Workbook Fun!

This year, I've heard several parents talk about how much their Imagineer is really into the idea of preschool workbooks. At our house, it's become a part of the day. Immediately after supper, D asks to "do the workbook". Here are a couple of workbooks we've really enjoyed along with (because they can be a little spendy when you're burning through them!) a couple of sites with lots of printables (FREE!).

Richard Scarry's Big Busy Sticker & Activity Book: A great book for Busytown fans! It's loaded with really colorful pages and all kinds of activities and games. In addition there are literally hundreds of stickers to be used for all of the activities. It takes a little searching around at times to match the stickers to the pages, but you'll get the hang of it. They're all letter coded. I only wish they made the sticker pages perforated as we opted to pull all of the pages out (before D stuck them all!).

Brainquest Workbook: This was also a really great book. It's organized into color-coded sections by topics (numbers, letters, etc.) and lasted a long time. The pages are all full colored and it's a pretty thick book.

TLSbooks.com: This site is nothing fancy, but is chocked full of printable sheets. We printed them all up double sided to save paper. They are listed by type of activity and there are lots and lots of pages.

Kidslearningstation.com: It takes a little clicking around to get to the pages that you want to print, but they have a nice selection of activities.

Do you have a favorite site? Feel free to comment below. As always, if you want to purchase the workbooks mentioned above, please use the links below for Amazon to support SCP!

Gung Hay Fat Choy!

It was the start of the Lunar New Year this week, and as usual Teacher Patty was helping us celebrate in style. In the Imagineers class we were playing with Mah Jong pieces, drawing and painting Chinese characters, reading books about Chinese New Year, eating fortune cookies with our snack, and some of us even wore beautiful silk clothes from China. The highlight of our morning was probably our parade down the hallway, with half of the kids as the dragon and the other half beating drums. I've posted a bunch of photos to our Flickr account. Check 'em out on Flickr!

Discoverers Teacher Opening!

We are just starting the search for a teacher to teach to the Discoverers class this fall! This a part-time role and a great opportunity to work at an awesome school. If you know anyone who might be interested, the job description and application information can be found on the Shoreline Community College website. Check it out!

Parent Education Resources

In case you missed them, below you'll find books from our last meeting with guest speaker Connie Dawson, Ph.D. She is the mother of 3 and grandmother of 8 and a former therapist working with families and childhood attachment problems. She taught in the counselor education program at Portland State University and is currently writing a book about 7 unposted rules that govern relationships.

What's New?

It's time for a little bit of housekeeping and dusting off the old keys to get this blog up to date! A few things things worth mentioning, in case you were not already aware:

• Did you know that the preschool has a Flickr account where parents can share and view pictures of the classes? The url is www.flickr.com/photos/shorelinecooppreschool, but you'll need a couple of things. 1. You do need to have a Flickr account because our photo albums aren't publicly shared and 2. you'll need to visit this link (while signed in), hover over our profile photo and add us as a contact.
• Notice that handy little Amazon box to the right? You didn't? It's wedged between the 'Recent Posts' and the 'Blog Archive'. One of our Imagineers parents setup an Amazon associate account for us (Thanks Evan!) which means if you use our link when you search and buy things on Amazon, SCP will earn $ to help our school. It's easy and it doesn't require anything special. You just need to make sure you either click the link on the SCP website (it's at the top) or start searching from our handy dandy little widget box. Don't forget! It's a great and painless way to help support our school.
• Do you have a blog? Do you have a family blog that you'd like to share with other SCP parents? Please feel free to comment here, leave the link and we'll add it to our Preschool Family Blog linkroll on this site.
• Do you like to blog? Want to help represent your class with posts on the blog? Please leave a comment here with your name and we'll be in touch with login credentials.

Happy Holidays!

In the blink of an eye we've managed to make it through the holidays and are just about ready to welcome in 2011. The classes have been to several field trips including the yearly visit to The Farm, tumbling at Cascade Elite Gymnastics and of course the always exciting visit to the Seattle Center to visit the huge holiday train followed by a trip on the monorail to ride the holiday carousel across from Westlake Center.

Here are a few pics from the carousel trips. Stay tuned in the coming week for a picture recap of the school year so far. We hope that all of the families are having a wonderful holiday season and we're all looking forward to getting back to school after the new year.

23rd Annual Halloween Carnival

Yes, it's that time of year once again! We're busy preparing for the Halloween Carnival this year. This year is extra special as it's also the 50th year of Shoreline Cooperative Preschool! It's amazing that for half a century SCP has been provided a caring, creative and nurturing place for families to grow. The carnival is this coming Saturday. Join us for lots of non-scary fun :)