Gingerbread and jingle bells continued

We are close to finishing up week 1 of gingerbread and jingle bell theme.

 I think it is important to educate the kids on different holidays just so that they know the history of them and may have a friend that does not celebrate Christmas, but a  different Holiday.

  On Tuesday Hanukkah was the Holiday we learned about, since I am 1/2 Jewish, I was looking forward to teach the kids more about it.  

 A menorah was a new thing for them. Instead of having just one day to open presents, Hanukkah was for 8 days and a present was given each night . 

Kaelis said "no fair" ha! 

 We looked at a menorah on the web aijnd went over each peice and what each one meant when lighting the candles.

Every month funshine provides sign language words that goes  with the topic we are talking about and  yesterday we learned  the word cookie in sign language .

We read The gingerbread man.

I like to read this book with different voices. Especially the Rhyme.

  Run,run, as fast as you can,

You can't catch me, I'm the gingerbread man!

After we read the book, the girls decided they were going to reinact the story.

One of them was the gingerbread man and then one of them was the different animals. 

We made the cutest gingerbread puppets that came in the funshine express box. 

I added real cinnamon so they smelled so good. 

Funshine has the best games and they are easy I play and understand.

For example , we played the Gingerbread Run math game.

The kids roll the dice with a number and then they move their game pieces that any spaces . 

We had a busy first half of the week and today we had a snow day. 

 What things do you do in snow days?

Joyful jamboree finale

On Friday we finished our joyful jamboree theme. The kids really enjoyed making all the Christmas crafts and learning about all different kinds of holidays and events. I personally enjoy it as well. 

The girls are getting so good at cutting and pasting with a pattern. Check out these elf shoes them made. 

 

Funshine provided this really fun game where one put a picture of a toy under a present and then the other person would try to remember where it was or I had them give clues to what you was underneath it.

The girls had a lot fun with it . 

We had a sickness going around last week so our curriculum was cut short a little, but all seem well so we are back at it. 

Candle talk

I hope  everybody had a good weekend. We are enjoying our second week of Joy Jamboree. Funshine provided so many fun things, we are exploring so many things.

Today we talked about candles and how different candles mean different things for certain holidays, Christmas advent wreaths,Jewish menorahs and kwanza kinaras. Candles are used to shine a little light, or make a room smell good.

Some days the kids want to be involved in so much, and other days I am lucky if I get 5 mins.

One of the games we played was Jack b nimble, jack be quick, but I changed jack to the kids name.

 For example: Lena be nimble

                       Lena be quick

                        Lena jumped over the  

                       Candlestick.

They had so much fun with it. We jumped over small ones only, tall ones, all of them and discussed which were harder to jump over.

Seasonal stockings was the creative arts today. They were so cute and simple to make.  The tricky part of it was the fine motor of lacing the string, after sometime we got it!

I enjoy watching the faces as they work so hard stringing the stocking.

Funshine extras is a really great resource. I printed this matching game. They have to match the uppercase letter to the lower case letter. Lower case (or baby as we call them) can be a hard thing to catch on to. Usually the uppercase is the easiet because they learn that first. 

This game was great to learn the lowercase. They could also match the color the light and that helped get it along 

We had such a busy day today learning so many fun things. I look forward to spreading for funshine knowledge tomorrow.

Joyful Jamboree

I have always loved the word Joy and it happens to be my middle name, so maybe I am a little partial to it.

 Funshine has a bunch of Joy in all the activities we are doing. I love Christmas crafts so I jumped with joy  when I looked  inside the curriculum box. 

 This week was filled with many things to keep us busy.

 The girls cut paper and wrapped boxes for at least 30 mins. This was a favorite for sure.

Fun shine included this fun game that included a cube with gross motor activities and then a number that was picked and that is how many times they did the movement.

 It was so fun and even the little ones enjoyed doing what the big kids did.

One thing I Enjoy about teaching preschool is how much the children really soak up, even though it seems like they are not listening or not focused, but then you just observe and notice things like this.

 They are looking at the word wall and pointing to the words and also looking at the color wheel. How great is that?

 I play the same circle time song everyday and as soon as I play it, the young ones get so excited and start clapping and then get a carpet square. 

 I know they are to young to sit the whole time, but they are so intent and listening when they do sit.

We learned a song today that was from the funshine curriculum and it goes like this:

(To the tune of twinkle twinkle lite star)

 Twinkle . Twinkle holiday star 

On our tree is where you are 

Sparkle, sparkle, shine so bright ,

Watch for Santa in the night,

If you see him will you please,

Tell him "thank you" just for me.

This is so simple and cute. I heard little twinkle songs being sung.

Wreaths were made today. 

 What are some of your favorite crafts to do?

Joyful

Welcome to December. Is it me or did November just fly away? 

 We enjoyed all the fun things Funshine planned for us last month and we are very excited for the activities that are planned for this month.

 Christmas music is playing in the background and the room looks festive and we are ready to for some fun.

 The fireflies themes are Joyful Jambiree and Jingle bells.

 Today we welcomed everybody back from Thanksgiving break.

 Joyful was the focus today. 

I love how Funshine provides a character counts section. Today we introduced Jacey the joyful Jaguar.

  Jacey is always joyful and always smiling. 

To go along with being joyful we made a Joy card.

 When I passed out the materials and we talked about each item, Kaelis says "candy canes bring me Joy." 

