May Day and the letter Y.

Since May Day was May 1st , Funshine express planned in the curriculum to make May Day baskets. 

We used plastic cups, stickers and ribbons and pipe cleaners to make. It was easy and fast.

 

We are getting down to the end of the alphabet with the letter Y. "Y" is for yo yo. 

 

The next theme we are learning about is books and book worms. 

This book was the book of the month. 

We made our own books with a book worm. 

 

Earth day and and more

Last week we learned about earth day and working together to clean up the earth.

We made these cute earth pictures and added friends to it. "We all live together"

 

We also made a collage of different papers and others designs on them and texture. It was free art which is one the ways art can b expressed. 

 

Funshine express provided all the materials we used for these activities. I just provided the glue or scissors. 

They is why like using funshine so much. All the supples come right to my door. 

All about art.

We are learning all about Art. What tools we use, all different kind of pictures . 

  

One of the creative arts activity was experimenting with water colors and mixing colors on a pallet that we  learned was a tool artists use. 

 

Another form of art we learned about is free art. Drawing anything you want to. 

 

Chicks and more

We had fun learning about flowers, chicks , what happens at Easter. Amelia knows how to work the camera 📷 !

She is wearing the chick headband that was an activity for creative arts. 

The

 

The girls did a great job tracing a flower pattern and adding straws for stems.

 

 

One of the games that came with funshine  curriculum was a match the egg to the right color nest. 

Spring

Spring has finally arrived and  here to stay I hope.

We have been doing a lot of spring activities with funshines express curriculum. 

We made these chick pictures using muffin liners and the worm is down and the bottom. 

 

The shape of the month is an oval, and one of the activities was to make a chic using the oval shapes from what curriculum. 

 Barrett and Amelia put on a pretty cute puppet using them.

H

  

There are letters of week that we go over every Monday and yesterday's was "W" is for work. They enjoyed placing their worms wherever.

 We will continue our unit on spring and move right into  our next. 

School. 

The letter V and yard pulling

Yesterday we started our new theme Egg-citing Changes.

The letter V is the letter for the 1st 2 weeks.  We placed Vegetables on the letter V.
 
 

Something else I have not mentioned about the curriculum is in each theme there is collection checklist. For each day it lists the supplies you need and what area. This helps when I  close ton supples and getting ready for the week. It also gives you time to get them if you do not already have them. 

 

Last week we made fun yard pulling art. We put a peice of yarn on paint and closed the paper , then pulled the yarn all around.

Once the kids understood what it was, they had fun pulling the yarn every which direction. 

Pirates etc....

We are on our last week of sail away and will move onto April themes. This year flew by. 

During circle time we talked about why pirates like to find gold coins in buried treasures. 

We did some coin rubbings. The girls thought it was really cool to see the coin come on paper. We did all different shapes. 

 

Lighthouses are also part of the curriculum talk. I am not sure I have ever seen a real lighthouse myself, but we looked up all kinds of lighthouses. 

 

During free choice time the girls decided to make a ship and the barbies would float on it. Oh the conversations that were going on were great!

  

The girls really liked these treasure boxes that they made. They knew the gold paper was good because it was gold. They had a lot of fun playing with the pirate that was with the treasure . 

Sailing away cont...

 

In the funshine  express curriculum word wall words come with each theme.  These are the words for the sail away theme. 

 

This book is the book of the of the month. It gives different ways to sing Row Row Row your boat with different words. The kids really like this one. 

 

Barrett and Lydia are playing the game that came with the curriculum. The choose cards that make the picture of the boat and finish the puzzle. 

 

This is a sailboat puzzle. I got out the shapes and then the kids match them up to make the sailboat. 

St Patrick's day and sail away.

 

Sailing away is the next theme we are going to talk about. We used blue paper and cut waves and then added sea stickers. 

 

For st. Patrick's day we made these cute lebercahn hat. I had one child say it looks light house. Well , it kinda does. It was for the kids to visualize that they were hats. We looked up a hat on a lebracahn.

 

One activity was to make sail boats. We used styrofoam bowls , craft sticks. We played them in water . I love how the girls put in the little people to ride in them. Check out the video on my Facebook page.

 

With every monthly curriculum a nursery rhyme comes in it and it has to do with the theme. I had no idea there were so many nursery rhymes that coordinate with the themes. We talked about the two sea's see's. I think they got it. 

We will continue with sailing away next week. 

Wacky weeks

 

Well so many obstacles have been in the way of posting. First stomach bug and then my phone crashing and losing ALL my pictures. So I have to start over . So hopefully I can get consistent again.

