Water Play! 6/2-6/6

Water Play!

This week here at SES Preschool we took advantage of the warm New England weather and got to splash around with some water activities.

For Group Time we played "Rhyming Water Tag," went diving for the alphabet into bowls of water to work on our beginning letter sounds, and became scientists to test whether classroom items sink or float.

The water table made an appearance outside and we brought out cups of water with paintbrushes to "clean up" the structure.

The AM Class worked on end-of-the-year self portraits and the PM Class made their tie-dye t-shirts for our End of the Year Celebration for Art on Thursday, and both classes got to make and play with some sticky Goop putty for a rainy day activity!

We can't believe that there are only two more weeks until Summer and have so enjoyed working with your little ones this year!

-Mrs. Reid and Miss Kate

May 5 - 8

In the wonderful world of preschool we have been busy learning about living and non-living things! Miss Jen has taught our lessons this week and the children have loved every minute of this unit!

During circle we learned a song about living things.

It is living
It is living
I know why
I know why
It eats, breathes, and grows
It eats, breathes and grows
It's alive
It's alive

Our LIVELY preschoolers worked on a group sorting activity to introduce ideas about living and non-living. We learned that all living things need food, water, and air. Living things also move, grow, and make more of themselves! We decided whether pictures of various things were living or non-living and placed the on a T chart accordingly.

Children also worked individually to sort things that are living and non-living on their own T charts. Pictures were of animals, plants, water bottles, hot air balloons, jars and more.

On Wednesday, students used the scientific method to determine if a fish was living and if a rock was living! Our little scientists, asked questions, recorded results, and made predictions! We decided that the fish was living and that the rock was not! Our fish has stayed, however we are still working on a determining his or her name! More to come on Monday...

On Thursday, we had a busy day of hunting for living and non living things! Children decorated binoculars with pictures of living things and then we headed out to our playground for a scavenger hunt! We split our afternoon class into four groups and recorded three things we saw. We then answered the following questions to determine if what we found was living or non-living: Does it need water? Does it need food? Does it move? Does it grow? Does it make more? Does it need air?

We had so much fun this week with Miss Jen! Next week we will take some time to focus on preschool writing for an upcoming school wide writing project! On May 27th, preschoolers will take part in a school wide writing celebration! This is a student-teacher event where preschoolers will get an opportunity to share and hear writing from grades PK through 2.

I want to take a moment to share with parents how important it is for your preschooler to view themselves as writers. This is why your preschooler will often come home with scribble writing, letter like symbols (things that sort of look like they could be letters!), random strings of actual letters, or strings of letters that make up short words! Our preschool writing is varied as everyone is at a different stage of writing. Next time your preschooler asks you to write something for them, encourage them to write it themselves (you can always write what they tell you it says on another piece of paper). Let them know that they are writers! If they get hung up on spelling, remind them that  they can work on spelling when they are in kindergarten, or encourage them to sound out the beginning of the word. Many of our afternoon preschoolers already know various letters and their sounds, so they may be able to write something like "BAL" for "BALL" or "KAT" for "CAT". Cheer those little writers on!!

Thanks for taking the time to read through the blog!
Mrs. Reid

April 28 - May 1

What a wonderful week back at school after April vacation!

We continued our work on plants and seeds. Lately, we've been singing a song about flower growth during circle.

One little, two little, three little flowers
Four little, five little, six little flowers
Seven little, eight little, nine little flowers
Peeping through the ground.

Give them rain and lots of sunshine
Give them rain and lots of sunshine
Give them rain and lots of sunshine
So they'll grow up tall

As they grow, they'll bud and bloom
As they grow, they'll bud and bloom
As they grow, they'll bud and bloom
In the lovely springtime

Our preschoolers had a fun time learning about seeds, plants, and growth. During group time, we completed a seed sorting activity (which will be hung on our wall) and life cycle of plants activity. We also worked on sorting by two attributes by playing a number/shape sort game. For literacy this week, we played a letter/sound/ picture game. Students looked at pictures to decide which ones began with the corresponding sound.

Preschool scientists have been drawing plant growth! We have been charting the growth of our pea plants. Some drawings still only represent dirt, while others are starting to sprout green stems. We will continue this project until we can no longer provide space for our growing plants, then kids will take them home to plant!

For our art project this week, children used many materials to create the parts of a plant. We used yarn for roots, crumpled brown paper for seeds, toilet paper rolls for stems, foam or felt for leaves, and tissue paper for flowers! They are very cute and can go home next week when they dry out!

This coming week, Miss Jen will be teaching some lessons for the afternoon class about Living vs. Non-living. We are looking forward to another eventful week in preschool!

March 31 - April 3

Wow, it is great to be back! I am enjoying reconnecting with each of the children and our wonderful families. Being away from Lucy hasn't been easy, but your kiddos fill my days with plenty of smiles and a fast pace that keeps me busy. I love it!

This week we spent time talking about transportation. I was reminded quickly of how fast our week flies by!

We sang a transportation song at circle (to the tune of Twinkle Twinkle Little Star):
Take a bus
or take a train
take a boat
or take a plane
take a taxi
take a car
maybe near or maybe far
take a rocket to the moon
but be sure to come back soon

During group time, we took a little field trip to the gymnasium to play "What time is it Mrs. Fox?" but we put a new spin on the old game. Usually children get to stomp out the time I give (3 o'clock = 3 steps), however this week we started stomping out words in sentences. This is an important skill to learn for early reading success.

