Preschool - Mammals

I love preschool days. I have so much fun and get so excited making plans for preschool and can't wait to see how the kids react to what we learn and what we do.
Our theme for the month has been Animals with the sub themes of reptiles,fish, amphibians and mammals which we explored today.
We started out with our routine circle time (welcome song, calendar and weather). I then showed the kids a word strip for "mammals". We took note that there are a lot of "m's" in that word. I gave the kids a capital letter "M" to trace with markers and then we covered the "M" with stickers of different mammals.


To teach the kids what mammals are I laid 6 various cards with facts about mammals on them upside down on the floor. The kids took turns flipping the cards over and we discussed the facts. Here are a couple examples:


After we had gone through all of the mammal facts I gave them a basket of plastic toy animals and even some toy people and we decided if they were animals of not.
When we came to the dolphin and whale toy we paused what we were doing to watch a segment about dolphins from the video, "This is Emily Yeung - All Sorts of Animals".

The video is great and teaches all about why dolphins are mammals!
We headed to the table and assembled these adorable little sheep. They had a great time with the glue and cotton balls.

After our craft time the kids looked through a bunch of books about mammals from the library and picked out pictures of their favorite ones.
Next we had snack time. The kids loved the bunny shaped snack (strawberry, cheese, oranges, chocolate chips and yogurt covered raisins) with a side of animal crackers.

After snack time we did a little science time. It really had nothing to do with mammals (except for the fact that mammals drink milk when young) but it was a great introduction to color mixing and just fun to experiment with them.
I gave them each a plate with milk and put a few drops of food coloring in the milk.

Next I gave them a toothpick that had been dipped in dish soap and they dipped it in the milk over and over. It is hard to capture on camera but each time the toothpick touches the milk it makes amazing patterns and swirls and moves all around.

Eventually they all stirred it up and we were left discussing how red and blue mixed to make purple. They LOVED it!

We had a little music time with the help of these camels and learned the song "Alice the Camel".

We ended with some wiggle time. The kids pulled animal names out of the jar and tried to act like that animal and have the other kids guess what they were. Highly entertaining! (The kids did have a hard time not telling what they were :)

We finished the day with some free playtime and everyone left happy!
Another successful preschool.