We capped off the week on Friday with a costume day. Students were allowed to come to school dressed up in their favorite costumes. I liked the variety of costumes this year. We had half and half real and make-believe characters.

Superman. Spiderman. A pizza man. Cinderella. Two butterflies. A dancer. An Army man. A soccer player. A train conductor. Dora the Explorer. A monkey. A pirate. Barbie. Even I dressed up as a bumble bee.

We made a list of all the characters and categorized them as real and make-believe.

Square 1 shows the caterpillar egg. They used an unpopped popcorn kernal.

Square 2 shows the caterpillar by using a small piece of yarn.

Square 3 shows the chrysalis or the cocoon with the tip of a cotton swab Q-tip.

Finally, square 4 shows the butterfly with two pieces of elbow macaroni placed back to back for the wings.

This game is great for little competition. There really is no winner or loser. The students only spin and match the pieces to the butterfly.

Great for color recognition and taking turns in game play.

One page read: Caterpillars smell with their antennae. The next page read: I smell with my nose. We took a picture of one student’s nose and glued it on that page.

Another page read: Caterpillars taste with their feet. The next page read: I taste with my tongue. We took a picture of another student’s tongue and attached it to that page.

This was a funny activity for the preschool students and they enjoyed looking back through the little booklet to see their body parts. This made for a funny way to end the school day.

Draw and cut out circles for each piece of the caterpillar. Draw a face on the first one and number each of the other circles with numbers.

For an alternative: use letters of the alphabet or letters of words.

Students will choose each circle of the caterpillar to place in the correct order.

Use a coffee stir stick. Thread several marshmellows on the stick. It is sticky and can be difficult for young fingers to get the marshmellows all the way on the stick but it is a good exercise in fine motor skills.

Use a second coffee stir stick to thread diagonally-cut fruit roll-ups. This activity may require the help of a teacher or adult. The stick must be threaded or poked through the fruit roll-up from the flat edge side to the pointy side.

Then the stick with the roll-ups can either be poked horizontally through a marshmellow in the center of the first stick or lay the marshmellow stick on top of the roll-up stick on a plate.

This is a cute activity to enjoy constructing a butterfly.

Cut out circles and tape to the wall. Cut out smaller squares of paper and draw or write something on the squares. The students will match these pictures, so they may be pictures of shapes or numbers or letters. Tape those squares underneath each circle. There should be two of each picture to match.

Students can flip up one circle at a time and try to match the pictures underneath.

The Kindle Fire uses Android apps. I have found many educational learning apps for preschool students and most of them were FREE.  They are easy to download and easy to operate. Once introduced to the apps, most of the 3-4 year old students can maneuver through them on their own.

I want to highlight some of the favorite preschool educational apps that have been great learning tools to enhance and reinforce learning in the classroom. These apps are not meant to replace teachers or their interaction with the students. They are more for reinforcing the activities teachers have planned and meet the interests of many students of the iGeneration.

The apps allow young learners to use their fingers on the touch screen and build their fine motor muscles for pre-writing skills.

Shape Builder — slide puzzle pieces into the correct spot to complete a picture, voice tells picture name and gives sound object makes when puzzle is complete

Alphabet Matching — memory matching game to remember and locate two matching letters at a time, voice tells letter names when clicked

Jumpstart Preschool: Magic of Learning

Giraffe’s Matching — larger game board than alphabet matching, memory matching game to locate animal pictures, gives animal sounds when student clicks each square

ABC Preschool — trace letters and numbers using different colors

Preschool and Kindergarten Learning Games — shapes & colors, letters, counting; voice calls out a command to locate the correct object out of a choice of four

Cookies & Milk — students bake virtual cookies by dragging ingredients to the bowl, stirring, and decorating then eating and enjoying a glass of milk

Connect the Dots — tracing letters by connecting the dots

Alphabet Book — letters, numbers, and shapes; identify the correct choice out of four options

FishPop — pop the fish by touching them with a finger being careful not to pop the octopus and make a black inkspot, must be quick to pop all the fish as they swim past

My First Book — listen to a story book with interactive features to touch the screen

The Story of the Monkey — storybook

Fruit Sorter – sort different fruit into four boxes as the pass by on the conveyor belt before they drop off

iStory Books —  storybook

Check out these apps and open up a new world of technology for preschool students. My students tend to enjoy and learn more from apps and strengthen their fine motor skills using a tablet rather than the desktop computer. The apps periodically update, keeping things new.

They glued magazine pages, soda bottles, yogurt containers, papertowel tubes, gloves, plastic cups, and aluminum foil. This was a collective effort on each student in the class. They worked together to put each item in the perfect place.

After lots of glue and hours of drying time, the masterpiece was ready for display.

We displayed it on the wall for all to enjoy the art of recycling.

We used a healthy green plant with many bright green leaves and long roots. This pothos plant grows long roots in water. The students can see the roots in the water and understand the parts of the plant.

We poured a household poison (bleach) in the cup of water with the plant. We will wait and observe what happens to the looks of the healthy green leaves and roots on the plant.

One year we poured vinegar in the water in the cup. The leaves began to turn brown and look wilted after a few days.

The students are able to see what happens with unclean rain. They have already learned the water cycle and how rain comes down then evaporates back up into the clouds.