Thanksgiving and Special Friends Day

In our class we were busy making Thanksgiving decorations, learning about the first Thanksgiving and trying to explain to preschoolers what "thankful" means.  I asked one student what he was thankful for and he looked at me with a puzzled look.  I then said, "what are you really happy that you have?"  He thought and thought and finally answered with "my mouth."  Ohhhhhh the simplicity of preschool :)

Our first craft was making turkeys out of toilet paper rolls...so cute.

We then worked on our own place mats for the upcoming Thanksgiving dinner...

We also worked on the letter F this week. We Fingerpained with Foam.  The foam is made out of shaving cream, glue and paint to simply dye it the color you choose.  Going to have to give Mrs. Sensing credit for that recipe.  The kids loved it!

Lastly, we finally got to have Special Friend's Day!  Each student got to bring in someone special, we made Thanksgiving crafts together and got to have a feast in the cafeteria.  It was a very fun and special day for everyone!

Thanks for stopping by! Next up...Christmas in Mrs. Kloss' class :)

Halloween Party!!

After weeks of preparation and excitement, out Halloween party finally arrived.  The kids were SO cute in all their costumes and we had so much fun with our Halloween activities.  We frosted Halloween cookies, made dirt 'n worm cups, measured items with candy corn and had a candy relay race.  Check out all the fun below!

Happy Halloween from Mrs. Kloss' kiddos!!!

Pumpkin Patch Field Trip

We were able to visit our local pumpkin patch last week and had an absolute blast!

• The kids could not be more EXCITED about our bus ride, since most of them had never been on once before :)

• We also got to go in the back and check out how apples are turned into apple cider...pretty loud, but super cool!

• We also got to drive some John Deer tractors, eat homemade donuts, swing on a rope and take a hayride to pick out pumpkins :)

So many parents came out to help and we could not have done it without them!  Thank you!

• Overall a great day...but boy were we tired!

Fall, Fire Safety and other Festivities

Pumpkin Paper Plates

• We started this week of by working on making pumpkins with our own faces on them.  The kids tore wrapping paper and tissue paper into pieces, painted glue on a paper plate and assembled a pumpkin.  I cut out a stem and a vine, which they glued on themselves.  When they dried, I added a picture of them from the first day of school and I must say they turned out pretty darn cute!

Letter Recognition

• We officially have met Ally Alligator, Bubba Bear, Catina Cat and DeeDee Deer!  For those of you who are not Zoo Phonics experts, that means my kiddos now know letters A through D :)  I really wanted to make sure they actually could tell the letters apart from each other and knew the names of each one.  We did this activity to help with that.  They had to color the A's red, the B's green, the C's blue and the D's orange.  They sure impressed me!

Fire Visit

• For the past two weeks we have been reading books about fire safety and doing firetruck/fireman art projects.  Thursday was finally the day we got to meet the fire men and see the fire trucks outside.  My kids were in heaven!  And I was so proud that they knew most of the answers to the questions they were asked about fire safety :) 

Some kids were VERY excited to meet the firemen...

They made me put on the fire equipment...very heavy!

But most exciting is that we all got to go out to the fire truck, explore, learn and go inside of it!

What an exciting time to be in preschool!  I'll leave you with the CUTEST birthday treat I've ever seen :)

Catching Up

Wow!  I have a lot of catching up to do...I haven't posted in 2 weeks and when I uploaded my pictures, I realized we have done A LOT in 2 weeks!!  We have been working the letter A, the letter B and writing our names.  We had an apple themed week and we also had our big preschool art show fundraiser, which was great!  Thanks for checking in and reading what we've been doing in the past two weeks :)

Name Work:

• We have been working very hard on writing and recognizing our names.  One project we did to help with this was "noodle names."  I wrote all my little kiddos names on construction paper, then put glue one letter at a time and my preschoolers glued pasta on their name.  Great practice with fine motor skills and name recognition!!  Check it out.

Letter Work:

• We recently learned the letter A and the letter B.  I like to use anchor charts to brainstorm words that start with the letter.  I do my best with the drawings and my kids like to remind me that I'm really not the best artist :)  We also put beads on letter B's for recognition and fine motor skills. The kids did this with partners.  It was great to see them try and work together to finish it!  While doing this the kids were very concentrated as you can tell from the pictures.  We also do zoo phonics so the friends we have met so far are Ally Alligator and Bubba Bear!

Finger Print Tree:

• One of our projects we did was these cute little trees.  I cut out trunks and branches from construction paper and handed them out so that the preschools could make their own tree arrangement.  I then gave them yellow, red and orange paint and they used their fingerprints to make the leaves on the trees.  Some are more defined than others, but all very creative!

Art Show!

• Every year our preschoolers work hard on creating awesome art work to "sell" at our annual art show.  I took my kids work and matted them, laminated them and put them on display.  Last Thursday, parents, grandparents and other various family members came with their little ones to "buy" their work.  We ask family members to make donations to take the art work home and raise money for our PTO and scholarships :)  Check out all the amazing art work my kiddos created!

Thanks for catching up with us!!  I will try to start updating once a week so the posts aren't so crazy long.  Happy fall!!

Leaf Painting

We have an Art Show coming up in the beginning of October so I was trying to think of some really cool projects.  With the help of my puppy running around eating all the leaves he could find, I thought it would be cool to paint with leaves!  I ditched the traditional fall color paint and went with bright, awesome, neon paint.  The kids LOVED it.  The steps are shown in the picture below.  Simply mix paint how ever you choose in a tray.  Put the leaf in the paint, then transfer onto the paper.  I wanted the kids to do as much independently as they could.  By the end of this project, I was covered in paint.  Check out my amazing leaf artists below!

Mat Man

Here in preschool, we met a guy named Mat Man.  He helps us learn how to draw ourselves.  He comes with all the right body parts and cute little song to help us remember what to draw.  I had my kiddos draw themselves for the first time to see where they were.  They were all so great to see!  We had a little chat after about how our legs and arms don't come out of our head :)  We will draw ourselves with the help of Mat Man once to month so that the kids can see their progress.  Eventually we will put together a book of our Mat Man drawings.  Take a look at the results of the self portraits!

Marble Painting

One of first art projects was this nifty thing.  We took construction paper, put it in a tray, dipped a marble in paint and voila...awesome looking art projects.  The kids had a great time choosing their colors and watching the marble create something they've never seen before.  It was pretty much magic...but then again most things are in preschool :) Check out some great pictures of the process and final project.

Getting Started

Welcome to Mrs. Kloss' Jungle!  Yes, our room theme is jungle, mainly because my favorite animal is a giraffe.  No, giraffes technically don't live in a jungle, but hey, we're in preschool and we can make anything happen.  

August rolled around and I was still jobless and losing hope.  Luckily, 3 weeks before school started I got a phone call telling me that someone quit and the job was offered to me! I am the proud preschool teacher of 36 amazing students who meet Tuesdays and Thursdays.  That also meant I had 1 week to get my room ready for open house and 2 more weeks to plan everything out.  Holy smokes, was I a busy bee.  Thank goodness for my husband and his muscles moving furniture and then my mom and sister for driving 4 hours just to help set up my room.  I still have a lot of work to do, but here is a snapshot of bits and pieces so far!