Dolphins and Puppies

I would like to share some great quotes from my little “Tinkerbell.”  When we were retelling the story of Jonah and the Whale (Big Fish, whatever), I was having them help me tell the story.  So after they threw him overboard, I said, “What happened after that?!”  Tink shrieks, “HE GOT EATED BY A DOLPHIN!” 

A side note about this picture--someone asked me why Jonah had no sandals...probably because Miss Rabedeaux couldn't find a Jonah praying so she used a "Shalom" drawing instead.  Oops!

Second moment—I was asking my class what different farm animals eat.  When I got to a cow, I got some typical responses, like grass and hay, but then Tink shouts (it seems she is always yelling) “Puppies!!!”  Cow-eating puppies anyone?

Monday was full of meetings—which I will willingly admit are not my favorite—but at least one great thing came out of them!  We were encouraged to make anchor charts for our “I can” statements for our letter of the week.  Check it out:

This week in science we learned about color mixing.  First we made some predictions with our primary colors, then we tested our hypothesis by using eye-droppers and colored water.  I read the book, Mouse Colors to keep reinforcing what we learned, and then they used q-tips and paint to mix their own colors.  It was fun to see the results!

This is a an example of someone who did it the right way... there were some that had a bit of trouble following directions...they looked a little more...brown?

Hurray for October 31st!

We don’t celebrate Halloween here, for which I am very THANKFUL.  So thankful, in fact, that we made thankful turkeys on October 31^st!  I honestly don’t have a huge issue with trick-or-treating, and most of my kids actually went (and some of them brought me some candy today).  Breakfast anyone?

But we did make thankful turkeys, and they are seriously cute:

When asked what he was thankful for, one little boy said, “WAL-MART.”  Seriously?  We live in the land where Targets are more plentiful than McDonald’s, and he says Wal-Mart.  I got some great responses, including chicken, fuzzy blankets, and frogs.  Overall, I think most of them got the message and said some real things they were thankful for.  Moms, dads, sisters, brothers, beds, and American Girl dolls were all very real answers.

We worked on letter G this week, and my fellow pre-k teacher made gumball machines with dot painters.  She worked on counting a certain amount of each color (though this example is probably not indicative of how many they were supposed to do…). Pretty sweet though. 

The start of November also means a new dramatic play area… we are now officially a pizza shop!

As you can probably tell, we are a mixture of a Papa Murphy’s and a Pizza Hut, but as we all know, Papa Murphy’s is far superior. Pizza Hut just has an easier logo to enlarge J

Enjoy your start to November—I know I will be.  There are sure to be some kids in a sugar coma!

Our busy week!

I feel like I could start almost every post by saying, “It’s been a busy week in pre-k,” but it is absolutely true.  The book fair was this week, and it was Red Ribbon week—which meant dress up days as well!  We did some really cool stuff this week, but I’ll highlight just a few.

We made candy corn patterns—this was a little tricky, but once they got the hang of it, they turned out really cute.  Unfortunately I forgot to take the after picture, so here’s what the sheet looked like before:

It was letter F week—we actually made these with our short week last week, and they were really…fun?  The paint made my room stink so badly, but the frogs turned out really cute, even if I am a little biased!

My three year olds made Joseph’s coat of many colors with contact paper and tissue paper.  A great fine motor activity, and I think they retained a bit of the story?  At least I hope! 

We also had a “pumpkin day” on Friday—not to be confused with pajama day, which was also on Friday!  We opened up a pumpkin, counted the seeds, and drew what we saw.  It was a pretty fun day!

Frog, Fish...Mouse?

We are back in action after a few days off last week.  I went home to Iowa and was spoiled with all my favorite fall foods and pumpkin sugar cookies by my sweet mama.  Yesterday was full of fun with F is for Fish, Fire Safety, and a dead mouse.  Wait, back up, yes I DID say it—DEAD MOUSE.  Which does NOT start with F, and it is definitely NOT welcome in my classroom!  Thankfully it was taken care of quickly, but it has made me a bit paranoid to move anything in my classroom—I’m fearful it brought Friends…yikes!  I’m hopeful it was a once upon a time story and it is completely over!  Also, please don’t think my school is unclean—it is well-kept and my classroom is clean, I promise! 

