Fun with the letter M

It was my turn again to teach for our preschool co-op this week. I was bound and determined to chill out a little bit and go about things much more simply this time around. I always find such a huge amount of fun things to do that I can't control myself, but I actually really enjoyed our time this week instead of shoving the kids out the door at 11:30am! LOL!

The letter M was great fun! Tuesday, we did three things:

~Learned about Monkeys!!

We acted like monkeys jumping on the bed while we sang that song. I read a book called Too Many Monkeys that was really cute! We moved up to the table to make paper plate monkey masks. The kids colored the back of the plate with brown and/or black crayons, then glued on the eyes, ears and nose & mouth pieces I had pre-cut.

For snack, they had 1/2 a banana and peanut butter crackers. Hannah being silly with her snack.Then I let the kids have "recess." They did some MONKEYING around on the swingset. :)~ Explored with Magnets!!

I made each of the kids a magnet stick by gluing a round magnet to the end of a craft stick. I provided a tray with a variety of items and asked them to pick an object that they thought would stick to their magnet. They loved doing this!!! Then I brought out some wooden Thomas trains and had them try to repel the trains across the table by putting the magnet wrong sides together. Lastly, I let them play with Magnadoodles and Magformers.

~ Counted with M&Ms!!

I gave each child an M&M graph that I made and a cup with 20 M&Ms in it. First, they sorted the M&Ms into colors, then they graphed them. We went around the table and I asked each kid which color of M&Ms they had the most of, then the least of. Who knew math could be so fun??!!

Today (Thursday), our activities were centered around three books~ If You Give a Moose a Muffin by Laura Numeroff, The Marshmallow Incident by Judi Barrett and The Mitten by Jan Brett. Yes, once again, the children's book NUT comes out in me!!!

Here's how the agenda went:

- sang Do You Know the Muffin Man

- read the book If You Give a Moose a Muffin

- moved to the table to practice writing our letter M's

- had "recess" in the backyard then came in for a snack of muffins, milk and mandarin oranges. the kids gobbled the muffins up and I bet they didn't even realize how healthy they were!

This dude loves preschool too!

- read The Marshmallow Incident- glued colored mini marshmallows on a capital and lowercase M template.

- read The Mitten

- kids "needled" (as one of the girls referred to it as) their own paper mitten then colored and cut out the animals to tuck into their mitten, just like in the story.

I think it's safe to say that everyone had a good time!! Only two more times of teaching before preschool is over!