Halloween Spooks!

October is always one of my favorite months in preschool with lots of fun projects and learning activities.  This year as part of the decorations for our preschool Halloween party, we made bats,witches, ghosts and jack-o-lanterns.

 My 3 year-olds loved making their spider hats!

 Our Halloween party was so much fun!  Both classes came at the same time and got to meet all the friends from the other class for the first time.  It was fun to see everyone's costumes!  We had some awesome party helpers come and help with games and treats!  Thank you so much!

We played Shape Bingo...

 Musical chairs...

 Made spooky spiders...

 Decorated bags to put our prizes and treats in...

 And for our treat, we ate eyeballs!  Yummy!

100th Day of Preschool

For our 100th day of preschool we went to the park.  While we were gone a special visitor stopped by...

 Zero Hero!

 There were zeroes everywhere! On the walls, ceiling, fan, door, window, tables...

He left us a fun treat...

 ... and a note.

Oh, we will Zero Hero! We will!

Graduation!

We had a very small preschool class this year so the traditional graduation/end of year program was not an option.  Instead, we invited parents and grandparents to our classroom for a simple graduation party. Instead of a program I put together a slideshow video of all our adventures throughout the year. 

Here it is (if it works):

We then did the graduation part of things and had a yummy treat!

I absolutely loved preschool! We had a blast and learned lots of fun things. I'm going to miss my kiddos that are going into kindergarten this year!  I am so excited for them and know they are going to do awesome!



100th day of Preschool!

For our 100th day of preschool we walked to the park for a pinic.  While we were gone guess who visited our school and left a fun treat!  Zero Hero!

This is what we saw when we got back...

There were zeros everywhere! Walls, door, ceiling, fan...

He even texted us pictures of him in our classroom while we were at the park! (Those will be added later).

Fish Farm!

For one of our field trips this year we visited the Cold Springs Trout Farm.  They absolutely loved it!

Cardboard Car Drive-In

As part of our transportation unit this year we had a cardboard car drive-in movie. Each student was given the opportunity to design and decorate their own cardboard car and bring it to school for a special movie day.

 Look! A movie tray built in!

Looking out the windshield.

After the movie we took the cars outside to play.  Bumper Cars!

Dr. Seuss Summer Camp

My Dr. Seuss summer camp class starts this coming Tuesday!  I still have a few spots available if anyone is interested.  I am so excited for this one!  I love Dr. Seuss and am so excited to share some of my favorite Dr. Seuss books and do fun activities with them!

Summer Camp Classes!

I am getting ready to start my first anual summer camp classes!  I still have spots available!

Class #1- Plants & Bugs!- M/W  June 13, 15, 20, 22 9:30-11:00 AM  $25.00

Class #2- Dr. Seuss!- T/Th June 21, 23, 28, 30  9:30-11:00 AM  $25.00

Class #3- Camping (5 senses)!- W/F June 29, July 1, 6, 8 9:30-11:00 AM

Email me at abclearningtree@gmail.com if you are interested!

For those of you who are preschool teachers or parents I will try and post our fun adventrues on here for some fun ideas. :)

I am so behind in these posts!

Sorry I am so behind! Life has been crazy!  I'm hoping to get everthing updated and posted over the next couple days.

All You Need For a Snowman

We had fun making snowmen this year.  After reading All You Need For a Snowman We went outside looking for things we could use to dress and decorate our snowmen.  We were really creative. :)

Mr. Qq and Miss Uu are getting married!

We giggled our way through a wedding this year in preschool.  Mr. Q and Miss U got married! How many words can you think of that begin with /qu/?

Halloween Crafts & Party

Flashback to October!  One of my most favorite months in school!

This October we had fun learning our letters are creating Halloween crafts to go along.

Ww- we made witches using dried apple heads and empty thread cones.  For hair we cut strips of paper and folded or curled them.  To cover and decorate the 'dress' we tore paper and glued it on.  It took some patience but they turned out super cute!

