A is for Apple

This week we started back in on our pre-school lessons. We're introducing/reviewing 1 letter each week along with some fun projects to go along with a monthly theme. This week we're talking about the letter A.

Yesterday, to continue our practice with the letter we talked about words that started with A and of course, Apple is a popular one! And... can you talk about apples without adding a project of cooking with apples?

We worked together to make an apple pie! The kids helped wash the apples and peel them with my favorite tool - the apple peeler/corer/slicer - everyone got to help this way! We mixed them with cinnamon and sugar, piled them high in the crust and baked it to golden brown.



Mmmmmmm. That pie looked and smelled sooooo good!



And it tasted good, too!







And all this talk about letters has gotten everyone excited about learning again. I gave everyone a snack of pretzels today and right away the older pre-schoolers started breaking them up to make letters out of them! Look - An A, a J, an R, an X - WOW! I loved hearing this and seeing them jump into this sort of activity on their and do so stinkin' well with it made me realize that maybe I Have been doing something right with these kids and they're actually learning! Just made my day!!!







My thrill over seeing how much the big kids have learned almost (I did say almost) makes me forget the times when we have screaming, throwing, kicking, biting tantrums, when one child will walk up to another and whack him upside the head for no reason, when one child will wiggle free of his booster seat to climb across the table to take food from another child at lunch, when the big kids have learned to sing - word for word - songs they probably shouldn't for instance from the Mama Mia soundtrack. Oh well, at least there's some good coming out of it, too!