End of the Year Preschool Party

This week we celebrated the end of preschool with a get together at the Splash Pad. All the older siblings are out of school, so they came along for the lunch and party. One of my friends compiled all the teacher’s praise for each student onto a certificate, and read the comments aloud. Natalie’s focused on her enthusiasm and artistry. She was beaming the whole time.

 

 

The last day of school I had the students pose with different objects to make up the ABC’s. I took emails from the field trips and lessons throughout the year to make up all the letters, then formatted it with a simple letter and caption, 4 to a page. Printed on brochure paper (glossy two sided paper not quite as stiff as cardstock), with a laminated cover. It was a huge hit. What kid doesn’t want to see themselves in a book? It was fun to reflect on the year behind and how much they’ve grown. If I do something similar in the future I’ll be sure to put my pictures in preschool folder on my computer each time I upload pics, and email all the Moms to get pictures the last month of school.

 

Last but not least the kids presented their moms with necklaces they made from wooden beads. Here’s Natalie posing with me wearing the necklace. You know, right behind some kids head. We took more shots, but Natalie’s eyes are closed, the Daley curse. Is there a photoshop action to open kids eyes? J/K.

 

Hooray for preschool! It’s been a great year.

Wooden Beaded Necklaces

Over Christmas I scored the crafting jackpot at the Goodwill outlet, and bought a HUGE box of wooden beads, spools and balls for 50 cents a pound.
I finally got around to doing something with them- painted beads for necklaces. We painted a lot of beads, enough  for Sophia’s teachers (first grade, and her specials teachers) and the other Mom teachers in our preschool co-op. Plus some for the other special ladies in our lives….act excited if you get one as  gift, k?
We’ll also be doing thank you cards, but that will be another post for another day.

I spent one naptime and after bedtime listening to After the Jump radio show and painting beads. After the second coat, on day 2 I arranged them on dowel rods and a box to spray paint with clear varnish in the garage.



Then today Sophia picked beads for necklaces. I used leather cording from Hobby Lobby.  My personal faves  of the necklaces have only 3 or 4 beads to match an outfit. It’s super easy to switch them out if you make them for yourself. 

For preschool next week the kids are going to pick out beads and assemble necklaces for their Mama teacher. I considered having them paint the beads…but I wanted it to be something the Mom could wear (outside the house!).


Hooray for teachers, crafts and pretty beads.


 

Z is for Zoo and Zebras

Today we did the letter ZZZZZ…..Which was appropriate because I am TIRED!  But we didn’t take a nap, we learned about zoos instead.

 

First we did some activities from some online zoo packet.

We matched letters to beginning sounds.

Zoo packet by Oopsey Daisy

Zoo packet by 2 teaching Mommies

 

We read some books about zoo animals- like Polar Bear Polar Bear, What do you Hear? Then we watched it on youtube:

 

 

We also made a mini zoo for our animal crackers:

 

And rolled an animal dice and graphed our results.

 

When we got flamingos we yelled “OH YEAH”

And when we were feeling out of sorts, we kind of went nuts. Natalie needed some alone time today, like all of preschool.

We also made some Zebra bread aka Marbled Chocolate Banana Bread

 

Mini loaves and muffins.

I wished we had been a little faster and had time to take a zoo out of your stuffed animals, feed and pretend to take care of them.

Hooray for the letter Z!

I’ll take a Slice of May with a glass of ice cold root beer please….

Swings and Popsicles.

Trikes and new patio sets.

Trampoline jumps at our neighbor’s house.

 

Budding scrabble players

 

Chapter book reader.

 

Curious george lover.

A mama duck guarding her eggs. And leading her hatchlings to their first swim. And she left two eggs behind.

Letter X. Q tip skeletons, x-ray handprints, tic tac toe.

 

Dancing Princesses.

Silly kids.

 

Something about the mirror behind reminded me of French Impressionism paintings with a mirror behind the bar. Love these girls.

Indianapolis Indians

We recently went on a tour of the Indianapolis Indians ball field for preschool.

 

The little boys did great hanging out while we heard about lawn care, suites and other stadium business.

 

Indoor batting cage

 

Sitting in the dugout.

 

 

From the suites

 

From the press box

 

 

A huge bat! We ate lunch outside. It was a fun day.