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!

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!