Bradley Brights

In September, I took my turn to teach our little preschool group that Thomas and Hailey are a part of. I always have so much fun planning and preparing the lessons and activities while I have them.

When the kids were first arriving, I had them look at books from my basket until everyone was there. Then, we talked about the weather and sang our days of the week song.


The first week I had the group we were studying the letter "D." On the first day we talked about dogs. We read "Go Dog Go," then decorated dog ears with dots. The day before I went and got several boxes from James' work to use as dog houses. We then went outside to play a little game I like to call "Go Dog Go." It's pretty simple. When I say "go dogs go" they were to switch houses with someone else. It was really a hit. See the video below.

After we played outside for a while, we went inside to eat dog chow (aka muddy buddies). It was funny to watch some of the kids when I first told them we were having dog food for our snack. A couple of them thought that was pretty awesome, others weren't so sure they wanted to participate. But, Thomas and Hailey made sure to let everyone know that I was just joking.

Eating our little snack.

After the first day I wasn't so great with taking pictures of what we were doing..ooops, but the next day they came we talked about dairy food. We had a taste test of five different types of dairy food: milk, yogurt, cottage cheese, cheese, and ice cream. We then used our dot stickers again and recorded the number of kids that liked each type of food. The chart turned out to be a little boring though because basically everyone liked everything. I was sure no one would like cottage cheese. The texture is a little funny, but they were all excited when I pulled that one out.

Here's another picture of the kids playing in our back yard during free time. I've found that very few moms allow sand boxes. (I actually have to fight with James to keep ours. It really is nice to have a neat husband, but sometimes when it comes to kids you just have to let them mess things up and not worry about it.) Anyway, kids always love to play in our sandbox when they come over. Sorry to all the moms who get sandy kids after they come to our house!

The other half of the group was playing Star Wars with Thomas' pvc pipes. They were very good not to actually hit each other with them.

The next week we did the letter "E." On the first day we talked about elephants. We read a super cute book called "Elmer" about an elephant who is colorful instead of grey like all the other elephants. We then made tissue paper Elmers, ate animal crackers, and played Elefun.

The next day we were explorers. We read the story The Elves and the Shoemaker then went exploring for some elves that I had seen earlier that morning hiding in our back yard. Those silly elves were even hiding in envelopes. After everyone found an elf, we went inside to eat E.L.F. cookies. Yum.

Now I don't have the group again until the end of March. I sure did enjoy them while they were here and I'm so glad that my kids have such a nice group of children to play with.