this post brought to you by the letter S

It was our turn to host preschool again and we lucked out and got the letter S!
Here's what we did.
First thing we set letter magnets out in the direct sun on cheap colored construction paper to make shadow art. (You can use any interesting shaped object.  The sun bleaches away the pigment in the paper and leaves a shadow of the object in brighter color.)

I'd planned to trace everyone's shadows with sidewalk chalk and then do it again from the same spot at the end of class so they could see how it shifts as the sun moves across the sky, but the plan was foiled by the change to daylight savings and none of our hard surfaces were in the sun yet with the time change. *sigh*

For "science" time we talked about our sense of smell.  We sniffed some essential oils and tried to guess what flavors they were.  Then we spread white glue all over a drawing of a strawberry, then sprinkled dry jello powder over it.  The dampness of the glue turns the powder bright red and when it dries you can do the old scratch and sniff routine and smell the strawberry scent!

We sang Once There Was A Snowman and I Stuck My Head in a Little Skunk's Hole.  We played Simon Say...sort of had to get flexible with the rules, but they loved it.

Next we got into snakes.  We colored toilet paper tubes with markers and then I cut a long continuous, spiraling line down the length of the tube and rounded a bit at one end.  (You end up with one little bit you have to cut off as shown in the photo.)  They picked out googlie eyes and a construction paper tongue (that I had pre-cut), and I hot glued them into place on the snakes' heads.

The snakes wrap themselves around your arm.  What's not to love about that.  (Note these would be even more fun out of a paper towel tube, but we didn't have enough on hand.)

I did an S alliteration coloring page back when S (our daughter S) was in preschool and it is still my favorite of my letter pages.  (Again, you are welcome to borrow this page, but for personal use only please.)

For snack we drank with silly, swirly straws and ate strawberries.

Then we did some homemade scratch art.  Before hand I used crayons and oil pastels to completely color  pieces of card stock, leaving an inch boarder of white.

Then you add liquid dish soap to black acrylic or tempra paint.  I don't have a precise ratio of soap to paint, but I'm guessing roughly 1 part soap to 3 or 4 parts paint.  Take that and paint over the colored pages.  The goal is to get a smooth thin layer of paint and the soap makes it so you can scratch thin lines instead of big chunks.  We used bamboo skewers for scratching tools.

Lots of fun.  Lots of black paint dust around to clean up afterward.  (Not a problem unless you don't get it cleaned up before you kindergartner comes home from school and thinks it is probably Oreo crumbs and starts licking the table...but that would never happen to you!)

We had lovely weather, so we spent free play time outside on the swings and slide and practicing our skipping.  Just as everyone was about to leave AJ pulled a spectacular S stunt.  He fell down and ssskidded across the ssssidewalk on his nose, making an S shape with his body before he ssslammed to the ground & sssstopped.  He ssscreamed and sssobbed because it sssurprised and ssscared him.  He was ssso ssssad.  It ssssucked.  It ssskinned his nose pretty badly and now he has a sssscab that he sssscratches.  Never fear, he shall sssssurvive! (and doesn't he look snappy in the outfit HE picked out for St. Patrick's Day!)