Very Hungry Caterpillar

Preschool theme this week was a classic! The Very Hungry Caterpillar by Eric Carle. We of course first read the book. Then our big craft was the life cycle of the butterfly all done on a paper plate, they either glued the stuff onto plate or onto a clothespin that I then clipped to the plate. I had some plastic-ish leaves and little white puff ball things that they glued on for the first phase, the egg on the leaf. Then medium sized green and red puff balls to make the little caterpillar. Next phase bigger puffs for the big fat caterpillar and we glued those on a clothespin so he could "eat" stuff. For the butterfly I grabbed cone shaped coffee filters and snipped off the edges and let them use water colors to paint it. Then I was going to use a spray bottle to spritz it but of course in true me fashion no water bottle to be found. So I just dribbled a little water over them, worked fine. It just spreads out the water colors and makes it a lil prettier :) Plus they get a kick out of watching the colors spread. They also painted clothespins. Then I stuck the wings in the clothespin and added pipe cleaner antennae.

Then it was snack time. Couldn't resist banana butterflies! They thought it was funny. There may have also been chocolate peanut butter and lots more pretzels involved after I took a picture of it. They were all over the chocolate PB!

 Then we did a sheet or two of line tracing, tried using scissors for a few minutes and lots of dot art. I just made my own dot art sheets in google documents. They aren't perfect but the girls didn't care and could identify each thing so we will call it a success. The goal with the dot art was coordination of getting the dots in the circle and also color matching. The circles were different colors and they were supposed to use the matching dot marker. They sort of got it. They loved doing it just neither really wanted to take the time to get the correct colors. Definitely be doing this activity again though. All in all a fun morning :)

Preschool time!

Its been awhile! We welcomed a new little peanut in June :)  Been a whirlwind!

My good friend and I started homeschool preschool last week. I get the girls one day a week for school and she gets them one day a week for school. Not only is it awesome to see them learning but I get a few hours a week to bust out some cleaning and Etsy orders without having to entertain my 3 year old at the same time! Double win for mom :)

So for preschool we are picking a theme each week. Last week was weather because it had rained earlier in the week and had been cloudy. A nice break from our blazing heat! So for my day we did 2 crafts. The first was rain in a jar. Very simple. I used a mason jar for each girl and filled it with some water (don't go all the way full). Then stuck some shaving cream on top. Or if you are forgetful like me and don't check till 11pm the night before to see if you have shaving cream you can use shaving gel. It still works. The "cloud" won't look quite so puffy and you kind of have to wait a few seconds for the gel to go white but it still worked out. Then I gave each girl a small cup with water with food coloring in it. Blue and green worked well. Then they each got a little dropper thing (from oriental trading, not a big fan they break easily but oh well) and got to drop the colored water onto the "cloud" and then watch it rain.

Total hit! Girls loved it so much we did it twice (and they asked to do it again this week too!). They totally missed the learning aspect of water, clouds, rains but hey they are 2 & 3. I was just super surprised there was no mess after we were done!

Next up was sun catchers! I cut out clouds on white cardstock and rain drops on black cardstock. Then I stuck the rain drops on contact paper and cut it to the rain drop shape. Tore up some white, glittered and blue tissue paper and grabbed cotton balls and ribbon.

They glued the cotton balls to the cloud and then stuck the tissue to the rain drops.






 Then I strung them up and voila! I actually love the way it looks and has been hanging on our back door for a week :)

And we also did line and letter tracing. Introduced the letter W for weather. I used some workbooks I got off of Amazon and made copies of the pages we used. And then lastly we had a snack. I put yogurt, PB, honey and a little cinnamon in a bowl for each and then let them mix it up. They got a kick out of "making" their own snack. I gave them graham crackers and apple slices to dip in the yogurt mix. Have to say it was rather yummy. Mommy may have tasted Z baby's a few times :)

 I must say it is very interesting to see the differences in the two girls. 6 months apart and some activities hardly any difference in the two and other things one or the other can be miles ahead of the other. I absolutely love our preschool time and so blessed to have a good friend willing and excited to take this adventure with me!