WFLW - Get Ready for Preschool

Friday, 5/13/11 - I thought I had missed this month's Get Ready for Preschool class with one of my moms clubs. I had to sleep in Z's room the night before, and I kept waking up in a panic that it had already started. Since it's around a 30-minute-drive away, and starts before noon, it's a real effort to get there on time! We made it, but we were late. (I know, right. What a shocker.)

Teacher Jen started with a song. They did "If You're Happy and You Know It."

"If you're happy and you know it, stomp your feet! Stomp stomp!"

She had each child bring something from home for Show and Tell. Z was very excited, and brought her little purse made by Auntie Kayneen, her new soft doll Rose/Rosie (a Carter's Just One Year doll,) Rosie's Bunny (a little blanket with a soft rabbit head, also Carter's Just One Year,) Shiny Bear (an October Beanie Baby bear with metallic fabric that we just found at a JBF consignment sale for $2,) and a heart-shaped box from my bento stuff.

Z sharing her menagerie

Then Miss Jen brought out her school mouse puppet and had it read a letter from a little mailbox. The letter described a game that the kids would be playing.

Then each child got their own letter (with their name on the envelope, which I love! They get the chance to recognize their own name, which is almost as thrilling as getting their own "mail!") These letters contained a picture of a mouse with colored overalls. Then the kids paired up with another person who had a matching colored mouse.

Z's match was the teacher's daughter. They sat down and made bracelets for themselves and their new "friends." They used pony beads and some letter beads and strung them on pipe cleaners. This is a great beading and fine-motor-skill activity for little ones, since the pipe cleaners' fuzziness keeps the beads from sliding off the other end, and since the chenille stem is stiff, the end doesn't flop away or out of the bead while the child is stringing it, as happens with ribbon or string. Z was easily able to string beads this way from around 18-months old. Now she can do yarn with the end taped a little to make it firm. Cut-up straws are another great addition to the pony beads for both the chenille stems and yarn beading projects. Shoelaces also make great string options!

After story and craft time was open play, where they explored the preschool. Z found a little stuffed kitty friend to drag around, and spent much of her time in the pretend kitchen area again, much like last time. Since the goal of this is to help her be independent and prepare for drop-off preschool next year, I didn't follow her around with my camera, since she was fine leaving me behind in the main room.

After play time, the parents have the option to leave while the kids stay and eat lunch. So I stepped out to the front room while she stayed with the other kids and Teacher Jen. She cried a bit, and the teacher distracted them with stories.

PBHoney "Rosie" sandwich, Pirate's Booty, salt, string cheese nibblets,
Cucumber and carrots, apples and blackberries

For the cucumber, I cut coins, then used my mini flower cutter. Veggie cutters also work, but I found the cookie cutter first. I just cut the carrot into coins, since my V-shaped blade was still in the car with the stuff I had taken to my sister's house.

I put salt for the cucumbers (she, like her Mama, is a salt fiend!) in a little froggy bento sauce container. The string cheese nibblets (more oval-shaped because the string cheese got crushed somehow!) are in a silicone star muffin liner I bought imported from China on eBay.

The apples are leftover from a Mcd Happy Meal, and the blackberries were from Costco. They're kind of in a smiley-face design, but this was totally unintentional!

I put in some Pirate's Booty as a treat, since it gets her seated and starting to eat when she's resistant. I use sugar cereal on the mornings we're running late to her co-op preschool, since she usually needs a bit of time after waking before she's ready to eat. So if I give her something super yummy or fun, she eats it faster and sooner, so we actually get something in her belly to help make preschool easier for the both of us!

For fun, I made her sandwich look like her new dolly Rose (kind of.) 

I did it like my Pinkalicious sandwich, using peanut butter to glue down the pretzel "hair," and frosting facial features. The nose got kind of messed up, since I hadn't known it was a gel tube. And the doll's eyes are blue, rather than green. But I don't have a tube of blue frosting. Ah well. I told Z that her sandwich was meant to look like Rose, so she loved it. She has an amazing imagination, and will happily accept things that look vaguely like whatever, as long as I tell her what it's supposed to be!

Can't you totally see the resemblance, though?

She fell in love with Rose and Rose's Bunny at Target as I was buzzing through the baby section looking for 2T underpants. At $9 each, I wasn't going to buy them on my budget, but she called Daddy and suckered him negotiated for future potty prizes. Then she snookered him by using the potty successfully, finishing up, earning Rose, then going back for round two and earning Rose's Bunny! Hahaha!

I don't have any pictures of her enjoying her lunch, since I was off in another room enjoying my lunch!

PBHoney, blackberries and apple slices, cucumbers, Ranch

I made myself a whole sandwich, plus the rest of the bread from hers. The rest of the apples and some blackberries, and the cucumber scraps and the rest of the cucumber flowers I'd made. Plus Ranch in a Tupperware Smidget, all in my purple Sistema. (I found clear ones at Bed, Bath and Beyond the other day. I got the colored ones at Old Navy, but they were on clearance.)

She ended up dumping all her salt out on a cucumber flower, but didn't eat any. She ate all the Pirate's Booty and half of her sandwich (all the pretzels though.) Oh yes, and the cheese. When I came back to "pick her up," she tried a bite of less-salty cucumber, and traded a blackberry for a grape from her new friend. And, as it turns out, she was coming down with something, this was actually a pretty good meal for her. 

She ate hardly anything the next few days with her cough, runny nose and fever. The doc thinks her cough sounds like Croup, but her lungs sound good. And her ear looks "troubling," but he couldn't verify that it was infected. So we went home with a hard copy for an antibiotic prescription to fill the day after her appointment if she still had a fever. Which she did. And it went away seconds before giving her the first dose of meds. Ah well.

Check out some other fun bento meals from this past week!