Keeping The Munchkins Busy with Cute Fall Crafts!

    It has been a whirlwind 4 months since I moved to California and started a new teaching job within 3 weeks of relocating from NY. Because of this, I am SO excited that we have the entire week off for Thanksgiving! No big travel plans here... the cross country trek this summer was enough traveling for me! This is my week to relax and just do whatever... 

   Last week, as we prepared for our big Thanksgiving feast, we had the keep the munchkins busy and focused as best we could. We know they love art projects, so we went with that.

   We have been collecting leaves for quite some time and put them in our leaf press. We took the leaves out of the leaf press and added them to the art center, along with scissors, a gluestick, a marker, a turkey body, a circle to cut out, wiggly eyes and yellow and orange strips of paper. 

 Check out these adorable Leaf Turkeys that they created:

And in Spanish class, we have begun to learn about the names of the different shapes. I had out different activites for them to do to learn the shapes in Spanish throughout the week.

Turkey Shape Matching Game:

 Shape Owls:

(I used this FREE template from Crafty Bee Creations)

Lots of fine motor practice!

As you can see, they really do love crafts! And they all do such a great (and cute) job!

    Well, back to my vacation...even if I have a long To Do List to plan and prep for the next 3 weeks, which I know are going to go by really, really quick!

¡Estamos Agradecido Por Nuestras Familias! We Are Thankful For Our Families!

  There are two days left in the week and then we are off for a whole week for Thanksgiving! I am so excited about this because I have never had a full week off for Thanksgiving! Woo-hoo!
   The munchkins have been working hard to prepare for our Thanksgiving Feast that takes place tomorrow. They have learned some fun, cute songs to sing and made some cute owls and turkeys as decorations. I am a little bit nervous as to how everything will play out. Our Montessori Preschool has 52 families...and almost all of them will be participating in the feast tomorrow. That is a whole lot of people... easily over 100 people will be there. So, I have been juggling teaching and some party planning these past 2 weeks or so! But it should all be fun!
   And since it is the season of giving thanks, it was the perfect time to talk about what all of us are thankful for: Our Families! So we learned all about Nuestras Familias in Spanish Class.
   One of the books I read was "The Family Book" by Todd Parr, It is in English, but was simply translated. It is a nice book to portray different types of families. And the cute word wall cards were purchased from Primary French Immersion.

We learned the names of all family members:

And then we focused on the immediate family members (that may or may not live in the same house), 

to prep for our drawing activity.

Each student drew their family members and I am so happy and impressed with how cute they came out. 

A few of my older kids labeled their portraits themselves!

I have framed them all with colorful construction paper and they will all be displayed for tomorrow's Thanksgiving Feast!

I think I need an early bedtime tonight, seeing as tomorrow may going to be a huge, busy, chaotic day!

Post Thanksgiving Note...

   Well, I felt like I was completely MIA last week, trying to get things in order for Thanksgiving.
   NOW Thanksgiving is over... and now I really need to kick my butt into super high gear as I try not to lose my mind getting ready for Christmas, which is to be very exciting (and stressful I'm sure) b/c our families are coming to Buffalo this year for Christmas!!

   Anyhow, before all that craziness begins, I just wanted to say THANKS to my small group of followers! I have been blogging since March and while I had hoped to have a bigger reader/fan base at this point, I will take the 45 that I DO have.  THANK YOU!
   I really do not know how some bloggers find the time to create awesome things for the classroom and can blog more than once a week!! Man...they make balancing family and career look SO easy! =) But I do admire all of them and much of my inspiration comes from those types of bloggers! So a big THANKS to all of you! (You bloggers know who you are!)

   So, on that note, just want to say thanks and post one more thing that my little munchkin and I worked on right before Thanksgiving.  I has absolutely NO time to post last week, but I do want to share this cute idea that I made my own, after finding it on Pinterest!
   My munchkin made one and them I made 3 more and filled them with Reese's Pieces candy and left them in the staff room for my colleagues.

 Here is the one my little munchkin made:

    So now to put on my Super Woman cape and get ready for the next month, which is definitely going to be crazy wild and busy! =)

   Hope everyone is enjoying the holiday weekend!

Gobblin' Good Fun with the Letter Tt!

Lots of Letter Tt fun going on this past week!!

And most of it has been centered around TURKEYS!!!

    Before all the Gobble, Gobble fun began, the preschool munchkins made the letter Tt with toothpicks.

    Then they had to make their very own turkey by finding feathers with the letter Tt and pasting them onto a turkey’s body.

Check out these lovely turkeys!!

    
    We had a little bit of textured art fun, using feather, felt, tissue, sandpaper and other fun materials to make feathers for our new friend- Tim the Turkey! 

    You see, I had a "turkey" named Tom, who I created during my very 1^st year of teaching, and I had invited him into my classroom to meet my kiddos every school year, BUT unfortunately, the years have taken a toll on him. L 

    And instead of trying to patch him up, one of my assistants volunteered to make a new one! She is currently is working her way to her CDA certificate, so I enjoy having her take part in the classroom and encourage her to make things and develop activities, so that when the day comes where she is on charge of her own classroom, she can already have things in her Teacher File!

   Since we have been working hard at learning letters for the past 2-3 weeks, this short week is serving as a Review Week. Here is a Turkey Letter Game I created a few years back. 

This is a differentiated activity that addresses the different levels of ability in my classroom, in that children can find feathers with the same letters on it OR they can pick a letter (in this case, it was S,P,T) and find feathers with the letter and feathers with a picture of the letter sound.

   And of course, there was the lovely hand print Turkey that my other assistant wanted to do with the munchkins! 

 

     I must say that I am very thankful for my assistants this year. I love that they are both so involved in finding and implementing their own activity ideas with the children. It makes lesson planning for me that much easier and it gives them an opportunity to do activities that they want to do with the kiddos!