Here’s a morning quote I’ll never forget:

If you have read up on my characters, you know that a few weeks ago I had a little one who wet his pants.  So of course I was concerned when he was “holding himself”—the classic, “I need to go potty” look.  So I said, “_____, do you have to go potty?”  To which he replied, “No, I just like to touch my pee-pee.”  Oooooooooh goodness, recovering from that one was tough!

On our way to library, a little girl said hi to her dad in the hallway.  After watching her greet her dad, a little boy said, “Hi brother!”  I said, “You don’t have any brothers, goofy!”  And he said, “Yes I do!  In my mommy’s tummy!”  “Well, you can’t say hi to him yet!” He said, “I was saying hi to my imaginary brother.  I always say hi to them.  And my imaginary sisters, Susan and Lucy.”  A creative kid, to say the least!

Zoo Field Trip

Yesterday I was greeted with this amazing sunrise as I was driving to school--the promise of a great day for a field trip!

The zoo was our first field trip as a class, and it was quite an adventure!  I took lots of pictures and I wish I could share the ones of the kids, but you’ll have to take my word that they are adorable!  Before we left, we made predictions of what animals we thought we would see.  They were right about most, but we had some wishful thinking as well (sharks, elephants, and eels, I believe, were all mentioned).  When we came back, we highlighted the animals we did see, and we got 21 right!  Not bad, considering that is higher than most can count. 

We had a rocky start with a missing lunch, but after that crisis was solved, we started our trek to the zoo.  We went to a presentation called, “Fur, Feathers, Scales and Slime,” and the guy speaking did an awesome job.  I was impressed by his ability to hold the attention of (most of) the 46 pre-k students for an hour!  After that, we ate lunch OUTSIDE.  Yes, it was 40 degrees.  No, the sun was not directly on us.  Yes, the wind was blowing the bags around, and no, I was NOT adequately dressed!  It was a very cold lunch!  Then my little group split off with parents and looked around the zoo.  Thankfully some of the exhibits are indoors, so we got a break from some of the cold weather.  It was a beautiful day, just windy!

To say they wore me out is a huge understatement.  Last night consisted of popcorn, Gilmore Girls, and falling asleep at 9:30!  Maybe a bit of a lame Friday night, but definitely necessary J

Next week is parent teacher conferences—my first ones alone!  I’m actually really excited because I have awesome parents in my room, and I have wonderful kids! 

Totally unrelated to teaching—sitting here sipping blackberry tea and working on my James study (which is phenomenal, for any of you interested!) and I wanted to share this verse with you:

Abraham…was strengthened in his faith and gave glory to God, because he was fully persuaded that God was able to do what he had promised—Romans 4:20-21

Hope you all have a wonderful weekend—enjoy this gray day!  

Letter E is Egg-cellent :)

There are days that I wish I were a five year old.  Not just because we do the sweetest art projects and sing all day, but because their lives are so simple.  Their biggest problems consist of someone taking their spot in line, who has more crackers at snack, and whether or not we are watching Veggie Tales at rest time.  Don’t we all wish our lives could be that simple sometimes?

Yesterday I was working on community helpers with my three-year-olds.  I showed them pictures of a firefighter, doctor, baker, police officer, etc.  When I held up a picture of a teacher, I said, “What does a teacher help us with?” and I pointed to my head (hoping they would connect that to learning) and Tinkerbell shouts, “EARS!  THEY HELP US WITH OUR EARS!”  Obviously my pointing was not effective!

Today I did an “E is for Egg” experiment with my pre-k class.  And by experiment, I mean we fried an egg, though it was exciting enough to elicit some screams (not egg-aggerating either, there actually were screams when the egg hit the griddle).  I have never loved teaching science more than at the pre-k level.  They are SO enthusiastic!

  

After we observed the egg and recorded our results, I read them a book about eggs.  If I had thought of it, I would have previewed the book a little more thoroughly than checking how many words were on each page and looking at the pictures.  As my luck would have it, I turned one of the pages and there was a picture of the inside of a chicken with an egg inside.  To which one child asked, “Miss Rabedeaux, how do the eggs get out?!”  Needless to say, the next two times I did the lesson, I casually flipped past that page. 

We are going on our first field trip on Friday, and I am so excited!  We’re going to the Como Zoo, and my students were bouncing off the walls saying, “I can’t wait till tomorrow!”  Sorry sweethearts, but your concept of time is a little off.  Friday will be here soon enough—can’t wait to see all of their crazy animal faces walking around the park!