Cars and trucks and things that go!

Cars and Trucks and Things That Go! is a book, a very big book, by Richard Scarry. It is one of Danny, and now Isaac's, all-time favorite books. It has given me many hours of peace and quiet. I was brain storming preschool themes with Danny, and this book happened to be lying in eye sight, so I suggested it, and of course it was a winner.

For preschool each week, whichever family is hosting picks a theme, and most of our stations revolve around that theme.

For art this week, we had "painting" with cars: the kids drove a few various small cars through a shallow pan with some paint, then drove the cars onto the paper. I think Danny is waiting for a new piece of paper, here, and watching Grace work on hers. Painting seems to always be popular.

The sensory bin was our box filled with cornmeal, some black beans and some hard white wheat grains. We put in every small construction vehicle we could find, and the construction bin was born. Danny and Isaac played in this for several days prior to our preschool week, and are still playing with it a few weeks later.

 

Science on Tuesday was rolling different size cars down a ramp (not popular); on Friday it was building balloon-powered "cars" out of small cardboard milk jugs and lid wheels (very popular). The writing station had big pictures of various "things that go", with the words written underneath: "car", "bus", "airplane", "train", "motorcycle", and "van". This was not popular either, I think maybe because of me moving our table to a slightly lighter traffic area. Usually the kids really like writing. 

Math had nothing to do with our theme, but I was excited to use these for preschool! Chris' mom bought the boys these magnetic triangles and squares, and they stick together to form 3-D forms. This was very popular; Danielle and Isaac played with them almost the entire first choice time. I've kept them out on the table and Danny and Isaac have been playing with them quite a bit. As a bonus, every time the cats or dog get close to any laying on the ground, they stick to their collars and...it's hilarious. So hilarious.

 

I think our last choice station was the role playing one; for that I had our car rug out in the living room, with the kids' parking garage. They didn't really play with that either. It's so funny, the things they like and dislike. Things that I think will be winners, flop. Things I'm not so wild about, they love. C'est la vie. I had actually come across an idea for playing "ice cream truck" for role playing, and I came up with all of these ideas to make fake ice cream and popsicles, to make the ice cream "truck", coins for "buying"...and I ran out of time and it just didn't happen. I think they would have loved it, so I'm kinda ticked with myself for not following through.

We played Red Light, Green Light several times throughout preschool this week. They loved it, and now Danny and Isaac and I are playing it fairly often. 

It was a fun preschool week though, aside from fighting over the Strider bikes (totally on Danny and Isaac's part) during outside time on Tuesday. Preschool has been very fun this year, I think Danny is going to be very sad to possibly lose some of his buddies to kindergarten : (