Last Day of School

Hey, Farah, I wanted to get this posted. I don't know when you were going to do it, but you can do one too! You've got pics for this day that I don't have. So anyhoo, here it goes:

We met at the Library because Cyrus had a talent show Farah wanted to see. The library was awesome and we all plan on signing up for the summer book reading program. We invited Jair to come to our end of the school year party. When we got their, we set up while the kids played outside. When Farah was ready she had the kids make Granola bars! They were sooooooo yummy. There was no corn syrup in it. It was all healthy, except for the marshmallows and the m&m's. Then while we waited to that to be set up we got going on our craft. I had the kids paint a border for a picture of themselves and then glue the picture on the page. Then I had them pick shells out to go around the pictures. They turned out great. I hope we can all find frames for the pics and hang them on our walls at home. The picture below is Lorien's last day of school picture. Darius has one too, but Farah will have to post that one.

May 22nd

My last day teaching! WAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHH!

Since we had to go to the library, we had our normal morning routine and then did a couple pages I had printed out. We finished talking about short vowel sounds. I gave them some pages for homework. Then we talked about the air around us. How do we know it's there? Darius said because the leaves blow. We made parachutes. The "man" or "woman" was an empty spool of thread. We tied fabric to it and threw them high into the air. The kids had fun throwing them up in the air. Their parachutes didn't catch as soon as I was hoping for, but they worked well enough. Then we went to the library, and as always, they had a blast!

May 20th

We started off with our Hello song and the Pledge of Allegiance. Then we did the calendar. Talked about weather a little bit. Then we talked about the TH sounds some more and thought of more words to write on the big TH poster. I gave them a packet to complete. It was mainly about Vowels. We had talked about them on Monday and I was surprized at how well they remembered the letters. They worked on the short sounds of A, E, I , and O. The last page was assigned as homework. Then we looked at the egg. It was awesome! The kids held it in their hands. The egg shell was completely gone. It was all rubbery. We wanted to see how far this rubbery surface went, so I asked Darius to break it. So he put it on the ground and stomped on it. It squirted everywhere! So it was a very thin "cooked" part. The science/cooking part of preschool was to learn about solar cooking. We got a bowl, covered it with Aluminum foil and put marshmallows in it. While they were cooking, Lorien and Darius wrote the steps of solar cooking down on paper. Their handwritting has certainly improved since the beginning. For snack time we got our food out. (Lorien shared with Darius since his mom was with Cyrus.) They got 1/2 an apple each, one cheese stick. We talked about fractions. I instructed them to cut the cheese in half. Then in 4ths, then in 8ths and then in 16ths. They had a lot of fun cutting. I think Darius even cut his in to 32nds. I helped them cut their apples into 4ths and then 8ths.

In The End

Spring Break was in April. We took a two week vacation. Lorien was sick so we hadn't done preschool the two weeks before that. When we got back, Lorien and I got sick with the flu. Then we had to go back out to UT for my dad's wedding. Finally life settled and we could have somewhat of a real preschool. Then Farah told me the end was fast approaching, like within a week! I was very sad, but we pressed forward. I did the week of 5-18 to 5-22
and Farah did 5-27 and 5-29.

I forgot my camera for May 18th, but we talked about the TH sound. We did our normal routine. We sat in a circle and sang our opening song and said the Pledge of Allegiance, and completed the calendar for the month of May up to that point. The words of the day were The, This, That, Three. I brought activity pages from a book Farah let me borrow. They wrote the words down and read the sentence that they had to put the word into. Then I cut paper into shapes and I did a pattern and asked Lorien and Darius to finish the pattern. They also had a turn at doing a pattern and having me complete it. They got a bit too complicated for me! Our Science project was with an egg and Vinegar. We talked about bones and what they are made of and how important they are to us. I asked them what could make our bones go away? They said things like oil. I told them that those liquids are very soft. Then I had them smell the Vinegar. Ew yuk! It was strong. So I asked if it could disolve (make dissapear) bone. They didn't think so. So I put an egg in the cup. We talked about the shell being made of Calcium and that's what our bones are made out of. Then they poured the Vinegar into the cup. We made our guesses, or hypothesis, about what would happen to the egg. Darius said it would crack, Lorien said nothing would happen to it, and I said the shell would dissapear. Darius kept wanting to check the egg, but I told him it would take two days for it to be ready. Then we read two TH books.

Gap in Photos

After Feb 4th I only have a few pictures in March. So let me explain Feb first. We had a Valentines party. Farah taught the kids to do If You're Happy and You Know it, but instead of clap your hands she had them say and do things like, blow a kiss, and give a hug. It was very sweet. Lorien and Darius also had made "plaster" items to give to someone special that day. So Lorien invited her Grandma Stevens and gave her the presant and Darius invited his Auntie Shana to give his to. Lorien also invited her Aunt Jair to come too since Jaden would love the activities. The kids got to decorate sugar cookies, dance and hand out candy. They really did enjoy themselves.

After that, I just can't remember what happened in Feb. Lorien probably got sick again.

In March when Lorien was sick I had a lesson about the old saying "In like a Lion out like a Lamb." We talked about wheather and what it had been like at the beginning of March and what we thought it would be at the end. Then Lorien painted the head of a lion onto a paper plate. She liked that craft a lot, so it's hanging on our living room wall still.

A long Time Ago. . .

So a while ago we stopped posting. I don't know if it was because we got too busy, or that we were all getting sick and it was a very long while inbetween classes. I'm just going to share some tidbits on the months of Feb-March. It will probably take a couple posts to get it done, but then you'll be filled in and won't have to worry about our sudden hault in progress. There are other pictures that come before these ones that I forgot about. I'll put them in the next post. ~Anne~

On 1-26 the kids were illustrators of a book they created. They sewed the pages together themselves and glued the words in order, then drew pictures to go with the words.

On 1-28 Lorien was sick, so we stayed home. We worked on the color wheel and drew a picture from the colors we had mixed. We only used the primary colors. Darius did this project as well and his color wheel is still hanging on his living room wall.We also did an expreiment to see if we could split the colors of a pen up on a paper towel in a cup of water. I forget what that's called. Anyone?

On 2-4 Lorien was still sick. We stayed home and studied colors made by light. We talked about the rainbow and then drew one.