First Weeks of School

We started preschool in September and have had so much fun for the first few weeks of school. I am so, so excited for this school year. This year's class is pretty amazing and I think we are going to learn a lot while having a lot of fun. The first couple of weeks we have been learning about class rules, working together, helping each other and classroom manners. Then we moved on to learning about colors. The neat thing is that these kids have already gotten their basic colors down so we were able to learn about colors like grey and tan and turquoise. Here are some pics of what we have been up to. 

We learned about having good "piggy" manners. We read the book,  This Little Piggy's Book of Manners and discussed what polite piggies do at school. The kids had fun practicing being polite piggies and then they had fun playing with the other animal noses. 

 We had a day of working together. After reading The Crayon Box that Talked, we talked about working together and how we each are good at different things. We worked on doing a puzzle together and had some fun playing with the parachute together. We were learning about listening and working as a team as we made the balls bounce, sang songs, and made a tent with the parachute. 

P is for Polite Pig

Classroom manners are an important thing kids learn in preschool. For our first week of school, we learned about classroom manners and rules. 

We read the book This Little Piggy's Book of Manners by Kathryn Madeline Allen. It is an awesome book that compares good little piggies with rude little piggies. The rhythmic words and fun pictures make this one of our favorites!

After we read the book, we made little piggy puppets and practiced being polite with our puppets. We used the pattern found at DLTK's Crafts, here.

3 Little Pigs Puppet Show

 Kids and puppet theaters are something that should mix often. Watching a puppet show put on by 4 year olds is so awesome. If you haven't seen one, it should be the next thing you put on your bucket list. So much cuteness!  You can see by our audience pictures that it makes for some fun times. 

We have this fun puppet theater that is pretty easy to make and is adjustable to fit into different door frames or walk ways. The post with the information on the step by step is here.

This year we also made our own paper bag pig puppets (lots of letter p's in that project) We used the template from http://www.first-school.ws. 

After the kids had some fun, I asked some of the moms to come in and help me do a puppet show for the kids. We did a funny version of the 3 Little Pigs. It is so much fun to listen to their laughter and to hear them calling out to the characters during the show. One of these days I am going to get someone to record it for me because I want to see their faces. 

This Little Piggy

We talked about our class "rules" using the book This Little Piggy's Book of Manners. It is a really cute
book comparing little piggies who use their manners and those who don't with lines like "This little piggy shared her toys. This little piggy said 'MINE!'"

After reading the book, the kids practiced using good manners so they could be good little piggies too. In the older class some kids used good manners and some didn't then the rest of the kids had to decide if they were being good little piggies or not.

After, the kids drew pictures of piggies who were using good manners at school.

To make the noses I covered half of a toilet paper roll with pink craft foam. I taped the foam around the outside of the roll and glued a circle on the front. For the ears, I put some foam triangles on the top of a headband. To help it look a little more pig-ish, I folded in one of the corners of the ear.

Puppets & Pigs

You have never seen one of life's greatest joys until you have seen a puppet show put on by 4 year olds. Oh. My. Goodness. It was adorable and cute and funny. I loved being able to just sit and watch their little personalities shine through.

And I love how my 3 year old class did not understand the concept of hiding behind the curtain. Their little eyes peeking out are just so fun!


I made this puppet theater and did a Three Little Pigs puppet show for the kids for letter P week. The theater was actually pretty easy to make. I followed the instructions found here on wikihow. You basically take a table cloth and cut it apart to make three panels that you hang on a spring tension rod in a doorway. It was really easy because you use a lot of the seams that are already there so you don't have to do a ton of sewing.

I'm not going to include the step by step instructions here because you can find them on the link I posted. I will offer a few tips of things that I learned:

First, the bottom curtain is suspended from the top bar with ribbon. Then it uses a dowel inserted into the curtain to keep it's shape. (See instruction 14 here if you are confused.) Instead of a dowel, I used a light weight valance rod to prevent the bottom curtain from swinging when it was hit.

Second, a basic table cloth isn't necessarily long enough to do a proper curtain so I just added a few strips of cloth to the bottom to make it a little longer. It was really quick and easy and it saved me the cost of having to buy two table cloths.

Third, it was easier for the kids to play when I took down the blue curtain in the background. They felt like they had more freedom and they could see what they were doing.

If this is clear as mud, you can always contact me for help. Enjoy!