Happy new year!

I hope everybody had a great Christmas! 

We did for sure. 

Since New Years is near, the kiddos have these cute hats to wear for news year eve. 

They went around the room saying" 

happy New Year!"

 The kids enjoyed making these and dancing with them in their heads. 

Happy new year!

Star and shaving cream fun

Stars are always so bright and kids seem to relate stars to Christmas trees.

 The shape for the month for Funshine is a star, which is only fitting this Christmas season.

I decided to get the shaving cream out and a star shaped cookie cutter and have the kids just be creative and get messy.

That they did.

I love making videos. I can capture so many impromptu conversations and just plain cuteness.

 

 

Red and green.

Since Christmas is right around the corner, we were busy doing lots of red and green activities.

Ripping paper and gluing are one of the favorites things so this activity was a favorite. 

I have some young ones that are not quite ready to explore with scissors so I cut some pieces and then I had the kids rip the rest. 

Using glue sticks is the highlight of the day! I always say "rub, rub, rub a little, them stick" I hear little voices saying "rub, rub, rub, stick." 

We used Christmas stickers that smelled like peppermint. Yummy!

Funshine express has an extra activity bundle that has a project for each holiday.

It comes with all the materials needed and a how to.

Some of the activities may be a little bit of a challenge for the young ones, so I usually make it easier or just skip that month. 

I chose to make a reindeer cup. 

The curriuculm listed brown paint to 

cover the cups, but Somedays easier the better, so this day was brown crayons. 

I am sure everybody that teaches homeschool or toddlers can relate to being flexible. Not one day is the same! 

Remember to follow me on Instagram @coleykidscreations

Feeling happy/sad

This week is a fun week. It is our last week before Christmas break, but no worries, I will still do posts!

We continued talking about feelings.

Funshine express always includes a cute language development activity.

The feeling happy game was so cute and the kids lived playing it. 

 I try to use a felt as much as possible because felt can be used over and over again and never get old. It is also easy for the little hands to manipulate and the ideas are endless.

So of course for Christmas I had to a felt Christmas tree with ornaments and a a star on top. 

Since we are talking about feelings, we are getting a lot of use out of the How do you feel poster. Each morning at circle time, the kids point out which face they are feeling. 

I will be back with one other post before I am off for Christmas break yippee!

Pine tree painting

We finished up the week with looking at evergreen branches.

After really observing the branches, we painted with them.

 I pointed out that the pine needles are the like the bristles on a paint brush. 

They enjoyed swooshing the branch back and forth make a picture.

Some of the kids used big movements, others just little ones. 

The shape of the month is a star. This month stars are easy to find. We found some on Christmas 

trees, in the sky, in books.

The kids practiced placing stars on a felt board and on top of the tree. 

We counted points and compared sizes. We sang twinkle twinkle little star while playing with the felt peices.

This is our last week before Christmas vacation and we will be busy doing all kinds of Christmas fun.

Green tree

 The  world around you is the best way to learn.  There is so much teaching that can go on and the children love the outside and looking at all the things that are outside.

 We explored the evergreen tree and discussed how it is a Christmas tree. It is also green.

 

We use our eyes to explore a evergreen branch and  how it looks. We used our nose to see if it had a smell. We used our hands to feel and explore the stem and the pine needles.

 

 

Since we were on the topic of  evergreens, The kids enjoyed looking at the trees outside and noticing that there was a evergreen tree in the woods. We also saw a squirrel, a bluejay, and many more things we saw with our eyes.

 

Funshine express has on every page of the curriculum guide objectives.

Objectives are tools that help select and plan for each child's needs.

As a preschool teacher this is important knowledge to know so that I can focus on the needs that need to be met.

                                  

   The Objectives are:

                                       language Development

                                       Social/emotional Development

                                       Physical Development

                                       Approach to learning

                                       Congnitive Development

On Each page under each activity, there are letters and numbers and the objective(s) that this activity helps meet.

 

 

I find this very helpful when I have a mixed age group with all kinds of  different development.

If parents were to ask me where their child's development is, I can lead them to the objectives and outline which ones are getting met or which ones need work, so they can continue help at home if needed.

 

This is such a great tool to have at my fingertips I copy the page and keep it in the guide for a quick reference.

There is also a calender that organizes the objective with the activity! How easy and quick and wonderful is that?

We made a forest of evergreens. We used our nose to smell the stickers that smell like peppermints. Yummy! 

 

 

 

 

My senses cont....

We had a busy week talking about all our senses and what we use them for.

We finished our star ornaments and packaged them up.

Another activity we enjoyed was making a star -studded wreath.

The first day we decorated our paper stars. We counted each corner as we decorated them.

We used wet paper towels to make the stars damp and then used markers to color them. We observed how different markers look when they are wet.

The next step was to make flour glue. This was really fun to make. I had no idea about this until Funshine express introduced it to me. It's a really neat texture and so easy to make. 

 Measure 2 cups flour and place it in a bowl.

Add 1 tablespoon salt and gently stir.

Slowly stir in 2 cups of water and green food coloring to add a green tint.

The mixture should be a thick, but spreadable -something like cake frosting.

Add more flour or water to get right consistency. 

The kids enjoyed using their fingers to spread the mixture around the rim of the paper plate. 

The kids enjoyed taking turns mixing the mixture around. 

Next week we will continue my senses and learn about the evergreen and gifts.

My senses.

I enjoy teaching about the 5 senses because there is so much stuff in the environment to use them with. 

 I had the kids close their eyes and we talked about what they see, the older ones knew it was nothing they saw, but the younger toddlers knew it was bed time when they closed their eyes, so they were not to hip with that activity. Ha!

