The itty-bitty Buck-a-Roo Preschool

Once Upon a Time . . .

2012-01-17T18:42:00.001-07:00

a brave knight brought his shield to preschool,

kings wore their capes and crowns,

and beautiful princesses smiled for pictures.

The End

What to Do in December

2012-01-15T18:22:00.004-07:00

We were busy buckaroos in December. We created some beautiful gingerbread houses,

some lovely little reindeers,

wrote letters to Santa,

rolled out some gingerbread playdough,

and enjoyed many delicious treats!

Merry Christmas!

Thanksgiving Feast

2011-12-03T12:03:00.004-07:00

This year we had a popcorn feast. Each little buckaroo brought a bag of treats to add to our popcorn mix. Mmm, Mmm, Mmm doesn't that look good?

We got all decked out in feasting gear, a vest, a necklace, and fancy headbands.
Happy Thanksgiving!

Goofy Gg

2011-11-23T19:34:00.000-07:00

Gg is for Green milk,

sorting into Groups,

and Goofy Glasses! Good lookin'!

Happy Halloween

2011-11-21T19:02:00.006-07:00

I'll be posting our Thanksgiving pictures soon, but couldn't leave off Halloween! Here are some shots from our visit to Black Island Farms.

And of course, our class Halloween Party . . .A little pumpkin measuring. Our rug is 21 pumpkins long!

Brown Bear, Brown Bear . . .

2011-10-25T16:10:00.007-06:00

What do you see? I see brown day looking at me. Brown day, brown day what do you see?
I see red day looking at me. Red day, red day what do you see?
I see yellow day looking at me. Yellow day, yellow day what do you see?
I see blue day looking at me. Blue day, blue day what do you see?
I see green day looking at me. Green day, green day what do you see?
I see purple day looking at me. Purple day, purple day what do you see?
I see black and white day looking at me. Black & white, black & white what do you see?
I see orange day looking at me. Orange day, orange day what do you see?
I see pink & gray day looking at me. Pink & gray, pink & gray what do you see?
I see rainbow day looking at me!

A . . B. . C. . D . .

2011-10-17T16:27:00.003-06:00

We have been such busy little preschoolers that I have not been keeping up with blogging. Here is a quick view of a few of the activities we have been doing. And this is terribly sad, I don't have a single picture for letter Cc. tsk, tsk, tsk, but for letter Dd we had plenty of fun with dinosaurs, doctors, and making a doughnut graph. Chocolate was the class favorite.

Rodeo Day

2011-09-13T22:06:00.000-06:00

We had our annual back to school Rodeo on Wednesday and boy oh boy my buckaroos sure dressed up fancy! We added our own 10 gallon paper hat and shiny new belt buckle to their getup and then hunkered down to eat some dee-licious cowboy grub. It is great to be back to school!

Back to School

2011-09-12T22:01:00.006-06:00

We started our new school year off with a bang, I mean Boom! Chicka Chicka Boom Boom! We made our own little coconut tree with the letters in our name climbing up, ate some cheesy letter crackers, added our letters to our class coconut tree and saw our brand-new preschool room!

A very hungry Caterpillar

2011-06-21T22:22:00.003-06:00

Time for letter Cc. We of course had to read one of the greatest books of all time, "The Very Hungry Caterpillar." Then we made a caterpillar in our ABC art books and even had a caterpillar & carrot sandwich for lunch. My secret circle maker . . . an easter egg.

Today's the Day . . .

2011-06-21T22:17:00.003-06:00

. . . the Teddy Bears have their Picnic! To celebrate letter Bb we ate a delicious buffet of letter Bb food with our Teddy Bears of course. Check out our spread: we dined on Berries (both straw and Blue), Broccoli, Bread with peanut-Butter, and I believe those chips are BBQ.

Ahhh, Letter Aa

2011-06-21T21:53:00.002-06:00

Alright, please excuse the tardiness of this post. We have been a little crazy around here adjusting from our latest move. But, we have not completely slacked off doing preschool, I just have slacked off posting about it.

I found this adorable art project and couldn't wait to make this alligator Aa with the boys. I just cut out the center of a paper plate to make our letter Aa shape and used the leftover edges from the plate to make those ferocious looking teeth. Our next letter Aa project was counting worms in our apples. Just pretend worms of course.

