Bunnies, Chicks and Eggs...oh my!

Hello Blogger Fans!

Oh my goodness! So busy...so many projects...so many things to learn...where does the time go? I get so busy, I don't even have time to blog!

Check out the adorable sock bunnies....these fun to make and the children had a great time choosing their socks, eyes and pom poms to make their one of a kind bunny! So easy to do, so much enjoyment!

We are Easter-i-zing ourselves! The baby chicks coming out of the egg are so cute, the baby birds in the nests are terrific...now they are in a tree in our art room. Come see!

Don't forget! The Easter Egg Hunt will take place on Thursday, 4/5 at 9 a.m. SHARP! Bring your camera and join in the fun if you can! And we are closed on Friday, 4/6 for staff in service day!

We are learning about the author, Beatrix Potter and that Peter Rabbit is 100 years old this year. We have a big book of Beatrix Potter stories, including The Tale of Peter Rabbit. It's just one of my cautionary tales about listening to your mother!

Have a great weekend!

Miss Sue

The Weather Outside is Frightful....

But inside, we're having a great time, despite the weather! We are enjoying ourselves even if it is dreary out there!

Today was an art project that produced a WOW effect with lots of oooohs and ahhhhhs! Take shaving cream and smooth it onto a tray. Place dots/squirts of paint on top of the shaving cream. It's good to use lots of colors to get the effect you want. Then, take a plastic knife and draw it through the shaving cream to create a swirly pattern. Place your paper face down into the shaving cream and pat down gently. Let sit in the shaving cream foam for about 1 minute and peel off. Cool! Wow! Awesome! Let sit face up for 5-10 minutes as the paint soaks into the paper. Then, take a ruler, squeegie or other flat item to scrape the foam off in one stroke. Add glitter if desired. Super duper cool...a true marbled effect as the paint sticks and the foam is wiped away. We even had a request for a redux of it this afternoon. We love it!

We did get the opportunity to play on the patio today with our purple sand sensory table, ride our trikes and build with our tracks. Hopefully we can do this again this afternoon!

Have a great day everyone!

Miss Sue

Happy Spring and Easter!

Hello Friends of Cherub,

It has been another amazingly busy day here....so many Spring/Easter activities to do and will we get them all completed in time?

We have many fun things scheduled...today was day one...we made our old standby, marble art eggs. Ohhh and ahhhh...they came out beautiful! Our children really love these and how immediate the art appears! Yahoo!

Got to go out today on the patio, the lawn yard is still too muddy from the weekend....and we are supposed to get more rain tomorrow. Jeepers Creepers! Lucky us!

Have a great evening...we are getting ready for the Easter Egg Hunt already. You'd be surprised at how much prep goes into an event like this! We love it! Reminder! The annual Easter Egg Hunt takes place on Thursday, 4/5 at 9 a.m. sharp! Bring your cameras to capture all the fun!

Smiles and good health...achooo...to you,
Miss Sue

Paint a Bow Wow Red*

Hello Friends Around the Planet,

Another fantastically busy day here at Cherub. So many things to do, so little time...for real! Today we are finishing up our I and J week. We learned about what the word "invisable" means. And, we made some invisable paintings! We took white crayons, colored and drew on different colored paper. Then we used watercolors to paint over our white crayon drawings and WOW! Magic! You see the "invisable" drawing come to life!

We learned about "diner speak". I brought in a book about diner slang and read the book to the children. It's called "Frank and Ernest", two friends who run a diner while the owner goes away for a few days. Everyone got big laughs out of: "nervous pudding"=jello, "blonde with sand"=coffee with cream and sugar, *"paint a bow wow red"=hot dog with ketchup, "moo juice"=milk. We even used some of the slang during lunch today! Fun!

Our yard is progressing! The project manager told me they were able to catch up with themselves and completed 2 weeks work in one week, due to the rain last week. We are "a wishing and a hoping" for it to be completed sooner than later!

Have a great weekend and enjoy the sun while we can!

Miss Sue

Entomology 101

Hello Friends,

Today, continuing our discussion of the letters I and J, focused on I. With that was the natural segue into talking about insects! Oooooh! Creepy, crawly, slithery, some in the bright of day and some by night or under rocks. Ickkkkk!

