Wednesday - And The Rest...

Hey Everyone,

My apologies for not updating as frequently! A new puppy at my house means lots of attention on her outside of the school day! Here's a picture in case you love sweet, furry, pals ...

Here are some other pictures from our week!

This week at school, we worked on our Transportation unit. We played games like VW bug color match, What's Different? (students had to place a marble on the one picture that was different than the other three), and read books about different types of transportation. We will do a little more with that next week too!

We are finishing up our unit on Community Helpers. This week in group time, we pretended like we were construction workers and worked with real nuts and bolts! We put our fine motor skills to workscrewing on and off the nuts.

The morning children are learning a lot about their names. In group time, we worked on writing the first letter of our names. Hopefully, with more practice we will be writing our whole name by the end of the school year. We'll keep working hard!

The afternoon class is working on Syllables, rhyming, and beginning letter sounds. Mr. Munch still wakes up to help us with that! Next on our agenda will be talking more about what a word looks like, and hopping out words in a sentence. I think our wiggly friends will get a kick out of that.

I want to say thank you to our morning volunteer parent, Jessica Powers. She spent Tuesday and Thursday with us this week helping out.

Hope you all have a great weekend. See you back Monday for another fabulous week!

Mrs. Reid

Wonderful Wednesday - And An Update On the Rest of Our Week!

Wow! Wednesday already. I've totally missed updating the blog the past couple of days, sorry folks!

This was a very productive week in PK. We have been working so hard lately! The unit we are working on right now is Community Helpers. So far, we've identified what types of Community Helpers we have and are now beginning to talk about exactly what they do for our community. In group time this week, children talked about what job they want to have when they get older. We made a graph which we will talk about Thursday.

We also worked on handwriting. The morning group is learning how to color very carefully inside the lines and identify colors of objects. The afternoon children each were given their very own name books! These books help preschoolers learn how to form the letters of their name. Nice work preschool writers!

In addtion to that, one of our groups during group time worked independently (well mostly) on counting playdough balls onto counting mats. This is the type of independent group work kindergarteners do!

Today we started a new incentive plan for the afternoon group. We are trying to fill a container with marbles by working hard together as a team. We can earn a marble whenever we get a compliment while walking down the hall quietly, cleaning up carefully, or just by being good friends to one another. We voted on what we would like to do when we fill our container. Ideas were, cookies for snack, a class party, read a special book, or a classroom campout day. Friends voted and for our first celebration of filling our good deeds container, we will have a classroom campout day!

Looking forward to the rest of the week!
Mrs. Reid

Tuesday - Friendship is in the Air!

Our Tuesday started off with the same loving energy that our Monday did. I have seen many acts of kindness this week and in between our Thanksgiving talks, we have been talking about what it means to be a good friend.

The kids had many ideas about not hitting, biting, fighting and also ideas about apologizing, helping, and offering to share. We read a book today called, "Martha Doesn't Say Sorry" by Samantha Berger. That really solidified our ideas about friendship!

This week, we have worked on our pencil grips. It's really important for preschoolers to learn the correct way to hold a pencil. Many kids caught right on! The morning class worked on picking out certain color pencils and coloring items of that color with care. They tried hard to stay in the lines and do careful coloring.

The afternoon worked on following arrows to write. We learned how to follow arrows to make vertical and horizontal lines. Next week, we are really going to start working on forming the letters of our names! It's exciting to see kids ready for this!

We counted some thanksgiving food this week too! Kids had the big job of sorting different pretend food from our Dramatic Play area and counting out how many of each food we had.

Tomorrow we will see the A.M students. Remember, no school Wednesday November 21st for the P.M students.

Happy Thanksgiving everyone!

Friday: It's Turkey Time...Well Almost!

We have been talking a lot about Thanksgiving in our classroom. We have been learning a little about pilgrims, the food and friendship they celebrated during the first Thanksgiving, and how they got here.

Our friend McClellan had some really awesome questions which ended up teaching our afternoon class a lot. He asked ... How did the pilgrims get to America? Why are Turkeys so fat? Which he offered up the answer that "maybe it was protect themselves". How did they all fit on one boat? And exclaimed "Hey! I didn't know Turkeys could fly!" during our read aloud. Thanks for all of the good thinking and prompting some in depth conversations about this time of year.

We moved our leaves in the hallway from our tree branches to the grass on our bulletin board. We are noticing that all of the cold wind has blown all of the leaves outside onto the ground, so naturally - we want our trees in the hallway to represent our changing seasons accurately.

Mr. Munch ate up some new letters today. Ask your child ... "If Mr. Munch at things that started with _________ (insert any letter you like), what things would he eat?" They may need to be reminded what sound each letter makes, but this is a great game for in the car. You can even sing the song. (Tune of Tiny Tim)

Mr. Munch
I have a hungry friend
His name is Mr. Munch
And what he likes to do all day is gobble up his lunch
He loves the letter _______
and things that start with ________
And he is very happy when he goes
Munch, Munch, Munch, CRUNCH

Our art project today was to make a handprint Turkey! Children had so much fun painting their fingers different feather colors and putting an eye, beak, and wattle (the red appendage hanging near the turkey's beak) onto their turkey creation.

