Week of January 28 - 31

This week it was all about Groundhog's Day!

We kicked off our rocking Groundhog week with a scavenger hunt! All around the room we found clues and facts about groundhogs. To name a few:

We looked at a picture of a real groundhog and saw that they have short legs, short arms, and a short tail.
They are quick!
They like to eat vegetables.
Groundhogs also hibernate for the winter. (ask your preschool if they remember what hibernate means!)

We even tried eating some green sugar snap peas to act like groundhogs. Faline and her family brought in a book called "Go To Sleep Groundhog" which was all about a groundhog who continues to wake up on the wrong holiday.

After that, toward the middle of the week, we talked about light and shadow. Kids had a fun time making shadow puppets out of cardstock. We had many bunny rabits (as that was my example) along with a turtle, lion, bald eagle, and mouse. We turned off the lights and put on a little show with flashlights and our puppets. We also experimented with different objects to see if light would travel through it or if the object would block the light and create a shadow.

On Thursday we did some roller painting. I love the texture and patterns the rollers make and we picked some pretty bright colors as well.

We have learned a new groundhog song you can sing with your little ones:

Groundhog's Day, I looked around
Saw my shadow on the ground
Yes, I saw my shadow when I took a peek
That means winter for six more weeks!

We have also been singing our days of the week song:

(Song to the tune of "The Adam's Family")

Days of the week (snap, snap)
Days of the week (snap, snap)
Days of the week, Days of the week, Days of the week (snap, snap)
There's Sunday and there's Monday
There's Tuesday and there's Wednesday
There's Thursday and there's Friday
And then there's Saturday
Days of the week (snap, snap)
Days of the week (snap, snap)
Days of the week, days of the week, days of the week (snap, snap)

Next week we will be having a Magical Math Week!!! I can't wait! The kids have been counting, adding, and subtracting up a storm lately! We will be focusing on measurement but we will be ready a lot of books about counting and using our number knowledge to help us measure things around the room! Hold on to your hats parents, 'cause your kids are going to blow you away with their math skills! Obviously we always talk about math and counting, but this week it's our main focus.

PM students: CAMP OUT DAY is Monday, February 4th. Bring anything camping related you would like to.

Stay healthy Preschool families!

Excitedly,
Mrs. Reid

January 21 - 25

This week in Preschool, we continued our Winter and Three Bears theme. We've read our Three Bears book many times and now the students are able to sequence the story. This is a great skill for preschoolers to have! They were able to identify the beginning, middle, and end of the book along with many little details and favorite parts!

A mysterious snowman appeared in our afternoon class. It had the number 0 on it and no decorations. On day number two of our snowman mystery, another appeared except this one had the number 1 on it!  He had one carrot nose! As you can imagine, the following day a snowman with two decorations appeared! We have a blast looking around the room for our snowman and then studying him to see how he is different from the last snowman we found. Finding them is most of the fun, as students broke into "search teams" spontaneously and independently on Thursday! Haha! We will continue our search for more snowmen this week.

On display for your viewing pleasure in our classroom are the students "Three Bears Themed Stories". I asked the kids to think of the story "The Three Bears" and recreate some elements of the story using any characters they could think of. Now some students REALLY got this assignment and stayed true to the trials of Goldilocks and even used some of the same language as our favorite story while other students were more organically creative, writing stories of their own imagination (ignoring our Three Bears Story altogether)! In any case, this got each child thinking and I mean really thinking! I asked the kiddos to write the words of their story and draw one picture to go along with their story. I then asked them to read me their words, which I proceeded to write down for each of them. I am teaching them that THEY can be and ARE writers! The dictation occurred because their stories were so imaginative I couldn't keep them to myself! They had to be shared with you all!

We baked Mamma Bears porridge cookies on Thursday. The kids thought it was a riot to take a trip down to the cafeteria to bake them! I put a copy of the recipe in everyone's mailbox to go home on Monday. These are great doughy cookies!

We worked on self portraits on Thursday as well. Miss Kate and myself were very surprised at how much the children's drawings actually resembled the artist! They did an awesome job. We discussed diversity and how everyone's skin is not exactly the same color. We worked very hard by holding a multicultural crayon up to our skin and choosing one that was a pretty accurate match to draw with. Using mirrors and pictures of ourselves we worked out what color hair we have and what color our eyes are. This was a great activity and the kids learned a lot about themselves and diversity.

Much time was spent inside this week and the kids were restless but great! I am sending home a notice on Monday about the P.M class's marble jar. It is almost full! I am aiming to have our "Camp Out Day" this coming Thursday so if you have any camping props, feel free to send them in with your child on Thursday.

Hopefully we will get some outside play time this week!

Excitedly,
Mrs. Reid