Enrollment

2011-06-16T11:31:00.007-06:00

For the 2011 school year I am offering two classes:

Preschool
Tuesday & Wednesday
9:30-12:00am
Ages 3-5
$65/month

Requirements:
Your child must be 3-5 yrs.old by August 31.
Your child must be potty-trained.

Toddler Time
Thursdays
10-11am
Ages 2-3
$20/month

Requirements:
Must be 2 or 3 yrs. old by August 31.

I am very excited to offer this new class option for the 2011 school year. Toddler Time is a playgroup with a little school structure mixed in to dip your toddler's toes into a fun learning experience.

There are only 6-8 spots in each class and they are filling up now. If you are interested in registering or have more questions you can email me at betsyshaw1@gmail.com.

Letter Qq

2011-03-14T21:38:00.005-06:00

Here are some cute Qq projects we did this week. We colored a quilt for our ABC books, then painted Qq's with Q-tips and turned them into a quilt. We did this cute Queen craft, read some books about Little Quack, and played hide-and-go-seek for objects in our Quiet Bottles.

G . . G . . G . . GREEN!

2011-03-05T16:36:00.003-07:00

We are gearing up for St. Patrick's Day later this month so we learned about letter Gg and things that are Green! We made some green binoculars to take on a "Green Hunt." Here are some green things we found at school.

Letter Uu

2011-03-05T16:29:00.004-07:00

I've been slacking off in the blog department. We added Eddy's cousin to our little preschool group and that took a little adjusting, but we are still busy and having fun. Here are some letter Uu activities. We made an umbrella in our ABC art book, played some Utah Jazz basketball, and hid some Uu objects underneath our somewhat sad looking umbrella.

What Will the Weather Be?

2011-02-11T18:45:00.005-07:00

We finished up learning about weather this week by doing one of my most favorite books from kindergarten: "What Will the Weather Be?"

Almost a name? Ya right, but it's his very own writing so I couldn't be prouder.

Now this brilliant idea did not work out as planned. The washable marker dots were suppose to run together more like paint, but they just kind of washed right out. Perhaps it was the puddle of water he doused on the paper.

He didn't want to get rained on so he had me add a house, a roof, and a door.

This snowflake turned out like a scary mask.

Underneath the thunder clouds it says "Boom, Boom!"

I love his sun. He added those cute cheeks and the grass at the bottom.

We also did a weather name. Windy Art Ee, Rainy Dd, Sunny Dd, and a Cloudy Yy.

Sunny Day

2011-02-04T17:29:00.005-07:00

After all that wind we needed a nice sunny day. We had a delightfully sunny lunch with sunshine smoothies, a little sunny art project where eddy smeared on some shiny syrup,
(you paint your colored picture with Karo syrup and let it dry all day and then it will have a very shiny finish) and investigated sunshine and shadows. Eddy making shadows with our Ee objectsOh yes, and Happy Groundhog Day!

Oh What a Windy Day!

2011-02-02T15:44:00.007-07:00

Yesterday we had horrible, huge wind! Eddy, however, has been waiting for a windy day for absolute months! He inherited a kite and I don't remember from where it has been so long, but he definitely had not forgotten. Flying his kite was priority number one. This just so happened to fit with our theme of weather this week in preschool so we did some "windy" art and ate a "windy" lunch.(A kite sandwich with a puffy cheeto string and a blueberry cloud of cool-whip.)

Our "windy" art supplies:
A paper plate letter Ee for Eddy:
Drop some colored water on your letter, be the wind and blow air through your straw to paint.We did fly Eddy's kite, but not for long because it was bitter cold!! Oh yeah, and our roof blew right off the house. Seriously. (Glad we don't have to pay to fix that.)

More Mother Goose

2011-01-27T14:38:00.003-07:00

Little Miss Muffet . . . along came a spider! Eddy loved the googley eyes, but who doesn't love googley eyes?

Hey Diddle Diddle Mobile Eddy loves "reading" this nursery rhyme in his room. Don't look to closely at my amazing artwork, look at that outstanding, orange scribbling from Eddy.

The glitter was also a huge hit.Now pick your favorite instrument . . . time to put some rhythm to our rhymes. Eddy loved singing all the nursery rhymes we've been learning while playing the triangle. Can you get a college scholarship with the triangle?