Please remember that next week we have a half day on Wednesday, November 21st. The MORNING class will attend preschool from 8:45am - 11:15am. The afternoon will not have preschool that day.

Thanks,
Mrs. Reid

Wonderful Wednesday!

Today, our morning class enjoyed a special Freeze Dancing session with Sadie's mom, Jo. Sadie decided that she wanted to Freeze Dance for her birthday celebration in class so she brought in a Yo Gabba Gabba CD for us to dance to. Jo had some great moves and played a mean pause button! Thanks again to Jo for sharing your fun with us.

During groups today children worked on using a Turkey Baster to transfer water from one measuring cup to another. It sounds sort of silly but believe it or not, activities like these help make our finger and wrist muscles stronger, something we need later in life for writing.

We also used a Turkey grid for counting. Each student rolled dice to count buttons onto turkeys. I was impressed that preschoolers could count so high!

Mr. Munch woke up from his nap and made an appearance again today! He ate letters D through H! Friends are getting really good at naming things beginning with specific letters that Mr. Munch could eat. Thoughtful contributions included - Eggs, Flowers, elbows, grapes, and hair! Man, that Mr. Munch must have a stomach ache!

The Thankful Turkey has been created! The turkey is hanging on our wall and preschoolers had a lot to be thankful for, so check him out!

Thursday already ... and there's a Gobble-Gobbley art project planned!

Mrs. Reid

Hey All! It's been a busy couple of weeks in Preschool! We've had a mixed up schedule for a while now and I've had a hard time getting on to update the blog. But alas, I'm here now!

Today, Tuesday after our long weekend started out with a new Dramatic Play Area. We have turned our Doctor's office into a veterinarian Hospital (many cuddly animals included!) Friends spent the day acting as pet owners, receptionists, and Veterinarians!

We read a book about Thanksgiving too. It was a book with a lot of words so we only read enough to get the gist ... then, we had a conversation about what it means to be thankful. We are working on making a Thankful turkey in our classroom displaying what each of us are thankful for on it's feathers! Each student chose something they were thankful of and drew a picture. I hope to have it hung up in the next day or two.

Learning our new song "Mr. Munch" (sang to the tune of Tiny Tim) was certainly everyone's favorite part of the day today! Mr. Munch eats letters and things that begin with each letter. He will help us learn  our letters and their sounds too!

During check in this week we will have opportunities to sort buttons by shape or color (students choice of course!), trace with pencils and colored pencils, or build with legos.  

Spooktacular Week

This week has certainly been wild and crazy! Unfortunately, we're not back on our regular schedule just yet.

Important:
Monday, November 5th - PM class comes in the morning from 8:45am - 11:15am. No school for the AM students. (This is also the day to make up conferences - same times as previously scheduled)

No schoool Tuesday, November 6th - In Service Day

This past week was a little chaotic with preschool screening, half days and no-school days, but we did manage to fit in a great book by Eric Carle, "The Very Busy Spider". Some children completed a comprehension page about the book, coloring or circling the animal that makes a web, and finding animals or objects.

In addition to reading "The Very Busy Spider", children also made a sand art spider web, complete with a spider of course! Kids had fun squirting glue and shaking black sand onto their paper.

We tried our pumpkin pies this week! Some children really enjoyed it while others weren't so into pumpkin pie! All in all, the experience of making them was thrilling and I've been hearing that kids are showing a big intrest in cooking projects at home. It's certainly made it's way into the dramatic play area! We've had piles of pretend cookies and pie!

Check back later for pictures!

Thanks,
Mrs. Reid

Read all about it! (Important reminders in addition to our daily update)

Important reminders:
Next week is an early release week.

Monday 8:45am - 11:15am - AFTERNOON group
Tuesday 8:45am - 11:15am - MORNING group
Wednesday 8:45am - 11:15am - AFTERNOON group

Thursday - NORMAL schedule
Friday, November 2nd - Picture day at 9:00am

Today, we made pumpkin pie. The key word was teamwork. We learned how to wait our turn because everyone had a very special part of the process which became their special job. We followed a recipe with helpful pictures to know how much of each ingredient we needed. We tasted along the way and realized that some of our ingredients don't taste so great on their own. I'm sure we'll love them all together in pie form! I'll take the morning pie and afternoon pie home to bake over the weekend. Friends will get to taste the final product on Monday or Tuesday.

We also had a book celebration! All week we have been getting excited about making books. We've read many books written and illustrated by Mo Willems recently and he has inspired us to write words in our own books in addition to drawing pictures. Today, we each saved our best book to read to the class.

Faline wrote a book about many things, Sam wrote a Halloween inspired, spooky story, Caleb wrote a book about Halloween as well, and McClellan wrote a book about dinasaurs. Some of our books even included details retold from one of our favorite Mo Willems book, Leonardo The Terrible Monster. Nice work smart preschoolers! There will be more opportunity for book writing in the days to come (blank books are kept in our writing center at all times for writing pleasure).

