you are my sunshine!

What a S U N N Y Day!

a quick little preschool lesson about the weather!

This morning we had a little friend stop by who loves art just as much as I do! She is our 6 year old downstairs neighbor and her and H-Train are, pretty much everyday, play buddies. She has been a blessing to us. For one, she helps H along his learning journey. They are about 2 and half years apart and play well together. Which frees up a little time for me to do other projects.  Anywho, yesterday she came by and I promised her stories and art. So, that is what we were going to do! It was quite the SUNNY day in AZ and we decided to talk about the weather. Here is what we did:

We started by looking out the window and describing what we saw. We looked for wind and didn't see any and the kids decided that it wasn't a windy day. We went through all the provided weather descriptions that came with our Dollar Tree purchase and finally came to the conclusion that it was a SUNNY day! Next we painted our paper plates with yellow and orange paint using sponge brushes. Next I cut two different colored 'ovals' and had them tell me what shape it was. I then cut it in half and had them tell me how many pieces there were. We glued them onto the plate for sunnies and painted a smile. We let them dry and began to read our book and sing our song for the day.

We love 'You are my Sunshine' and have been singing and reading this book since H was very young. The second book is a Margaret Wise Brown book of some of her more popular stories and is most certainly a go to for me. 'Sunshine and Snowballs' is one of my favorites. Not only for the story, but for the illustrations as well. You can use this story to talk about seasons, too.

After our song and story, our suns were dry. I cut out yellow rectangles and orange triangles. We talked about what shapes and colors these were. Next, we learned about pattern repetition by putting a bit of glue on each end of the shape and gluing them in a pattern form on to the back of the sun. We then named them by color and shape. That was a little tough. They both were getting confused with having a two part question to answer, but learning to describe something like a shape by color and shape is a great way to build their communication skills and sentences. 

That is what we did! We had 45 minutes until our friend had to leave for swim practice and that was the perfect amount of time to get a little one on one time in with the kidos. Hope this inspires some of you! Being hands on with our kids and helping them to learn what is all around them through art, music and stories, is such a very SUNNY kind of approach!

Books used in this lesson:

Sunshine and Snowballs by Margaret Wise Brown

You are My Sunshine

A place to buy them: www.amazon.com