The Wide Mouthed Frog

Spring is here!!! We are learning about a variety of life cycles in our Pre-K class and reading lots of great books about animals that come out in the Spring. One of the favorite units is our unit on Pond Life, which includes all the animals found around a pond, especially frogs!
This week, we are reading two versions of the same story about the Wide Mouthed Frog. Although the stories vary a little, essentially the story is about a frog that goes around telling smaller creatures that he has a big wide mouth and will eat them. Eventually, he comes across something bigger than himself and discovers he is the desired meal time snack! 

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The Big Wide Mouthed Frog by Ana Martin Larranaga is a favorite in our class! The kids love to help tell the story by chiming in with the repetitive portions of the text!

Wide Mouthed Frog by Keith Faulkner is one of my favorites, because it is set in the Okefenokee Swamp, which is located in Georgia and Florida, so it includes creatures my students are familiar with. The kids love it because it is a pop-up book, and what kid doesn't just love a pop-up book?

We made our own wide mouthed frogs, using construction paper and paper plates. 

If you have a favorite Wide Mouthed Frog story that you love, please share it in the comments!!

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Valentine Card Mailboxes

Every year, I ask each family to work together to create a "mailbox" to hold all their Valentine cards. Our families are really creative and have a great time working together. The kids can't wait to bring them and share with the class how they made them!

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No-Sew Artsy Birthday Banner

Need a way to decorate for an occasion with little prep work or materials? One of my co-workers (Morgan, an amazingly creative preschool teacher) made this absolutely adorable birthday banner for a friends' child's birthday party. She took some burlap, cut triangles and stenciled and painted letters on each piece. Simple clothespins hold the pieces on the string. I love that she added some pics of the birthday boy!!! 

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Upcycled Snowman Lightbulb Christmas Ornaments

It's time again to come up with ornaments for our kids to make to hang on our school tree. I try to change it up every couple of years and have been searching for something easy and economical for the kids to make. I also wanted something a little different than the same old ornaments that you see every preschool class make. I saw these some time ago on Pinterest and knew we had to try them!

First, we painted the lightbulbs white. As we didn't have any glitter, this served as more of a primer than a real need to paint over the white bulbs.

We painted the tops, or hats, blue and dipped in cups of glitter.

We added eyes, nose, mouths and buttons with puff paint.

I had some fleece scraps that the kids could choose to use if they wanted to make a scarf.

After tying some yarn around the top, we took them up to the lobby and hung them on the tree.

It was a perfect time to pose with our class in front of the tree!

We will be reading lots of great snowman books during our winter theme, but "Snowmen at Christmas" is a favorite and goes perfect with this activity!

Happy holidays!!!!

Artsy Pumpkins

There have been some very crafty kids in our school! Pumpkins, pumpkins are everywhere! I thought I would share some of my favorite pumpkin crafts that are the current decor in our classrooms.

Craft bucket clean-out Pumpkins
  The inspiration for these cute jack-o-lanterns was actually the need to clean out their craft bucket and use up some of the leftover materials from other projects. These are the school-aged jack-o-lanterns.

  Our pre-k class was inspired and wanted to try it, too!

Painting Mini Pumpkins
We recently visited the pumpkin patch and brought back mini-pumpkins to decorate.We have been painting and adorning them with glitter in our art center every day.

Easel Painting Still Life
This was a still life pumpkin painting done by a preschool student.

Knuckle Pumpkin Patch
These have been around for years, but I still love them! The teacher painted the child's knuckles to help them make a pumpkin patch.

Paper Plate Pumpkins
Paper accents added to an orange painted paper plate make adorable little pumpkins!

Free-hand circles and tissue decoration
I LOVE, LOVE, LOVE this fine motor activity!!!! The 3's class drew circles with markers, then filled in the pumpkins with craft tissue!!!

Pick-a-part Magazine Face Jack-o-Lanterns
We've made some cute jack-o-lanterns by cutting facial features out of magazines and gluing them on the pumpkin shape. Somehow I managed to have this activity going for a couple of days, but didn't get any photos of the finished products. I'll try to add some here later.

Paper Bag Pumpkins
We've also made lots and lots of paper bag pumpkins. Here's a pic of them added to our pumpkin patch from a couple of years ago, as well as a few of this year's crop.

In all honesty, Halloween is my least favorite time of year, but seeing all these pumpkins adorning our school classrooms have really brightened my season!

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