Apples and Cherries

I'll admit it, this was a tough day at preschool for me.  I have been under the weather and the girls have been a little on the cranky side.  Miss M insisted on wearing her super hero fairy princess costume for circle time, which is not a big deal in general but it was distracting for her.  I decided not to push her to take it off or to even sit at circle time because I knew she'd push back and I was not in a mental frame to respond appropriately.  Littlest enjoyed getting the opportunity to help with the calendar and weather icons (normally under the jurisdiction of the older girls).  She still likes to try and rip everything possible off my display board so I spent a few minutes after school with my hot glue gun making that a much harder process for the future.

We learned "Way Up High in the Apple Tree" and the associated body movements, which all three really liked so we sang it half a dozen times.  They also loved loved loved the Johnny Appleseed book we got in our materials this month.  I liked that there was a predictable pattern to the story, making it easy for them to tell it with me after a few pages.


The Johnny Appleseed puppet was a huge success.  I really liked this craft because it was a great blend of punch and paste (the pieces all came pre-punched so I didn't have to cut them out) and creative space.  The girls were able to draw Johnny's facial features and color his shirt however they wanted to but the other pieces were done for them so it didn't take forever to finish and everything was recognizable as a particular piece of clothing.  If I'd been more with it, this would have been a great craft to help teach some following directions/language skills.  As it was, I had barely finished helping them tape their puppets to the craft stick when the two oldest began a great conversation using very appropriate social language and even making up their own song.  It made this speech therapist's heart smile.  Puppets are a great way to help kids develop conversational skills as well as teach vocabulary.  I can see a Pinterest search for easy puppet crafts in my future.

Miss M took off on her own for a bit so Littlest and our friend worked on patterning.  Littlest just likes to line things up right now and point to them while I name them.  When Miss M rejoined us, we worked on the cherry tree craft (I traced their arms, rather than paint them because I was not in a mood to chase anyone down to clean them up before paint got everywhere).  We had a yummy snack of popcorn and apple slices while we watched Disney's "Johnny Appleseed" cartoon on YouTube.  This was followed by "The Ugly Duckling", giving me just enough time to clean up in peace.

It was a bit of a tiring day for me but I always feel like I've done something worthwhile with the girls when we do a lesson or two, even if the rest of the day isn't spent quite so productively.