Bb- We made black bats.
Vv- We made paper plate vampires.
PP- We estimated how many seeds were in a pumpkin. 
Jj- We carved our pumpkin and counted the seeds.

Gg- We used 1 sheet of white paper and a small piece of black and made ghosts.  The bottoms were all different. Some folded, some curled and some left them straight.  We loved seeing these hanging throughought the month.

 For our Halloween Party one of our dads came and played some really fun games with us.

We had a donut eating contest. Hey! No hands!



October was a fun month filled with awesome art projects, scarey stories and songs, and great activities.

Groundhog's Shadow

For groundhod day we studied shadows.  We had a great time learning about nighttime and daystime and how the sun affects shadows.

We started by talking about daytime and nighttime and what kinds of activities we do during each.  We worked together to sort pictures into daytime and nighttime. We had to add a "both" catagory when we decided that some activities are things we do in both daytime and nighttime. 

We took a short break to go outside (thankfully the sun was shining) to trace a friend's shadow.  Our friend had to hold very still while we traced his shadow.

Back inside we closed the blinds and got out flashlights to study how shadows can change and move.  15 minutes later we went back outside to trace our friend's shadow again.  He put his feet in the same place as before and struck the same pose while we traced his shadow.  Guess what! It MOVED!!!

Wednesday's activities extended into Friday (today).  In our centers be were able to play with flashlights and make shadows using various classroom items and small toys.  We then helped each other trace these shadows onto white paper to be used later to guess what made the shadow.

Filling the Spots

Hey, all you other preschool teachers out there!  What do you do to fill your spots?  How do you advertise?  How do you get the word out?

Wondering if I will be able to fill my spots is a little stressful! I am a small in-home preschool and can't afford to spend money on advertising.  Passing out fliers is a hassle and is time consuming!  i even drove around to 8 or 9 elementary schools near my home and put fliers up on their community bulletin boards. 

I've done some research and have found a few great places I can advertise for free online.  This last year I put ads on KSL, Google Places, Merchant Circle, and Craig's List.  I had my brother who was taking a web design class help design a website for my preschool.  Did you know there are several places that you can set up a web page for free?  Yay!  Do you have any other places you use or know of others who use them?  I am always looking for more ideas.

I have just opened enrollment for the 2011-2012 school year and I have up to a total of 44 spots to fill between my 4 possible classes!  I was hoping I would have younger siblings of some of my students this year that would be old enough next year but that hasn't worked out very well.  Half of my students are either only children or are the youngest in their family.  I only have 1 student who has a  younger sibling that may be old enough next year!  It looks like I will be starting from scratch again this coming year. [sigh]

I have created a Facebook page and I'm hoping this will reach more people.  I suggested this page to all my Facebook friends and I'm hoping that their friends will see the link, and then their friends will see it, etc.  Hopefully it works.

I am planning on doing fliers again this year but I am going to start much earlier.  Last year I didn't get started until July or so that was too late!  I am also going to try to put fliers up in more areas.  Those of you that do fliers, do you put them on the houses that say No Soliciting?  I'm a little nervous about doing that even though I'm not knocking on their doors.  Last year I only put them on those houses if I could see that they had young children.  No one called to complain so I'm assuming they weren't upset. 

Someone suggested I put fliers up at various businesses in the my area.  Do any of you do this? What kinds of businesses do you put them in?

Introduction

Hi, everyone! 
My name is Ashley.  Prior to starting my preschool I taught kindergarten for several years.  I wanted to be able to be a stay-at-home mom for my future children and still help out financially.  I had the opportunity to teach in several different preschools while getting my degree and loved it.  I wanted to own a preschool "someday".  This past year I decided that "someday" was now and opened a preschool in my home in Clearfield, UT.  Preschool is going great and my students are wonderful!  I have just opened enrollment for next year and am hoping to fill all my spots. 

I thought it would be great to start a blog and connect with other preschool teachers and share ideas.  If you are a preschool teacher, work with young children, or even if you are a mom of young children I would love to hear your ideas and fun things you do with your children to help them learn and grow.