Family Events

Welcome to Teacher Buzz!  Each month one of our fabulous teachers will be posting fun ideas for activities you can do with your preschooler.  It could be a recipe, craft idea, or a fun way to explore math and science.  Be sure to check this page each month for more postings.

Apple Burritos Recipe

Shared by Ilene Alpert, 4 Day 4's (Koalas)

It is always wonderful to cook with your children.  Cooking provides so many learning opportunities, including math (quantity), science (combining simple ingredients in new ways), fine motor development (cutting, spreading, rolling), reading readiness, and following step by step directions.   As a parent, you have the best chance to provide individual attention to your child in developing new, important skills.

We found that many children do not know how to use a knife.  However, with careful instruction and supervision, they can learn where to place their fingers to cut safely.  Spreading is also not easy, since children must learn how to use the side of the knife.  It takes practice.

In math and science, Koalas prepared Apple Burritos this week.  Credit for the recipe goes to the Mailbox Magazine. The children loved making them, and upon consumption gave this yummy snack ten fingers up!  I hope you enjoy making them at home.

Apple Burritos

Ingredients you will need:

1 small tortilla per person

Whipped Cream Cheese

Apple Slices (about 2 per tortilla)

Brown Sugar/Cinnamon mix in shaker

You will also need:

2 plates per person (one for the tortillas and one for the apple slices)

1 plastic knife

Process:

1.  Place Tortilla on a plate

2. Spread cream cheese on the tortilla (let the children do this)

3.  Take 2 apple slices.  Cut them into smaller pieces and place them  ontop the cream cheese.

4.  Sprinkle with the Cinnamon/Sugar mixture

5.  Roll each side up to the middle to make a wrap.

6.  Eat and Enjoy

Three Little Kittens Activity

Shared by Linda Peters, Early 3's (Bunnies) & 3 Day 3's (Froggies)

One of my favorite things to do in the classroom is to extend literature through prop boxes and activities related to the story of the Three Little Kittens.
As you may remember, the three little kittens lost their mittens, found their mittens, washed their mittens and then hung them up to dry.  We have a collection of children's mittens just for this story.  We read the story in class the first day.  The next day we bake an apple pie to have at snack the following day and we also act out the story at rug time.  On our third day the children are very familiar with the story so we extend it further.  When they come into the classroom they each have to "find" a pair of mittens hidden in the room and put them at their place at the snack table.  At snack time they can choose to put their mittens on and eat their pie!  Even the teachers will put on mittens to eat their pie to show then that it is ok to do it.  After all, the kittens in the story get into trouble for "soiling" their mittens!  But we tell them that it is ok because they get to wash their mittens in the water table after snack and hung them up to dry!
There are so many curricular areas covered in these activities: language development (vocabulary words), science (baking pie), one to one correspondence (finding pair of mittens), fine motor development (using clothes pins to hang mittens on the line) to name a few.  It is really fun and rewarding tot see the children get excited about the activities!

Regular Sand vs. Magic Sand