Rainbows & St. Patrick's Day Celebration

*Warning: lots of pictures ahead!*

 

Last week, we were busy little leprechauns, learning all about St. Patrick's Day, shamrocks and rainbows.  I'm going to sum up our Wednesday and Friday classes all in this post, rather than splitting it up into two seperate ones.  Don't freak out!  I know it's out of the norm (really, I don't even know what the norm is anymore), but I promise, it all fits together nicely!  Let's start with our rainbow theme...

 

On Wednesday, we read a rainbow emergent reader and:

 

We graphed Fruit Loops, talked about more and less, and made a rainbow-patterned necklace.

 

The children painted shiny rainbows with the help of a little corn syrup added to the paint.  Check out the ones in the hallway, and tell me you don't just want to touch them to make sure they're not still wet!  We also worked on the order of the colors in the rainbow.



 

We made beautiful torn paper rainbows for our art projects.  They are also in the hallway, brightening it up and anticipating the arrival of Spring!

 

On Friday when we walked in the room, this is what we found:

 a big, leprechaun-made mess!  That pesky little man threw bean bags and blocks all over our room, including in our palm tree!  And you know what else?  He put a pink mustache on one of our babies!  The children were delighted to find the room in such disarray and knew right away that we had been tricked by a wee Irishman!

 

After we cleaned up and settled down (just a little!), we read:

 

In math, we played a roll-a-shamrock game, where the kids rolled a die, then used a dot marker to stamp the same number of dots on the shamrock.  They also had the opportunity to play the shamrock pattern match file folder game again.

 

In art, we colored and cut out a leprechaun, complete with beard.  I didn't get a good picture, but I am very pleased with the improvement in coloring.  All of these fine motor exercises and activities are starting to pay off!

 

At the end of class, we did a Flower Color-Change experiment.  This also involved color mixing (which we did today as well), using food coloring and water.  Currently, we have 3 white carnations in red, orange and yellow water.  (The other 3 are coming soon!)  We will check on them each class day to see which one starts to change first!

 

Hope you all had a fabulous St. Patrick's Day!



Shamrocks

On Monday, we began our week-long celebration of St. Patrick's Day with a lesson on shamrocks.  This is such a festive holiday - you just can't help but get excited and maybe even dance a jig!  (Not that I danced a jig or anything...just sayin'.)

 

In Circle, we introduced the letter Vv, and continued counting our bananas by ones and tens.  Each day, we also practice singing the Days of the Week song, as well as saying the whole date.  (Ex: Today is Tuesday, March 12, 2013.)  We talked about the difference between shamrocks (3 leaves) and lucky four-leaf clovers.  We read the book:

 

At the math table, the children matched shamrock patterns.  I found this over at Preschool Printables a loooooooong time ago.  Check them out for lots of free file folder games and other printables to work on at home. 

 

You may have noticed that we do a lot of matching activities in preschool.  This is for good reason - the children are learning how to recognize things that are the same and different, which will help them with letters and numbers as well.

In art, we printed shamrocks using green paint and shamrock cookie cutters.  This was an easy peasy craft, but one that the kiddos really loved!  Some were content printing just a few shamrocks, while others decided to fill the entire sheet of paper!

Here's where those mad matching skills come in handy:

The kids matched the letters in shorter words like "green" and "windy", then said each letter name.  After that, we moved on to a more challenging set with the words "shamrock" and "rainbow".  Again, they matched the letters and said each letter name.  They did a fantastic job with this!!  (Word labels by RFTS Preschool.)

 

At the end of class, we had a {very condensed} lesson about taking care of our teeth, and we read:



 

We also:

• colored a picture with Piglet and a four-leaf clover (fine motor skills).
• made leprechaun faces using a playdough mat and green playdough.
• played in the block room.