Humpty Dumpty Puzzle

2011-01-19T20:32:00.006-07:00

Lay out a few popsicle sticks.

Take two long strips of tape and tape all the sticks together across the back.
Paint your design and let dry.
Take off the tape.
Your puzzle pieces are ready.
Try and put Humpty together again.

Penguins and other Pp things

2011-01-16T13:12:00.010-07:00

As promised, we learned about penguins this week. We also did lots of other letter Pp things. . .

we measured with Popsicle sticks

we had a Pp Picnic where we feasted on peanut-butter sandwiches and pretzels, (we were all out of bread so I had to use hamburger buns, oops)
we did puzzles,made some pipe-cleaner Pp's, then played a little game where we had to find Eddy's letter Eemade some mini pizzas, practiced pinching our pencils when we write,and made a heads or tails penny graph. After all that fun we had a penguin picture hunt,(we each took a turn hunting around the room for the different penguin pictures. Eddy would tell me, "good job mom" or "that's right!") ate a little penguin snack,
(eddy counted out the # of goldfish for each square and then ate them up) we even had some fish fillets for our penguin lunch (and gingerbread marshmallows because he is 3 and he can)
played what sounded like a super cute penguin game of balancing an egg on your feet, (but guess what, that was hard for little 3 year-old feet) so we invented a new game where we would race back and forth across the room to rescue our penguin eggs, but we had to do penguin moves like sliding on our bellies, diving, swimming, and of course waddling.
Then for our science investigation we did an experiment with water and tested what things sink and what things float. This was a huge hit. We gathered items from all over the house and then threw them in our water tub. Here is what we found.
I wasn't sure if any of these activities were sinking in with my edders because it is definitely not like teaching kindergarten, but then my guy made my day when we were out to dinner at Sizzler. He saw a picture with some shrimp skewers and got so excited, "Mom! Look, it's like the Pp's we did."

My Best Student

2011-01-06T19:26:00.006-07:00

I love teaching preschool. So much so, that I had this crazy idea to start a new preschool class this January. Unfortunately for me, that is not really the right time of year to start a preschool, but I really, really wanted to teach preschool so. . . meet my new student.

His name is Eddy and he is really cute, really smart, and quite a handful. The Listening center
chalk art
(check out that awesome snowman)
snowman sandwiches
(please excuse the gore, red jam was not the best choice)
snowflake sort
coffee filter snowflakes and a good old-fashioned indoor snowball fight!

Next week . . . Penguins!

Curriculum

2010-06-16T11:14:00.001-06:00

I often get asked this small question,"What do you teach?" My mind immediately thinks of a million and one ideas and I just don't know where to begin, SO . . . to answer that question simply, I'll just say A LOT!

We cover the basic subjects of:

Language Arts
Math
Science
Social Studies
Health
Art

My curriculum goals are based off of the DESK Standards for Davis County. I have adapted from there my own personal preschool goals. Each month we will focus on a specific goal in Language Arts and in Math.

Check out the list below to see what each month's focus will be:

Sept.

write name
colors/shapes

Oct.

spell name
sorting/graphing

Nov.

syllable clapping
#'s1-5

Dec.

concepts of print
position words

Jan.

blending
#'s 6-10

Feb.

beginning sounds
patterns

March

rhyming
counting

April

segmenting
#'s 11-15

May

sound spelling
#'s 16-20

Miss Betsy

2010-06-16T11:00:00.000-06:00

An itty-bitty bit About Me!

I have a bachelors degree in Elementary Education with an emphasis in Early Childhood Education from Southern Utah University and a masters degree in the Art of Teaching from National University.

I also had the best 1st grade teacher in the world and decided at the age of six that teaching would be the job for me.

I taught kindergarten at West Clinton Elementary for 5 1/2 years and then came home to teach preschool. It has been a nice change and I'm thankful I still get to be a teacher. I absolutely love school, love learning, love teaching, love being creative, and love the positive attitude and energy that comes from working around children. Can you tell I might just love my job?

Teaching Philosophy

I had to write many teaching philosophies as I went through school and prepared professional portfolios and could bore you with oodles of feel-good, dramatic, and sentimental fluff, but my teaching goals are really quite simple:

Provide a organized, positive, and engaging learning environment.
Celebrate and challenge each student individually.
Teach my students to take on any task with a positive attitude and hard work.