The game for this theme is placing the pictures on each body part.

Ex.... We use our nose to smell, so they placed the flower on the nose. Of course they tried to really smell it!

Funshine express always provides 1/2 books that go with each theme. 

For this theme the book is Feeling Great!

It goes through all the feelings. The animals have a feeling just like me.

This was a favorite for sure. I was asked to read it over and over.

The best part, is listening to the kids retell the story in their own words.

The color of the Month is Green and I always like to play games or do an activity where they have to find the color we are learning about. 

I have this cute bowling game and I  had the kids try to roll the ball to the green pin. Most of them caught on right away. 

 

Turkey time

 I hope everybody had a great thanksgiving. I am still full. 

Before break, we were busy making a turkey time table topper.

I had the kids do everything on this themselves, so some had more streamers/color.  I drew the face on.

For music and movement we played Autumn Tree.

We matched the leaves on he tree. 

After a few times of showing the movement, we sang a cute song while matching.

 Tune to row, row, row your boat:

on,on,on the tree.

The leaves go on the tree.

Red, orange, and yellow, too.

The leaves go on the trees.

Off, off, off the tree.

The leaves fall off the tree.

It's getting colder everyday

The leaves fall off the tree.

The kids were soon singing their own 

version of it!

This week we start our My senses theme. 

I can smell the fun! 

Bushy squirrels.

  I hope everybody had a great thanksgiving. I am full and ready to take a nap! 

The friends had a great time making squirrel tales.

They were so cute dancing around wearing the tails.

         Paper bags 

         Sentence strips

         Combs

       (Not pictured)

        Brown paint  and newspaper 

I played the song grey squirrel, grey squirrel for them and they shook Their bushy tail

 

 

 

Cute bushy tails. 

They had so much dancing around and shaking their tails! 

Bears sleep

I We finished our the week by pretending boxes were caves and having bears hibernate. 

I even found one if my friends hibernating. She said she was sleeping until it was warm! 

Did you know Funshine express has many other things than just curriculum? They have extra curriculum add ons. For example, they have these alphabet letters  that can be made into a book or just left alone. These are for ages 3-5, however my toddlers love decorating the letters and it is a good way for them to lean the letters. When a parent was checking out, get child pointed to the letter B and said "B". How cool is that?

It makes my heart burst when I see imagination explode. My friends pretended that they were in a cave and they were listening to a book. 

We will continue our it's getting colder theme next week. My Inhome  is only open Monday and Tuesday, but we will do a bunch of activities so I can post. 

Hope everybody had a great weekend! 

Brrrr.. its cold outside

This week we started our It's getting colder theme. It sure has gotten colder. No more shorts and flip flops. Pants and boots. The temperature has dropped a lot since last week so it is perfect that we talk about the season change and what happens when it gets cold.

 

At playtime I showed all the kids a picture of a bear from our picture card and told them I had some fun things to tell them about bears. At circle time we talked about how when it is cold out, we stay inside more and cuddle in a favorite blanket and that keeps us warm.

Just like us ,certain  animals like to sleep in a warm place during the winter. I asked the children where do they think bears sleep when it gets cold to stay warm?

 The most common answer was a bed. Well that makes sense!

I showed them a picture of a cave and I had one friend say "A rock?" Well, I guess it is a big rock.

 

 



One of the games this month that came in the Buttercups curriculum was a in and out opposite game. It had "in" and "out" on it and the idea was to put the animals in the forest or off the trail. I have a few older part time friends that come and Austin was lining them up by size all the trail.
We talked about each animal and which ones might sleep during the winter.



Leaves falling are one of the first signs that fall is here and it will start getting colder.
In each fun shine express kit, comes a music cd that has specific songs for the themes and activities . Last year the cd had a song called Autumn leaves are falling down. I played that while the kids threw the  leaves in the air  and then pretended to rake them up and jump in the pile. It was a lot of fun.
 

 

One of the creative arts activities was to glue a bear on blue paper,
rip tissue up for the cave
and then tear a doily in pieces to represent snow.

 

I love reading this book because it is just like normal life. The bear sleeps and some animals find the cave and make noise, but the bear never wakes up.

A pepper kernel got in the bears nose and made him sneeze. {I love that part because I will pretend to sneeze and the kids giggle and giggle.}

He wakes up and eats and has fun, but then cannot fall asleep. Everybody else did though. Sounds like parents trying to get their kids asleep. Right?

Here is a super cute video that I made. We were pretending to be bears that sleep.

 

Dragon shakers

As the end of the year approaches, I always observe the children getting the routine down pat and just blooming from the first day of school. They are sitting longer for circle time and getting into creative arts more. 

I just get giddy seeing the littles grow out of the toddler stage and into little people.

Soooo... We have had a  super fun time learning about castles and kings. 

We made these really cute dragon shakers. We used markers in a wet coffee filter and observed the difference between wet and dry markers.

After they were completed, we danced to to a dragon song that was on  the Funshine curriuculm cd. We danced over and over to it. 

I made finger paint and glitter sensory bags.

Of course the idea came from Funshine express. 

The kids really enjoyed manipulating these.

One of the books that came with the curriculum was Big box for Ben. 

It is about a boy who received a big box and used his imagination to pretend it was different things.

The kids really enjoyed this book. The more I read it,the more they remembered what things he made from it.

We built with different size boxes and they pretended each one was one of the items in the book. How cool is that?

n

Next week we will be exploring colder weather with its getting colder, however its not real cold here yet,but it will prepare us for when it does.