Preschool & Pinewood Derby

The week after Easter, I taught Mom & Me School with Joshua and his three little friends. Our theme for the week was Store/Money and the color was Green. We read books about shopping with Mom. One cute one was called "Llama, Llama Mad at Mama." It made me laugh because it was a good representation of how much kids hate shopping.

We learned what a penny, nickel, dime and quarter look like and sorted coins. We did penny rubbings. We figured out how many pennies it takes to make a nickel, dime, and quarter. We also made piggy banks using Ziplock containers and decorated them with foam stickers.

I set up a cute little grocery store for the kids with simple food items from our pantry. I went the dollar store and found pre-printed price labels that are for yard sale items and stuck them on the food containers and got fake money packets for $1 at Wal-mart. We borrowed a cash register from one of the preschool children's family and we were in business. They just loved being the cashier and counting out the money.

For the color green, we read "Green Eggs & Ham." For our snack I made green scrambled eggs, green ham, and green milk. The kids ate like pigs! They loved it! We also read "Five Little Speckled Frogs" and made green frog puppets out of white paper lunch sacks, googly eyes and construction paper.

That Friday, April 17, was the Pinewood Derby. I am the Cub Committee chair and we wanted to make every boy feel appreciated for their efforts this year. The Cub Master and I decided to do an individual award for each boy. We got items from the dollar store and did things such as, best paint job and they got a paint brush, most colorful got markers, bright idea got a book light and on and on. The Derby went pretty well. It was longer than we would have liked, but when you have 25 boys to race, it is kind of expected.

Robert had two cars to make this year since Matthew was now turning eight. Matthew wanted a specific design. He wanted his car to look like the handle of a sword. What Matthew didn't realize is that this would make his car slower and more bulky, so he was a little disappointed that his wasn't one of the fastest cars. He did however, make 4th place in his den and got an award for most colorful.

Christopher in his third year of the Pinewood Derby, was all about speed! His dad even convinced him to forgo any decorative painting beyond the once over spray paint job because they didn't want even the slightest weight added!

I guess it paid off because Christopher won first place in the Pack run-off. Oh the joys! He was so stoked! You can tell how each of them felt about the experience by the pictures. I have to remember to take the pictures before the races are run next time.

I really didn't even get to see the boys' races because I was so busy filling out awards and doing all the business of Cubs. Next year we will do things differently so I can actually enjoy my own kids more.