Big Energy-Little Learners...Can I do it all?

Whew! My days have seemed so busy to me but when I sit down to blog and write it all down it seems like less. Silly how putting things into words doesn't always capture the events in the day. For this post I am going to combine yesterday's and today's preschool lessons. Stations Reading station: With new library books the kids haven't seen.  I have been keeping them pretty busy so they have not had a lot of time to spend reading.  Rock counting:  I pulled out the bag of rocks I bought months ago and haven't used and decided I was going to figure out a way to use them as a station.  I put them in the red tray and set out two 10 spot tiki green ice trays next to it.  I wrote the numbers 10 and 20 on papers and taped them in front of the trays.  The instructions were to sort or group the rocks into these numbers using the ice trays or the red tray.  Rubber Band Geo Board: This came with this weeks discovery pack from our local library.  My little dragons are

I was supposed to get the results of our gummy worm experiment in on Thursday but got caught up in work. I have been working hard on file folder games. I have 7 completed that I intend to introduce to the kids soon so keep an eye out for those. Gummy Worms In Water Results             Cold Water                                                          Hot Water  The cold water worms expanded.  The hot water worms melted to the bottom of the jar.  The kids didn't really understand even after we turned the jar upside down and saw the worms stuck on the bottom.  We talked about what it means to melt and to absorb water.  I showed them an original gummy worm pointing out the same piece / color of the gummy worm so they could see the change.  The pieces that absorbed water were bigger and didn't broke easily. Where the original was smaller and was hard to pull apart.  Mostly I had questions like  "Can we eat them?" "Can we touch them?"

Weekly Review (All the activities we did that I didn't have time to blog about) This was a hit!  As always I close the door and prepare the bath while the kids are jumping up and down with excitement outside the door asking if it is ready yet.   I think it is my favorite part :) When it is all ready I open the door slowly and ask "are you sure you need a bath?  You aren't that stinky." They scream "yes! yes!'" Spencer adds in "I stinky, ewwww" To make this bath: I made clean dirt and put drops of food coloring in it.  I left the stirring up to the kids.  I stuck foam flowers to the walls and popped the fake flowers off the stems and put them in the water.  I dyed the water green, but you can't really tell in the picture.  Lastly I set out garden/sand toys and some giraffes. Paper Town With Spencers obsession with cars I thought that a paper town would be a perfect station!   My idea came fr

I am exhausted. We had a long busy day in preschool today.  The kids really enjoyed having something to do constantly and I didn't have bored, whiny baby dragons. :) Before we started any activities I helped the kids clean up the playroom. There has not been a lot of time spent down there recently-because of the mess-plus I want to start setting up dramatic play areas downstairs so it needed to be done. After the playroom was clean, all the toys in the right place, the kids wanted to stay downstairs and play. Of course :D. (My plan worked) This gave me time to make breakfast and set up preschool. I like setting up when the kids are busy so they are not trying to play with things as I set them up.  They tend to get bored easier when that happens. I have been stuck on new station ideas and decided I need to leave the stations out longer so I don't go through them so fast. Stations Shape patterns- I set out a tray with different shapes and colors and gave the ki