great activity to help the children with their cutting skills and with their self esteem