Farmers market

For the past week and a half, we've been doing a farm unit (part of our larger animal unit). One of the super-fun new activities we tried was a K3 Farmer's Market, and it was a huge hit! We set up a table full of produce -- some real and some play -- and placed a price tag at each item. Students were allowed to shop one at a time, each one choosing at least one item. To purchase their items, they had to count out the correct number of pennies that were shown on the price tag(s). Then Farmer Connie bagged up the items and sent them on their way! 

Another satisfied customer!

We also let the kids dress up as farmers and have a picture taken in front of our barn.

For some of our students, the opportunity to delve into a real veggie was just too much. This happy corn-eater didn't even mind that it was raw!

K3 is so much fun ... even if we are pretty silly at times!

Jungle safari

Ok, so it was a playground instead of a jungle, but we like to use our imaginations in K3! Our annual safari was last week, and we had a blast!

A long morning of safari-ing makes a kid hungry, so we had a special safari snack when we were finished: raisins, bananas, and animal crackers!

So. much. fun!!!

Ocean fun

One of our favorite projects is the ocean mural we do during "ocean animals week." We taught the students what a mural is, then we headed outside to do a little painting ...

Once the "ocean" dried, we did some sponge painting to create fish, jellyfish, octopus, and starfish. We added handprint squid and a couple of Rainbow Fish from a separate class activity. 

The finished product!

This week, Mrs. Connie put together this amazing sensory table filled with several different ocean habitats! There were different colors of sand, large and small shells, fish, penguins, turtles ... even flip flops, palm trees, and real water! 

Isn't it beautiful? It didn't stay that way for long though!

Our kiddos couldn't wait to get their hands on this beach scene!

It was a mess, but these smiles made it all worthwhile!

K3 Funnies

It's time for another hilarious round of "Funny Things K3 Students Say"!!

• You know our kiddos love being Child of the Day, and it's funny to see the ways they vie for this position ... even though every day it's a completely random drawing. One day after a recent break from school, Mrs. Connie was telling the kids how much she missed them. One little boy piped up, "Well, if you missed all of us, you could just pick all of us for Child of the Day."
• We were reading a story in which the main character was a pig. I showed the students the cover of the book and asked them what kind of animals they saw, and everyone responded "Pig!" This was quickly followed by one child noting, "Bacon comes from pigs." (And no, it wasn't lunchtime!) 
• "Letter Q is my favorite!!"
• "I'm becoming a very nice gentleman."
• One little girl was using our toy doctor kit to take Mrs. Connie's blood pressure. She pumped up the arm cuff, looked seriously at the "results" and then declared, "You're completely dead. We have to get out all of the junk food."
• Any preschool teacher knows to expect a lot of potty humor ... it is what it is. One day a boy came out of the bathroom with a giant smile on his face and announced "I had to toot, and the poop came out at the same time--the toot and the poop came out together!" 
• During our Valentine's party, Mrs. Connie and I joked about making ill-behaved students walk the plank. Apparently this wasn't OK with one little boy who finally told us, "If you say 'walk the plank' again, I'm going to take you to mine house, walk you to the dock, and push you in the water ... WITH NO LIFE JACKET." 
• A dialogue overheard recently between a little girl and a little boy ... Girl: "Maybe when we get older and grow up, we can get married!" Boy: "I'm not getting married. I'm only going to play." G: "Well maybe we could have no sons and no daughters." B: "Well that might be OK."

And the reason we love our jobs ...

• "I love you more than the whole galaxy."

Celebrating Dr. Seuss

Last week, we celebrated Dr. Seuss Week in honor of Dr. Seuss's birthday on March 2. Naturally we read lots of Dr. Seuss books, and we even had a special guest reader! 

Is it the Cat in the Hat?!?

Nope, it's just one of our wonderful K3 moms!

The kids were enthralled!

Thanks to this same mom, we had a special Cat in the Hat treat!

We also experimented with Thing 1 and Thing 2 wigs, They were cute, but extremely time-consuming, not to mention we never could get the look quite right. Oh well ... our girls look cute in them anyway!

T-party

Since last week's letter of the week was T, we decided at the last minute to have a fun T-party! We celebrated with hot raspberry tea (well, it was warm), letter T shaped cookies, and Teddy Grahams! What fun! Here are some photos ...

After tea and light refreshments (anyone a fan of Hyacinth?), we had fun with tire track painting. This activity is exactly what it sounds like ... running the tires of trucks through paint, and then painting the tracks onto paper. They loved it!

The finished product!! Love our little K3 artists!

Valentine's party pics, round I

Here are a few photos from last week's Valentine's party ... one of our awesome dads took these, and they are GREAT! You might notice that this year's party had a different theme from years past. We retired the Clifford dog party and decided to do a pirate party instead!

One of Mrs. Connie's friends made this AWESOME pirate ship full of fruit!

Here are some of our little pirates enjoying their special snacks.

No pirate party is complete without a treasure hunt! Our students enjoyed finding these hidden scrolls throughout the school. Each scroll had a photo of a different location at school ... each one they found led them to the next location, and finally they found our treasure!

Stay tuned for more pics from Mrs. LeeAnne's computer ... including the TREASURE! :)