We also designed our own insect using marshmallows, raisins for eyes and toothpicks to get them all to stick together. It was a hit and a request for another time to do it! No two were alike and everyone had great ideas..."I'll make a snowman insect, I'll make an airplane insect...etc." Cool! Fun! Awesome! were some of the exclaimations of my friends.

Yeehaw! Another sunny day to play outside! We enjoyed bubble blowing yesterday and can't wait to get out there again to do it!

Have a great day,
Sunshine and smiles all around!
Miss Sue

Jelly Fish, Jelly Beans and MORE

Hello Cherub Friends,

Wow! We have had a busy few days....we have been learning about all things J over the past few days...today we learned about Jellyfish and where they live and how big they get! We saw a picture one bigger than the diver next to it!

Yesterday we did a jelly bean counting, sorting and catagorizing activity. How many red jelly beans to you have? Find 3 black jelly beans, count out 5 green jelly beans from your bowl...lots of talking about bigger/smaller, color, which beans had more colors than others, the next biggest and more things. And of course, each child picked out 5 jelly beans in their bowls that they could eat at the end! That makes the learning time even better.

Today we made our own jellyfish....look for these soon, floating in our imaginary tank! We have had lots of fun with this theme...tomorrow, it's all about jelly....grape, strawberry, blackberry and more and how good it tastes on toast!

Have a great evening!
Miss Sue

Happy Monday

Hello All,

Well, we had such a good time with our St. Patrick's Day party, I had no time to blog. There was plenty of festivities to keep us busy! Plus a leprechaun came to visit us while everyone was sleeping....he or she pushed the bookcases around, over turned some chairs, and scattered gold coins and shamrocks all over...leading to our party!

We had our rainbow cupcakes, green jello jigglers, green berry juice drink....this was living in a big way! We had lots of fun trying to guess what the leprechaun looked like, how he/she moved around so fast and that maybe next time we could catch a glipse of them.

Lots of fun in store for us this week...our 3s/4s are studying the letters I and J. We brainstormed words that start with that letter and practiced writing "I"s and "J"s. Jelly beans, igloos, ice cubes, ICE CREAM! :) and many more fun words.

Our yard is progressing, the construction crew is back after 4 days of rain....yahoo! Lots of action today with cement being delivered, the bobcat going back and forth in the yard and lots of people working hard. Let's hope they can get on a roll and move fast to get us up and running (literally) sooooooooon!

Have a great day!

Smiles,
Miss Sue

A Bit of the Blarney, too

Hello Friends,

We have had a busy day today...we're getting ready for our big party tomorrow, in honor of St. Patrick. Did you know that New York City has the largest celebration/parade outside of Ireland? Well, they haven't been to our school to see all the fun we have in store for tomorrow.

Today, we finished our handprint leprechauns...so cute on our bulletin board. We also talked a lot about rainbows and the end of the rainbow where there is a pot of gold. (Don't we all wish?) So for our celebration tomorrow, we made rainbow cupcakes. Check them out....we measured, poured, added food coloring and had a great time all working together in our 3/4 year old class to get these made for our party.

I have it on the best authority that a leprechaun might be visiting us tomorrow while we sleep...you never know what kind of tricks he might pull while we are not looking!

Irish Smiles and Hugs to You,
Miss Sue

All Things Green

Hello!

Wow! Did you know if you mix blue and yellow together, you get green? Well it was a magical experience today when we saw how it works when blue and yellow began to become green....MAGIC!

We used potatoes as rubber stamps today...I carved them into different shapes and we used our paint to make the prints. Check out the photos! Plus we used our favorite paints this afternoon to paint with them again. It is a rainy week here, we're playing all the games we can think of to keep us busy!

We are so happy to have Miss Charlotte with us! She has gotten into the swing of things already with Johanna and I teaching her all the ropes. Johanna will be available to sub on occasion, so you will probably see her around, too.

Enjoy,
Miss Sue

More St. Patrick's Day Fun

Hello Friends of Cherub,

Happy St. Patrick's Day Week to you! The rain has shown up and that means rainy day fun inside for us! Our busy group today made Shamrock Rainbow Windsocks, made Leprechauns, made rainbows and lots of fun inside play.

