Catching Up...

I'm back.  The last month has felt frantic and overwhelming-- spring fever kicked in, my own kids' sports schedules flooded my calendar, Uncle Sam's tax deadline was looming, and I just needed to take a break and step away from the blog for a little while!

After a nice long Spring Break, I am refreshed and ready to do some catching up.  So, here goes... a look back at the last 4 weeks in pictures.

Betsy returned from her trip to Florida!  We did a shared writing activity and my Pre-K students wrote her a letter to ask her to come back after a long, cold, and snowy winter!

A handful of my super-smart cookies in Pre-K are breezing through the folder games that I give them each morning as an arrival activity.  It was time to step things up just a little bit, so I created a set of "My First CVC Words" spelling folders that are just right for them!  These students know all of their letter sounds, and about 20 sight words.  They are ready to start putting the letters together to create short vowel patterns.  (And they LOVE that I made new "harder" folders for them!)

Spring art projects make me love the season even more.  The colors!  The new life!  In this process art project the students used cups of various sizes and shapes to make rainbow circle prints.  It was so easy and each project was unique.

During a long car ride over spring break, I had the chance to update my very first TpT product- the one that correlates to my very first blog post- the Frosty Queen Ice Cream Parlor.  In just 6 months, my tastes and styles have changed and this set of dramatic play signs needed a facelift. I'm really pleased at how it turned out!  What do you think?

Our lunch bunch students conducted some neat science experiments related to Colors.  In this one, we read Mouse Paint and then mixed 2 colors of paint in a ziploc bag on the window.  (Idea from Pinterest.)

In April, we began a unit on Community Helpers.  Kids love learning about fire safety, don't they?!  Our younger class made these fire collages out of red, yellow, and orange tissue paper.

Another Community Helper art project was this "Fast Tracks" painting activity.  The students rolled cars and trucks through paint and made tracks all over their papers.

Finally, we decorated big Easter eggs using clothes pins and pom poms as paint brushes.  Thanks, again, Pinterest for the great idea.

Whew.  I think that's enough catching up for today.  Stay tuned for updates about our big Fairy Tale production and more.

Have fun playing and learning with your children today.