G is for Gorilla

Another fun preschool day today as we dove into the second week of our A to Zoo Animals theme.  I had planned to do F is for Fox but we only got through the craft before the girls decided they just wanted to play for half an hour.  I was able to rein them back in with the promise of another craft and then we did some of the activities.  I'm really trying to let them lead more and not worry so much about what we do and don't get done.

Littlest really liked the F is for Fox Art activity.  It was similar to one we did a few months ago and turned out just as cute.  I cut out the tail and ears but she had fun shredding the napkin and gluing it on the tail.  She also started doing some actual vertical scribbling for the first time, instead of just drawing circles.  I was impressed.

All of the girls liked the gorilla mask activity and combing the paint on, although eventually they asked for paint brushes.  I need to find a better type of paint for them to use once we finally finish off this horrible stuff I can't make myself just throw out.  It's too thick and gloppy.  With the masks, I noticed that they'd curled a bit after they dried so I ran them through the laminator and then had the brilliant idea that they could use a dry erase marker to add facial features since they had just painted the fur and that was it.  It worked really nicely with the emotion spinner.  Miss M cycled through happy, sad, angry and surprised pretty quickly before deciding her gorilla was happy and wanted to go eat more bugs and berries.

I modified the Gorilla food activity because honestly I was just too tired at that point to pick myself up off the floor and hide the letter tiles.  The girls were just as happy passing the bag around, taking one, naming it and finding the match.  Miss M and I named animals that started with our letters and Littlest made their sounds.  They really liked this game.  I think I may stick it in our file folder box for the month.

We ended our school time by dancing through the entire Dance N Beats DVD for the month.  Littlest is especially enjoying it because there seem to be fewer types of movements and she can pick them up faster in these short songs.  It is super cute to watch.

We are headed to the zoo for Littlest's birthday on Friday so I may make up an animal scavenger hunt based on the ones we have already done (and will do) for fun.  It should be a good time if it's not too blasted hot.  I'm kind of missing the rain from a couple weeks ago...