What's Cooking?

Hey Good Lookin', what ya got cookin'?!  We are kicking off our Summer program talking about one of our favorite things- FOOD!!!  The children recreated some of their favorite foods by doing art projects.  They made ice cream sundaes, pizza, and taco salad!

 

The Pre-K class spelled their name out using glue and different spices!  The children really enjoyed tasting the different seasonings as well!  For a sequencing activity, they talked about how to build their hamburgers.

We also experimented with different foods.  They did an activity with a watermelon and then got to enjoy some of it!  The Waddlers made Frozen Yogurt Bites!  They got to enjoy them with their lunch one day and they were a big hit!

 Of course, we have a great cooking project this week!  We made our own mini pizzas!  Who doesn't love pizza?!

 After a week of learning about cooking, we have some great Chefs who are ready to cook up something for you!

Our letter of the week was "q" so the children made "q is for queen"!

Pre-Kindergarten Graduation

It's time for our Pre-Kindergarten graduation!  We are so proud of these sweet little ones and know they are ready for Kindergarten but my goodness, we are going to miss them!!!  Some of them started at Sunflower Station Preschool shortly after I did!  It's been so neat to watch them grow over the last 3 1/2 years!  As part of our graduation ceremony, we put together a slideshow of pictures that we had taken of the children over the years.  Let's just say, there were only a few dry eyes in the room at the end of that video!  I had a difficult time getting it together long enough to make my closing remarks!  It's amazing how these children become like our own!  Take a look at all our graduates!

What a great group!  Do they have to go to Kindergarten?!

After the ceremony, the children and parents get a gift.  The children work for several weeks making a scrapbook for their parents to show they are ready for Kindergarten and to have a keepsake with pictures from their time at Sunflower Station Preschool.  We also give each child the Dr. Seuss book, "Oh, The Places You'll Go".  The teachers that have had each child write in their book and our hope is that they will keep this tradition going by having every teacher sign their book through highschool.  Then, at their highschool graduation, they will have a book with notes from all their teachers!

 Again, we are so happy for all of our graduates but we are definitely going to miss them!

Summer

Summer is right around the corner so we are getting ready for some fun!  Throughout the week, we talked about the hotter temperatures, the sun, things we can do during the summer, etc.  Several classrooms played with beach balls but one room made their own!  We also made sun catchers that turned out really neat!

 This class made pin wheels to watch in the wind!

Pre-K did an experiment outside to see how long it would take to get to some of their toys which were frozen in a block of ice.  They had "tools" to use and also watched the heat of the sun help melt away the ice!

To review matching upper and lower case letters, the children made suns!  I love activities like this which are so fun for the children, it reinforces letter matching, AND they ended up with beautiful artwork in the end!  

 For our letter of the week, "p", we had lots of different projects going on!  After all, "p" is for popcorn, parrots and pineapple!

We hope you have a GREAT summer!!!!

Under the Sea

"Take it from me, up on the shore they work all day. Out in the sun they slave away, while we devotin', full time to floatin'.  Under the sea!" 
We are headed to the beach this week to learn all about the different things we might see in the ocean!  The children made turtle, jellyfish, crabs, fish, and more!  One classroom even made scuba diving outfits! How fun!

I think some of our parents were even more excited about this project than the children!  Each child in Pre-K got to make their own aquarium to take home, fish and all (plastic fish, that is)!

Several classrooms made ocean sensory bags where the children could move the ocean water around to find different sea creatures!

Time for some math activities!  The children compared whales and sharks and also sorted out the multicolored goldfish to see which one they had the most of.  Then of course, the "shark" had to come along and eat up all the goldfish!

We have some of the cutest ocean displays in the different rooms!  I love seeing all of the children's work displayed in such a fun way!  The kiddos love it too!

For our cooking project, we made Ocean in a Cup using blue jello for the water and crushed up Nilla Wafers for the sand.  YUM!

Our letter of the week was "o" so all the children made an octopus!  As you can see, there were several different ways that these were made.  One classroom added some math into the activity by having the children put the legs on in number order.  Another group worked on their fine motor skills by stringing noodles on for the legs!

We had a lot of fun this week and it will have to do since we can't take a field trip to the beach!