Fall/ Halloween

Because we are a Christian center we don't celebrate "halloween" (well actually we do...we just call it Harvest)
We have a harvest party every year and the children and their parents are invited to come.

Throughout the week we talk about Pumpkins a lot and do some pumpkin projects.
We gut a pumpkin in the sensory table...i find it easier to cut the top off myself and then scoop out the insides before hand and put them back inside the pumpkin to make it easier for the children to "gut" with spoons

We also use hammers and golf tees to practice hand eye coordination and make really cool looking designs

The older children go on a field trip to the pumpkin patch this week and we use their pie pumpkins that they get to decorate at our party.
We go to an awesome pumpkin patch that includes: Pumpkin Picking, Hay Ride, Hay Maze, Story Time and Donuts and Cider!!

The younger children who cannot go on field trips yet have their own pumpkin patch outside. We take them for wagon rides and let them pick out their own pumpkins and even have donuts and cider too!

At our party we decorate pie pumpkins

We make slime!
(Cornstarch + Water with green food coloring)

 We play hook the spiders (using straws and those silly little spider rings)

We also play Mr. Pumpkin Head ( i make holes in the pie pumpkins first)

Construction

Last year the road in front of our building was being widened and the construction went on FOREVER. Our children were really interested in it so we had a construction theme one week. Here are some fun things we did!

Building: I saved our food order boxes for a few days and taped them shut to create large bricks. I added items from our tool prop box (like goggles, drills, hammers, and tape measures) i also bought some caution tape from Party City (for $2.00) and we let the children build! This was a favorite center all week... and it only took a dollars to create!

Then i put my small diggers from the hot wheel collection in the sensory table with sand and rocks... the boys in my room LOVED THIS!

Pets

For our pet theme last year I found some really cute printable's from kidssoup
I bought some dog treats from the dollar store for the kids to use and used the dog printables (mounted to card stock and laminated) at our math table. Our kids had so much fun "feeding" the dogs the correct amount of treats!

Writing

Our 3-4 year olds are at all different stages when it comes to writing. We have some that still hold the pen at the top...some that hold it perfectly and can write anything when the letters are dictated to them and we have others who are not interested at all.

Some of the children that have longer names are having difficulty writing their names...but i found a really cool website that lets you make your own tracer pages.
http://www.kidzone.ws/tracers/index.htm
We use this all the time for the children that are having more difficulty and it really helps!

Friendship

August 16th is Friendship Day!

At our school we do a few cute activities on this day.

Friendship fruit salad- A few days before i send a note home to all the parents asking them to bring in 1 piece of fruit to donate to our salad. We then allow the children to wash and cut up the fruit together and make their own fruit salad! Its a really fun activity and really yummy too

Friendship quilt - i pre-cut paper squares and punch holes in the sides and allow the children to decorate as they please. Then we stamp their hand on top and the children write their name on their own square. The children thread the pieces together to make a huge quilt (sometimes they need help threading)
I did this before with felt squares and fabric paint but it was very difficult. I suppose if you have time you can sew the pieces together.

I have a friend game - This game is played while children sit in a circle ( i usually do this at circle time )
The teacher starts out with 1 bean bag and sings the song....
I have a friend
I have a friend
I have a friend named.....Jennifer
I have a friend
and then passes the bean bag to Jennifer
Then it is Jennifer's turn and so on until everyone has had a turn!
Our kids LOVE this game!!!

Flower shop- I set up a cute little area for the children to buy flowers for each other. Really cute fake flowers can be purchased at the dollar store. We put them in little buckets and use our gardening toys to take care of them. I also put out some cash registers and play money. We use our small table to put the flowers on. I made a cute little arch way out of paper towel rolls and then wrapped crepe paper around it. 

I made the buckets out of plastic containers... but i added cute labels to encourage color matching during play

You can get more creative and use a shoe rack. I saw this really cute picture on FAMILYFUNBLOG.. awesome site if you haven't seen it check it out!

Picture taken from http://www.familyfunblog.com

Splatter painting

We used fly swatters to paint with. We did this activity outside because it was a little messy (not as bad as i thought) The paintings turned out so beautiful, the pattern the fly swatter left was really pretty!

This is a great way to explain to children about colors blending together to create new colors.

Winter Animals

In the early winter we do a Winter Animals theme in our classroom. It is always a big hit.

We talk about animals that hibernate/adapt/migrate

We make a bear cave of course! I'm getting pretty good at making caves (if i do say so myself) We use large dark blankets and drape them over our tumble mats to create tunnels and caves. We fill it with blankets, pillows and little LED push lights so that our children can read inside.

We read The Bear Snores on...a class favorite

Last year we made a hibernation chart. I was shocked at how interested the children were and how much they remembered.

For those of you who don't know Jann Brett (who writes the Mitten and Hat books) has an awesome website with tons of free down loadable activities. Also if you write an e-mail to Jann, she sends you a big packet filled with goodies. We got ours in about 2 weeks!!
Our class loves the story The Mitten. We act it out using a big giant sheet (as the mitten) and the children climb in. To make this more fun i downloaded the animal masks from Jann Brett's site and laminated them for the kids to wear.

We also read The Hat and I set up a small clothes line with pegs and winter clothes clipped to it, so the children use the props during the story.

We also do a cute animal track matching game that i downloaded from http://www.kidssoup.com
(great site by the way....you pay for it but i think it's only 20 dollars for the whole year. TOTALLY WORTH IT)

Along with this activity i put out winter animals and brown model magic clay. We make footprints in the clay and set them out to dry for the kids to take home.

Kidssoup had this super cute song that we sang every circle time. It came all of the pieces that i downloaded and made into felt board pieces. I taught the children the song every day and by Wednesday they were able to sing it by themselves and use the felt board pieces correctly.
The song is to the tune of London Bridge

Geese are honking "let's fly south"
Let's fly south, Let's fly south
Geese are honking "lets fly south"
Time to migrate!!

Ducks are quacking "lets fly south"
Let's fly south, Let's fly south
Ducks are quacking "let's fly south"
Time to migrate!!

Robins are chirping "let's fly south"
Let's fly south, Let's fly south
Robins are chirping "let's fly south"
Time to migrate!!

Owls are hooting "let's fly south"
Let's fly south, Let's fly south
Owls are hooting "let's fly south"
Time to migrate!!