I'm looking forward to seeing my afternoon class in the morning on Monday!

Wonderful Wednesday

What a wonderful Wednesday, but first let's talk a little about Tuesday!

Tuesday our morning class listened to some Big Band Swing! All of our three year olds did an outstanding job listening to the instruments, clapping when they were done playing, and snapping their little fingers to the beat! I was very impressed with how patient they all were and how nicely they acted! Read more about it on the channel 22 news website.

Today...there is something in the air! Keep washing hands, taking your vitamins, and drinking lots of water ... there seems to be a little sickness going around. Nothing to be alarmed about, just the common cold and a little stomach bug.

For those of us that were healthy and happy at school today, we sang our pumpkin pie chant, worked some more on syllables and played a game about letters and letter sound. Preschool friends had a blast "fishing" for letters and matching them to pictures! Children loved finding letters in their name and often yelled out "Hey, I have that letter in my name!"

Wednesday music is in the air in Mrs. Reid's preschool classroom! Our morning class had a great time freeze dancing. Rhythm, rhythm, rhythm! The afternoon class had a special guest in music time, Mr. Van is what we called him for short. He brought in some folk wooden dancers which we made dance to our lovely singing. We also learned a dance from Denmark. We had to spin, stomp, and clap along to a beat with partners and in a big group. So much fun!

Aurora is our calendar helper this week and has been helping us count the days in october. I'm impressed by how many children in our afternoon class can count to 24!

I'll be sending home picture order forms for picture day in communication folders tomorrow. That day is Friday, November 2nd and our time slot will be at 9:00a.m. regardless if you are a morning student or afternoon student.

I'm off to the store to pick up some supplies for a baking activity tomorrow! Singing our pumpkin pie chant has left us all hungry- let's make pumpkin pie! Don't worry, we won't use the pumpkin mush in our science area!

Looking forward to tomorrow,
Mrs. Reid

(Our superhero invasion! We had Superman, The Hulk, and Tornado Girl *with a sidekick- all imagined during check in/ table top activity time!)

Wow, what a busy day in preschool! Our Monday started with Library time with Mrs. Kidder. She read us a book about the alphabet. I was impressed with how many letters children were able to recognize! This week, Mrs. Kidder has asked that we keep our Library books in our classroom. There are many families who seem to be feeling as busy as I do and their library books didn't make it back to school this week.

I'm working on getting a spot for each child to save work, and store books (I think I'll hit up the dollar store for some little baskets!)

Onward! We talked so much about our alphabet today! On Friday, teachers worked to put together our new word wall. We'll start small (with only our names, and a few words to familar songs) but hopefully by the end of the year, we'll have many words (and pictures) on our word wall.

In groups today, children tried tasting pumpkin seeds from our pumpkins Thursday and made a graph to represent our likes and dislikes. We also constructed a Mat Man! Mat man is part of the Handwriting Without Tears program and starts our thinking about the lines and curves that make up letters! Preschool friends really enjoyed singing the song that helps us put Mat Man together. If your child didn't count pumpkin seeds today, they will tomorrow. Same goes for Mat Man fun.

Ooooey, goooooey, PUMPKIN mush is currently on display on top of our sensory table! Our preschool scientists are investigating what our pumpkin mush will look like over time. We scooped out all of the pumpkin seeds and mush on Thursday, now it's time to investigate! Some guesses were that it would become liquid and it would disappear. My guess is that I will be happy it's in a disposable bag!

Another fun day in Pre-K! You can look for another update in a couple of days.

Tomorrow we have P.E - sneakers please!

-Mrs. Reid

Welcome to our new blogspot!

Instead of doing a weekly newsletter, I've decided to try out the world of blogging. Here, I can post pictures, update you more frequently, and have more space to write!

Last week, we started our Fall unit. Our activities included leaf rubbing, apple stamping, an apple tree counting game, and a handwriting lesson.

Our song was, "Little Apples":

One little, two little, three little apples

Four little, five little, six little apples

Seven little, eight little, nine little apples

All fell to the ground

For the week of October 15th, we are continuing our fall unit. We are exploring all things pumpkin! So far, we have created pumpkins out of paper bags and newspaper, and used an eye dropper to strengthen our finger muscles and create a tie-dyed type of leaf art project. We're looking forward to another Handwriting without Tears lesson and counting activivites centered around our Five Little Pumpkin poem.

"Five Little Pumpkins"

Five little pumpkins sitting on a gate

The first one said, "Oh, my it's getting late."

The second one said, "There are witches in the air."

The third one said, "But we don't care!"

The fourth one said, "Let's run, Let's run!"

The fifth one said, "Isn't Halloween fun?"

Then Woo went the wind and OUT went the lights.

Five little pumpkins rolled out of sight.

Please check in often to see what we're up to as we grow from buds to blossoms!

-Mrs. Reid