Coop Preschool Week 3: My Friends!

This was our third of fifth week of hosting co-op for the year.  This weeks lesson was about Friends!

The most critical component to success seems to be parent involvement, so I decided to post my plans the day before so everyone would know what to expect at class.

In an effort to contain the chaos of having between 6 and 15 toddlers in our house, we decided to limit 'arrival' play options to coloring and blocks today.

We had a fairly small group, but both went well and the kids seemed to have fun.  I'm amazed at how much better they are getting at coloring!!

For snack, we had veggie sticks and cuties.  

For circle time we sang our name song again and then I read the book Friends by Helme Heine

It's a cute story about a mouse, a pig and a rooster who are friends.  I think our group is just getting old enough to start understanding stories, so after I read I asked the kids a few questions.  It was a smaller group, and I liked having the chance to speak to them individually.  I can't imagine being a teacher with a class of 30 or whatever insane number they have sometimes.  Ek!

Activity 1: I was really excited about our first activity.  I cut out pictures of each of our preschool friends along with their names.  The kids took turns sticking them on the board.  We talked about the persons and then added their name.  For our age group, I told them what the name was and they stuck it next to the friend.  It was really adorable.  I had planned to divide our class into two groups (since we had a small group, I didn't).  But I think it was a good plan.  This activity would have been nearly impossible with 9 kids.  Before class, I also had a lot of fun with Colin and the pictures.  "Lily has black hair, that's different than mine, but look Jacob has hair like mine!"  

Activity 2: Friendship paintings

Okay, so this actually was just painting.  My original plan was to have each child make a hand print and then ask a friend to make a hand print, but we haven't painted yet this year, so we just painted!  We love painting!

Activity 3: Friendship Bracelets.  

I was a little concerned if this would be a bit advanced, but everyone did great! We threaded beads onto lace to make friendship jewelry.  I love beading because you can do so much with it, hand/eye coordination, patterns, colors, concentration.  

Activity 4: Chalk Writing- I cancelled this activity.  It rained last night and it was just too muggy and wet to go back outside.

We only had 3 kids by closing circle, so it was a bit more casual.

Overall it was a great class!