  I love how different they look, but using the same items.

We also read . Elf on the shelf.

 Our elf will be returning to our school room tomorrow so we had to remember all the rules.

I got these a felt activities and the girls had a great time designing their own.

Turkey fun

We are finishing up our last week of giving thanks. I have loved teaching this because the kiddos love talking about what they are thankful for and learning about how thanksgiving came to be. I also know that right after the giving thanks unit, we head into christmas themes and I CANNOT for that. You can?

We have done a lot of fun things this so far.

Turkey feet supplies

Kaelis thought it was so funny that her foot was covered

with paint.

They turned out so cute.

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I love projects that I can frame and this is one that will come out every year for decoration. I loved it and so did the other parents.

I honestly would not think of some of these projects and I am so thankful the funshine provides such wonderful and simple activities.

One of the activties that was in the curriculum guide was to put our hands behinds our backs and pretend to grab candy corn with only our mouths just like chicken and turkeys. The girls thought this was so funny. The kept doing it over and again.

We made a corn on the cob yesterday using bubble wrap and paint.

The temptation of popping all the bubbles made it hard for them to paint. I let them pop them... Why not? fine motor?

Have a wonderful thanksgiving!

Giving thanks

We have officially started the countdown to Turkey day.We have done several activities   that makes us think of thanksgiving and bring thankful. 

  Turkey gobblers headbands were so cute. Funshine included all the supplies for it.

                  Patterned scrap paper

                  Turkey cutouts

                   Eyes

                   Magic foam peices 

The kids colored there head bands however they wanted. I loved seeing how each child decorated differently. One took  a lot of time and effort to make the whole head was colored. Another child just did enough to say she colored it and was finished.  We did the turkey trot while wearing the hats. 

 This was a game that came with curriculum. The children would pick a number card and then add that many children to the table. I had them even take away some cards and see how many cards were left. 

 You never know what will keep a child's interest for a certain period of time, but this kept busy for about 10 mins.

Quill writing was another neat idea that we did. We used feathers and paint. I did not have ink on hand. The girls thought it was really neat and it ended up being a painting, but they got the idea of writing with a feather.

I had this felt turkey and I thought it would be a great time to bring it out. I love watching all the creative ways the kids sort the feathers or what patterns they make.

 What activities are you doing?

Giving thanks

We have really enjoyed learning about giving thanks and what we are thankful are. Funshine express has some really neat ideas for this theme.

 One of the favorite songs we did was 

                    If your Thankful

                    

                    If you are thankful 

                 And you know it,

                  (Clap your hands)

                  If your thankful and you 

                  Know it

                  (Clap your hands)

                  If you are thankful 

                 And you know it,

                  And your face will surely 

                  Show it.

                   If you are thankful 

                 And you know it,

                  (Clap your hands)

                 Repeat with 

                 Stomp your feet

                      Turn around

                     Shout hooray

Every month funshine does a character counts activity.

 Tony the Thankful Tiger was the character today.  After introducing him to the kids we discussed what it means to be thankful . Theo was thankful for a lot of things . He was thankful his friends felt sad when he was not feeling well. I asked the question;How can we show people how we care for them? 

One of the kids said " we give a huge wet kiss and a great big hug."  How sweet.

                   Meet Theo

Today we read the book Manners at the table , this book can in the kit.

It was about what are good manners are. It was easy and simple for them to understand.

      

Our embossed foil activity was really neat. The kids thought that it was cool that the harder they pressed the more the design would come out.

These are the supplies that came with the kit. 

                Foil

                Golf tees

                Cardstock

Fantastic feather was the Math activity and the kids decided to count the feathers whole making a turkey with playdough.

It is so helpful that funshine provides a math game every month . I know I can grab it and begin. I usually laminate them so I can use them again.

Lena did a great job matching numbers.

Hope everybody's week is going well.

Sweet dreams

Today ends our 2 week theme sleep tight. The kids really enjoyed learning about counting sheep, that stars are rounded and not pointy.
One of the reasons I love teaching preschool is because of the excitement they get over the smallest thing. Their brains are so curious and they are eager to learn.
 Having an inhome daycare can have some challenges because of the mixed ages and planning things that the older children will learn from, but still having toddlers that need things simple.
funshine express makes it simpler to get activties based on age. Buttercups are for 6 months to 36 months. Fireflies, which I currently use, are for ages 3-5, they have a faith based curriculum and then jitterbugs 6-10.
 Every month I know I will get age apporiate activties and a ton of facts that those sponge brains can still soak up.
If you are new to lesson planning or in home or just need a curriculum ,funshine is perfect. On the teacher guide it outlines an activity for Math, music, gross motor, creative arts, literacy and social and emotional. Even one for dramatic play.


Yesterday we talked about dreams and what dreams are. Some are scary, some are funny, some are sad. I had one girl , with the biggest smile "my dreams are about princesses all the time, so they are always happy."

 

We pretended we were sheep jumping over the fence.

I had some stuffed animals so I got those out and then it was their turn to jump over the fence .

   This was a felt story about a girl who made a wish upon a star. Felt peices were provided by funshine.

We made a wishing pouch yesterday and put 3 wishes in. 

It's always a fun day when the funshine box arrives and we open it up to aim much learning.

These are the books we read and because we had Pj day, the perfectly perfect pajamas was the perfect book.

We look forward to jumping right into Let's give thanks.