We also worked on our pencil grip. The phrase "SUPER GRIP" was spontaneously coined during our work time! I told the children their super grip (which is a proper pencil grip) is like a superhero who helps them write and draw. Little did I know "super grip" would stick and since, we have heard kids yelling it from the writing center. AWESOME!!!!!

Lastly, we worked on filling in a transportation coloring sheet. Students wrote about where they would go and how they would get there, then drew a picture using simple shapes to represent their ideas.

On Thursday, we drove hot wheels through paint then made tracks on white paper. This is one of my favorite art projects. It's so simple but adds life to the walls of our classroom.

Next week we are catching up on a few concepts. We will be working on counting, patterns, and letter formation. We will be talking about the letter T and it's sound in case you'd like to practice during those car rides!

Mrs. Reid

Greetings from Preschool!

This week our theme was Leo Lionni and we got to read "Inch by Inch," "Nicholas Where Are You?" "A Color of His Own" and "Swimmy."

We paired up some fun hands-on activities with our author study, measuring items around the classroom with our own pipe cleaner inchworms, exploring colors with wax paper chameleons and using teamwork to make a giant fingerprint fish with Swimmy as the eye (AM Class.)

Preschoolers played a fish counting dice game this week for Math time and we got to take over the gym on Monday for some trampoline bouncing, balancing and "What Time is It Mr. Fox?"

Our poem at Circle Time this week was a Shape Poem that we had learned in the Fall and it goes like this:

I'm Suzy Circle, I'm happy as can be
I go round and round. Can you draw me?
I'm Tommy Triangle. Look at me!
Count my sides. 1-2-3!
Rickety Rectangle is my name. My 4 sides are not the same. Two are short and two are long
Count with me, sing right along! 1-2-3-4
Sammy Square is my name. My 4 sides are all the same. Turn me around. I don't care I'm always the same, I'm Sammy Square!

It has been a great three month run working with Miss Amanda (who promised she will come back and visit!) and we are excited for Mrs. Reid to be back on Monday!

Have a great weekend!

-Miss Kate

Community Helpers Part 2: Our week of March 17-21

Happy Spring!

Knowing New England weather we will probably need snow pants again before the flowers come up, but we are still feeling excited here in Preschool!

This week we continued our Community Helper unit. Our block area became a Construction zone, complete with signs and hard hats, heavy lifting and activity.

Preschoolers got to dig around for magnets in the sensory table, and there was lots of activity in the Writing Center Post Office.

For group time we played Community Helper games that involved counting and sorting, played Fire Truck Bingo to practice identifying numbers 1-10 and worked on our creativity and cutting skills by making our own menus!

The AM class explored Art out of recyclable materials this week, making pirate ships, factories and towers, and the PM class worked as X-Ray technicians to make their own X-Rays out of black paper and Q-Tips.

We've been playing alot of rhyming and beginning sound games on the rug at meeting so feel free to ask your preschooler to come up with a rhyme or give you a word that starts like...

See you all Monday!

-Miss Kate and Miss Amanda

By the way...


While studying our Five Senses, the AM and PM Preschool each created a group poem (all in their own words) about Winter Senses and so here they are. Consider this a "See ya later" to Winter!

WINTER SENSES
by the AM Preschool

I SEE...snow, snow falls on the ground, snowflakes, birds, snow on the ground

I HEAR...drip drip drop, a bird going toot toot toot, children, birds, Santa Claus

I SMELL...oranges, hot chocolate, dirt, cookies from the oven

I TASTE...snowy snowflakes, icicles, applesauce and lollipops

I TOUCH...snow, soft and crunchy and hard, the bus, ice, digging snow



WINTER SENSES
by the PM Preschool

I SEE...snow, snowballs, snow falling down from the sky, ice, people making snowmen

I HEAR...cracks on the ice, I hear ice too and it goes crack crack crack! Snow falling down. I hear ice when I'm skating kkk-kkk

I SMELL...cooking peppermint patties, ice and when I smell it it makes my nose stuff, candles when they're blown out, gas, when fire cools off it smells good.

I TASTE...snow, ice, food

I TOUCH...cold, smooth, bumpy snow

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Community Helpers! Our Week of March 10-14

This week in Preschool we learned alot about different Community Helpers. We read books about garbage collectors, veterinarians, bakers and farmers, played Community Helper Bingo and Miss Jen got to do some guest teaching! Our Dress-Up area became a Vet's Office this week and our Writing Center was transformed into a busy Post Office for postcard and letter writing!

Preschoolers got to practice their dice rolling and counting skills, as well as remembering shapes and colors, with a fun game that highlighted places in the Sunderland Community, like the Town Hall, Post Office, Library and Frontier Pizza to name a few. Kids got to travel along a path, Candyland style, and it was really fun!

The Science Table was a big hit as students got to explore magnets this week. Next week we'll be moving the magnets to our sand table so kids get to dig archaeologist-style!

The PM Class tried out the watercolors that they made with Gus's Mom to make rainbows and it was exciting to use something that we had made ourselves to create some bright springy art!

We'll be studying more about our Community and Community Helpers this coming week and hopefully the weather will warm up so we can have plenty of outside time, too!

Have a great weekend,

-Miss Kate and Miss Amanda