Snowballs and Mittens

We had so much fun at our last week of Tales for Twos! The theme was Snowballs & Mittens.

We read Hello Snow and One Mitten.














We did a fun guessing game on the flannel board:
I had 5 mittens of different colors and a white circle behind one.

Snowball, snowball
Cold and round
Behind which mitten
Can you be found?

From http://tonsoffunpreschoolactivities.blogspot.com/2011/01/tot-school-mittens.html

 Then I had pairs of mittens cut from scrapbooking paper and I gave one to each child and I kept the match. I put my mitten on the board and asked the little ones to come up if they had the match.

 

Then each parent was given an envelope with cards of the seasons and different clothing that you wear during each season and they had a little one-on-one time with their little one talking about the seasons.

 

From http://www.montessoriforeveryone.com/assets/PDF/Seasons_and_Clothing_Matching.pdf

 

 

We finished with a very fun indoor snowball fight using cottonballs!

 

The take-home craft was a mitten wreath...

 



Construction, Demolition & Garbage

Well, I actually did not do this theme. Tuesday, we didn't have a program because I was hosting a librarian's workshop and Wednesday, Miss Sarah filled in for me. BUT, this is what I had planned...

Books:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Construction Machine Song:(from KidsSoup):
(Farmer in the Dell)
The excavator scoops up dirt
The excavator scoops up dirt
Hey-ho, Look at it go!
The excavator scoops up dirt

 

The bulldozer moves the dirt...
The dump truck dumps the dirt...
The steamroller flattens the dirt...

 

 

She'' Be Driving a Bulldozer When She Comes (She'll be Comin' Round the Mountain)

By Rob Reid

 

http://www.rapnrob.com/pdf/shebulldozer.pdf

 

Take-home craft:

Great for talking about shapes!

 



New Books I Like

Great new ABC book! A through Z looking at street signs! Great book to take along in the car and play a game to see how many signs you come across! Environmental print fun!

 

It's words cre8ed with numbers! It reminds me of the old Concentration TV Game Show or trying to figure out license plates on the road! Great fun!

Bugs by the Numbers by Sharon Werner is the follow-up book to Alphabeasties. Both books create the image using numbers and letters. Very cool books!

Very nice new board books by Britta Teckentrup

 

If you have a little girl that likes to create things- a crafting, creative girl, this is a perfect book for her! I loved this book because Chloe is different, but she is creative and enjoys making unique gifts and other things. She also is kind and forgiving to a girl who wasn't kind to her which is a great example of being the better person! Liked this one a lot!

 

Miss Debbie's Resources

A lot of patrons ask me where I get my ideas. I decided to create a Pinterest Site for you with a lot of the online resources I use. There will be art & crafts, books, rhymes, early literacy and more. Anything I come across in my normal everyday work, I will pin here if there is a image or video to pin. Sometimes there isn't an image- for an example,  a list of the best preschool music cds without any images, and I can't pin it.

If you aren't familiar with Pinterest, don't worry! It's easy-peasy! You do not have to create a login to see the resources and you can follow simply by using your email address.

http://pinterest.com/missdebbieatfpl/

Hope this becomes a great resource for you!

Lemons & Limes, Apples & Oranges

We  read The Red Lemon by Bob Staake, An Orange In January by Dianna Hutts Aston and Apple by Nikki McClure.

We danced to Jim Gill's Silly Dance Contest. We sang a song to the tune of Peanut Butter & Jelly called Lemons, Lemonade:
First you take the lemons and you cut them, you cut them
Then you take the lemons and you squeeze them, you squeeze them
Then you add the sugar and the water, the water
Then you drop the ice cubes, and you stir it, you stir it
Pour yourself a glass and drink it, drink it
Lemon, lemonade- yeah! Lemon, lemonade-yeah! (Themes from A to Z by Education Center)

We used our lemon and lime props to work with positional words.

 

The limes are here, the lemons are there

The limes, the lemons are everywhere
The limes are up, the lemons are down
The limes, the lemons are all around
The limes are in, the lemons are out
The limes, the lemons are all about
The limes are low, the lemons are high
The limes, the lemons all say Good-bye!

 

We tasted lemons and limes. And then we did a short sequencing activity with a girl drinking lemonade.

 



I had these take-home activities: lime and lemon slices, apple and orange word sheets and a positional word game to use with the lemon and lime props. The A words worksheet was from Mailbox Magazine and the O-words sheet I made in Word. The Wacky Word games was from http://www.uen.org/Lessonplan/preview.cgi?LPid=16188

Color Your World

There are a ton of books about colors! Last week for Tales for Twos, our theme was colors.

We read Dog's Colorful Day by Emma Dodd- too cute! I found a picture of the dog online and printed it and drew a larger version, so as I read the story I could add the colored spots to the dog. I also printed a dog for each child and provided the spots to take home!

We also read The Artist Who Painted a Horse Blue by Eric Carle. I love this book because it shows familiar objects that any child would recognize in different colors- as he sees them and as a child might see them. Here is a review of the book which speaks to the importance of it better than I could:

Every child has an artist inside them, and this vibrant picture book from Eric Carle will help let it out. The artist in this book paints the world as he sees it, just like a child. There's a red crocodile, an orange elephant, a purple fox and a polka-dotted donkey. More than anything, there's imagination. Filled with some of the most magnificently colorful animals of Eric Carle's career, this tribute to the creative life celebrates the power of art.

We did Hokey Pokey Colors with crepe paper streamers- you put blue in, you put blue out, you put blue in and shake it all about, etc.

We finished with Red Car, Red Bus by Susan Steggall. Great book for colors, patterns, sequencing and more. It would be great to print out the vehicles in the book and use them as manipulatives while you read the story and afterward use them to make up your own pattern. Perfect, simple, free activity! (Didn't have time to do it in our program)

I gave everyone materials to make a "color book".

Easy Peasy Halloween Picture Bingo!

There are a lot of free Bingo card generators online, but I like the dltk-kids.com one. You can do words and pictures or just pictures. You can choose the number of squares. You have lots of options.


I made these simple 3X3 Halloween Bingo cards with just pictures on the site and printed them. They also generate the call cards. I laminated the bingo cards and I printed the call cards on a transparency so I could use an overhead projector to show the little ones the picture.

Of course, we had to use candy corn and Halloween M&Ms for markers! Easy to do and lots of fun! Great for parties, classrooms and at home!