Check out the photos for see for yourself!

We bid fond farewell to Johanna, whose last day is tomorrow, 3/14....but welcome our newest Cherub staff member, Charlotte. She will be working the afternoon hours from 2:30 until closing. Charlotte comes to us from programs in Alameda County. She is looking forward to being closer to home. Myself and Charlotte will be working together for the next few weeks to get to know everyone and learn the closing routine...be sure to introduce yourself!

Hugs to you,

Miss Sue

St. Patrick's Week!

Hello Followers,

What kind of fun can you have with the color green, shamrocks, the history of Ireland, St. Patrick, leprechauns, rainbows and potatoes? Just about a whole week full of fun! We have many, many plans for a week of fun leading up to our party on Friday.

Today we made marble art shamrocks. It's an old standby, but children love the magic it creates with marbles rolling through paint and how it colors the paper! No two shamrocks are the same and it is is a delight for our friends to have an instant painting! Watch for many incarnations of shamrocks in the form of windsocks and more.

Our yard is progressing! Check out where we are now....hopefully the rain won't come too soon to allow for more progress. It's improving everyday to make our yard safer for all of our friends.

Have a great day,

Miss Sue

Happy Friday to all

Hello Friends,

It has been an adventure filled week! We have had all sorts of big construction equipment in our back yard helping to make our playground even better! Whew! It's been a little like "Mike Mulligan and His Steam Shovel" here...jackhammers, backhoes, bulldozers, cement mixers, electric saws and more! We couldn't pay anyone to put on this spectacular show for us! Lots to see! Lots of progress! Let's keep our fingers crossed for the rain to stay away to keep the project on schedule....

This week has been busy with things were are learning here at school. Our 2s learned all about Yellow this week and went on a color hunt looking for yellow objects. Our preschool discussed all things "H" and traced Hs on paper, made some artwork and more.

Persnickity camera today...only one photo to show...our white board of activities for the day. On to next week when it is our St. Patrick's Week Extravaganza!

Have a great weekend and make a memory!
Hugs,

Miss Sue

More of H Week

Hello Friends Near and Far,

Ohhhh! It is cooool today, with a stiff, cold breeze and jack hammers through our yard! As you know, the upper yard has been out of commission, because they are pouring a new retaining wall. We have had construction equipment abuzz in the yard...most recently, a cacophony of jack hammers going until 3 p.m. every day! Leapin' Lizards!

We are working on H things this week....we have had a fun time...learning all kinds of stuff. We played with the fire station, tents, rubber stamping and more.

Check out our photos! Enjoy!

Miss Sue

It's "H" Week

Hello,

It's the perfect way to start our H week, with a "hello" to all of you! Today we have the Cherub County Hospital in operation. We talked about what happens at the hospital, things you might see there, the universal sign for the hospital...the blue H and more. We had many, many patients at the hospital including babies and "adults". It seemed that every visit to the hospital resulted in a shot, much to the Drs. delight!

It's a beautiful day, time to play outside and see what is new in the world around us! Have a great day!

Hugs to you,

Miss Sue

Rain, Rain Go Away...

Hello Followers,

Oooh, 3 days of rain...oooh...ahh! We are doing the best we can having fun even with the rainy weather! We hope to have some sun soon! We've been playing on the patio with our bikes, scooters, trucks, chalk etc. to let off some steam!

We are continuing our study of "G", still making a list of "G" words...today we came up with God, gown, green, grass. Today our 2s enjoyed some free art time, playing in the color/shape sensory table and matching the colors/shapes on the board and some outside time. Our 3 and 4 year olds helped make the afternoon snack today...Corn Muffins! We measured, poured, stirred, talked about how much each package/box of muffin mix made and how many packages we needed to be sure everyone got a muffin. Then, we talked about what happens in the oven when you bake something...how it changes from wet to dry and smells terrific! This afternoon, we'll practice making some "G"s for our older children.

Check out our bulletin boards and see what kinds of G things are around...Have a great day!

Miss Sue