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

Week 2 Letter: A Theme: Alligator Number: 2 Bible story: Creation pt 2 Bible verse: "As for me and my house, we will serve the Lord." - Joshua 24:15 I hid the letter A and number 2 magnets around the house again.  It took Little Dragon longer to find the magnets this time.  Start When boys get together they like to fight and wrestle, probably because they aren't allowed to do this with their sisters.  So for about an hour before we started preschool at 9 am Little Dragon and Thunder Dragon fought bad guys in the living room because they were the 'good spider man who saves the boys and the girls'  I count this as our gross motor skills, they are pretty active and keeping good form. *shrugs shoulders* We also played Alligator Tag and Swinging Monkeys. Bible Day 1 we read creation day 4-God created the sun, moon, and stars.  Activity: Mobile Day 2  was our reading of creation day 5-God created the fish in the seas and birds ...

What is an alligator theme without a sensory bin?   My idea was to do a swamp sensory bin and I had to use what I had around the house for this one, no extra time to run to the store this week.  I thought about using brownie mix but it always dissolves in the water not giving the kids much time to play in it.  I went with oatmeal.  I would have liked to dye it brown but the kids didn't complain about the color.  I had The Dragons add the water I liked using oatmeal because it doesn't dissolve in the water and it smelt really good. :)   The oatmeal absorbed some of the water making a great swamp texture.   Even though the water wasn't brown the oatmeal did make it kind of murky.   Perfect for alligator hiding The kids kept asking how I snuck milk into the bin because of the color.  Silly kids! I never did tell them my secret.  I went with magic. 

I loved the idea of this craft as soon as I saw it.  I was looking for coloring pages and found a great picture of an alligator. I was looking at the picture and noticed the detail for the hard back scales and thought how fun would it be to do a textured painting for alligators? I found a paint set at Wal-Mart at the beginning of summer for only $10.  Inside were many different paint rollers, shaped sponges, and paint trays.  It was perfect.  The rollers varied in texture too!  Some were smooth others were squared or zig-zag.  I knew the rollers would be perfect for this activity! The Dragons have also been itching to paint with these materials and were tickled to see the tools we were using for this weeks art.  It took a couple tries before The Dragons got the hang of rolling the roller in the paint instead of dipping it.  As the boys painted I set out 1 of our alligator props for a visual of the scales.  Then we hung ...

 Great for fine motor skills practice are the dot pictures from many packets I see online.  There are so many different themes for the dot pictures and there are many different ways to use them.  I have used them a couple different ways and have not found one that The Dragons dislike. This time we used the Letter A is for Alligator themed dot page with pom poms and clothes pins The idea was to clamp a pom pom with the clothespin and release on one of the dots Little Dragon was having some trouble opening the clothes pins But he kept trying and finally got it open and picked up a pom pom!  The picture is blurry but you can see his excitement!  I set two clothespins on the tray just in case someone wanted to help out (like Doll Dragon)  Together they were able to complete the page feeling achieved!   :)

Each week a letter craft is added to our alphabet wall to help us remember the letter in a fun way.   Letter A is our letter this week and our theme is alligators, so it was only fitting to make an alligator A.  Materials:  Scissors green construction paper markers glue white paper I  had the A outlined in the week folder before the activity with the teeth triangles already drawn as well. The only recognizable shape are the triangle teeth.  We counted our triangle teeth.  Then cut them out  Then glued them in place Little Dragon used his extra teeth pieces for eyes.   He also wanted to add teeth on his nose for some reason.   I really liked it :)

This is a darling craft!  I loved them when I saw them on pintrest and knew it would be part of our alligator theme. They also look like the letter A when you open the clothes pin. Double whammy!  Materials:  clothespin green paint glitter red paint googly eyes glue I gave The Dragons their clothespins and asked that they paint the outside green.   And the mouth red We did this craft after school so Doll Dragon could join.  The Dragons have missed working together.  While the paint was still wet we added some glitter.  I don't use glitter often and thought both Dragons would enjoy adding some to their craft, which they did.   Last The Dragons glued on their googly eyes.  The Dragons added their own eyes a bit forward on the snout so they look more like frogs to me.  I do not like crafting things that are just going to take up space and I will end up throwing away.  These fit perf...