Grocery Store Field Trip

In order to schedule this field trip to Giant Eagle, we visited the website www.fieldtripfactory.com Here are some photos of what we did there.

We walked through the various parts of the store as the tour guide explained what was sold there. At the seafood section, we got fish stickers, at the deli, we tried turkey, and at produce, we tasted a slice of banana.

 We got to go back in the back to the cooler and freezer area. Also, he showed us the forklift, nicknamed Raymond.

 Look how high Raymond can lift those pallets!

Our fun tour guide also showed us how the compactor worked.

At the end, each child got to play cashier and scan some items on the scanner. We also got to take home some chocolate chip cookies!

Happy Shopping!

Creepy Crawly Critter Creations

We did an insect study this week. We talked about parts of an insect and then the students used popsicle sticks and other art materials to create their own insect/critter. Here is how they turned out.

Exercise Cube

What you need:

Scissors, glue stick, a cardboard box in the shape of a cube (taped ends) or you can also use an empty cube-shaped tissue box. 

Pictures of different movement activities or exercises.

Optional: Beads or beans to put inside to make it rattle when you roll it.

 The finished product:

Instructions:

Children will roll the cube like a die and do whatever activity it lands on. There are other ways to use the cube. Be creative. You can make a second cube with numbers and then roll both the dice. The children will do the activity they rolled the amount of times that comes up on the number cube.

Leave a comment if you come up with some additional ways to play with this!

I'm linking up at:

Barber Shop

One of the topics we talked about when studying community helpers was barber shop/beauty salon. So we decided to build our own.

Here is the barber shop we set up in dramatic play area. As you can see, there are several customers waiting in the waiting area. 

You can't see it in this photo, but we have a large sign for the barber shop in English and Spanish which the students helped decorate.

Giving the baby a new do.

Here are all our supplies.

Happy Styling!

Springtime in Preschool

We are studying Spring in our class this month. Here are some photos of how we arranged the dramatic play area into a Spring area.

Frogs on lily pads with cattails.

Logs made from rolled up brown construction paper and little plastic butterflies, lily pads and frogs.

Light table against the wall with bean bags around it to sit on.

This interactive wall has foam cutouts of fish, ducks, and frogs that are stuck on with velcro so kids can take them down and put them up how they want. There are also words stuck on with velcro to match with the animals. Our table is decorated with flowers and a watering can and there are dishes and food available for kids to have a picnic if they want.

We also planted flowers in cutoff water bottles. Here are a couple of pictures.

Happy Spring and hope you enjoy some fun activities with your kiddos!

I'm linking up at:

All About Me Study

We have been doing "All About Me" study for the beginning of the school year. You can see some of the other activities we did here:  Dental Health Activity, Puzzle Piece Names, Who Stole the Cookie from the Cookie Jar?, and Share Day. 

Here is what we had in our sand and water table. The children gave the babies a bath with soapy water. They also enjoyed pouring water on the babies and washing their hair.

Disclaimer: I wrote this post at the beginning of the year, but never posted it because I was going to add more. Anyway, now it's the end of the year, and I don't remember what I was going to add. Go figure...

Child Safety and Protection Summit

Today, I attended our spring training for work, The Child Safety and Protection Summit. The keynote speaker was amazing. If you ever get a chance to hear Tonia "Neen" Cain speak, you should definitely take the opportunity. She has a truly inspiring story. You can also buy the DVD of her movie Healing Neen  on her website: healingneen.com.

We broke out into sessions in the afternoon. The two I attended were School Readiness and Working with Children with Challenging Behaviors. 

One of the things I got out of the School Readiness session was using an activity matrix. If you haven't used one before, here is a video describing how to use it as well as some other resources below. To print a blank copy of the matrix, click on "Tools for Teachers."

In the Working with Children with Challenging Behaviors session, I found the part about Autism interesting since we have a child in my class who was recently diagnosed with Autism. This video is by Autism Speaks and is an introduction to Applied Behavior Analysis (ABA):

In other news, my baby girl is due to be born within the next couple of weeks! Hope to post more soon. Thanks to those of you who are still reading even though posts have been rare the last few months!