Today we continued with wacky weeks and learning about the Letter T. 

We made a Tree for the letter T. 

We went around the room looking for items that may start with the letter T. 

 

Practice sheets come in the curriculum every month. They have them for the letters , shapes , and colors. Amelia is practicing tracing the letter T and coloring the items that start with T.

Science is always an activity that is daily, however we do not do it everyday. Depending on the activity. 

Today was the difference between Fizz and foam. 

For the fix activity we observed flavored water going into the glass and listening I the bubbles fizz. The girls thought it was so cool. 

Click on the link to see it. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1ep7NxVJkGg&feature=share

Snake on a stick and funny shape match

 

The kids loved these snakes on a stick. They were an activity from our last theme of  tropics in the winter and rainforest animals.

 

This was a fun activity to match shapes and textures. 

 The Funshine theme for this week is wacky weeks. 

We celebrated Dr. Seuss's birthday by ready one of his famous books and playing a tic tac game with fish. 

We also introduced Carson the The clever Crocodile . 

We talked about that clever means intelligent in a creative way.  We talked about having an imagination and how to use when playing with things .

 

We will be silly this week with lots of silly activities. 

Tropics in winter

Wowzers.... I need to get caught up.

So this week we finished our tropics in the winter theme. Talking about rainforest and the animals .

 

Monkeys 🐒 are one of the animals that live in the upper part of the rain forest. 

We learned that some of  them have prehensile tails. They can swing from one branch to the other. 

Monkeys eat fruit , leaves , insects , spiders and eggs and flowers . So a wide variety. 

We made Monkeying around Monkey's . The kids decided to act like a monkey and slither like a snake.

 

The February math game was pick a card and move the animal to the finish.

 

You will also find jungle animals like Jaguar , leopards and other types of jungle cats. 

 These are our Deep in our the jungle pictures. 

The letter Q and feelings

So I am farther behind than I thought. 

Last week we finished our theme on feelings. 

 

Our Q is for quarter pictures . 

 

Jenna was playing with the feelings game. We turn over the cards and look at the face and see what the feeling is. The kids got most of them... surprised and proud were tricky ones. 

 

 We made a feelings chart. I love the way each face looks. So different in their own way. 

Curriculum worksheets come in the kit every month and they relate to the themes of the month. 

Amelia was busy learning about the number 14. 

 

Finally over it ....

So I am way behind in blogging. The stomach bug hit our house bad and I had less children , I had to take a day and half off.... We are all feeling better and now I need to catch up. 

We started our unit of  tropics in the winter. 

All about the rain forest and the animals of the rainforest.

 

These are the cute vines that we made. We talked about how vines grow in the rainforest and they can be really long. 

 This book came in the Funshine curriculum this month. It's all about the different layers of the rainforest. I had no idea there were actual layers. 

I learn as well when I teach. I have learned more through Funshine express than anywhere else. 

 

The Macaw is such a pretty and we talked about only finding it in the rain forest or maybe at the zoo. They are a tropical bird and need the trees and rain. 

We made a cute macaw of our own. However , the kids decided to leave it plain and use markers instead of paint....

Still cute though 

I love my body and P is for Peacock.

This week P was introduced.  "P" is for peacock and pencil and penguin and pig. 🐷

For creative art we did "P" is for Peacock picture. 

Peacock is an animal that may not be familiar to some kids so before we started ,we looked at some real pictures of peacocks and a video on how they spread their feathers. 

 

One ruin about Funshine express curriculum that I have not mentioned much about is the objectives and goals that each activity developes and focuses on. 

For example the objectives for this activity 

Art , A1 shows creativity, flexibility and inventiveness in play experiences . 

Fine motor PD4  begins to control use of writing , drawing  ,art tools and art/crafts mediums 

Emergent reading L18 demonstrates alphabetic knowledge:can recite the alphabet, names ,own name,recognized and names most letters. 

Emergent writing L25 demonstrates age appropriate writing: tracing ,copying letters and numbers , copying shapes and symbols.

 This comes in handy when you need to know what skill we need to work on, where they should be.

It is all outlined on a sheet that comes in the curriculum book. 

 

With the theme Feeling Fantastic , we talk about how we can take care of our bodies and love our bodies. 

Eating vegetables and fruits 🍉, exercising were the things that we thought of. 

We made a I love my body necklace.

We need to teach children from an early age to live their bodies. 

We identified each part of the cutout person. The kids placed a heart sticker to place on the person. It represents love ❤️ and we need to keep our heart healthy to live a long time.