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

Our Week of March 3rd

This week in Preschool we joined the rest of Sunderland Elementary in celebrating Dr. Seuss's Birthday! We got to read "Green Eggs and Ham" and "The Cat in the Hat" and made our own striped Cat in the Hat hats!

We also invited the principal, Mr. B., into class to read "My Many Colored Days" and "Dr. Seuss's ABC." The kids did a great job listening and got to move around too!

Reading all that Dr. Seuss got us in the mood for some rhyming! We played rhyming games this week in the gym, did some rhyming puzzles and sang "Down by the Bay" where kids got to make up their own rhymes!

Our Math Time this week was also full of games. We got to sort by shape and color, practice some early addition, counting, and number identification with unifix cubes and play a game where preschoolers rolled a dice and scooped rainbow stones.

Have a great weekend!

-Miss Kate and Miss Amanda

Sunderland Preschool Loves Reading!!

February 24-27

Greetings everyone!

Welcome back from our extended February Vacation!

It was nice to have everyone back after a nice little break and the Preschoolers got right back into the groove of things. This week we learned about The Five Senses and learned a song to the tune of "Frere Jacques/ Are You Sleeping Brother John" that goes...

Five Senses, Five Senses
We have them, we have them
Seeing, hearing, smelling
Tasting and touching
We have five, we have five

Reading and talking about the senses got some great conversations going in class and the kids took what they learned, and talked about it independently during the day. Ie. "I'm tasting!" while eating snack and "I'm using my sense of sight!" while playing at the Math Center for Choice Time. It's always great as a teacher to see that kind of enthusiasm. The AM and PM class each wrote their own "Winter Senses" poems as a whole class and these are hanging in our book area if you'd like to take a peek!

For group time we went on shape/color treasure hunts in small bins of rice and students sorted, counted and recorded their findings with crayons. We also used our senses to draw still lifes of fruit bowl with oil pastels, which you can find hanging on the wall in class.

For our Thursday Art Project the AM class created winter scenes with water colors (the kids can tell you how we "woke up the paint" with water) and salt, and the PM class had a special visitor (Gus's Mom!) come in to MAKE our own watercolor paint. Science and art in one!

Have a fabulous weekend and see you next week to celebrate Dr. Seuss's Birthday...

-Miss Kate

Valentines, Snow Days and Vacations Oh My!

Greetings from Snow Day Number Two!

Another short, action-packed week here at the SES Preschool!

We continued to practice greeting each other at meeting with either a high-five or hand shake, using our words and making eye contact. For calendar jobs we looked at the weather and counted our February calendar as a class. Both the AM and PM are getting to be quite the singers! We sang our "Days of the Week" and "I'm a Little Penguin" songs and also learned a new song about friendship in honor of Valentine's Day. It goes like this:


Make new friends
But keep the old
One is silver and the other is gold
A circle is round, it has no end
That's how long I will be your friend

We'll definitely be adding this to our repertoire and singing it more after February vacation! It was a good opportunity to learn two more words in sign language, too. "Friends" is signed by linking your two pointer fingers and "make" is signed like you're squeezing out a dish towel vertically.

We took advantage of an empty gym to run around on Monday and play syllable "Duck Duck Goose," a Preschool favorite! The kids also got to meet "Mr. Munch," our in-class letter-eating monster. Each student gets a foam upper-case letter and when their letter is called they feed it to 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 likes the letter ______
And things that start with ________
And when he gets a letter
He eats it munch munch munch
CRUNCH!"

Puppet Show was introduced as a new Choice time center and this was hugely popular. It was really fun to see the kids using their imaginations and playing with friends who they
don't normally spend time with.

Knowing that the Thursday snow storm would probably change our Valentine's/Friendship Celebration in Preschool, we celebrated a little early on Wednesday by making heart shaped melon treats with cookie cutters and going all out with glitter and glue for our Valentine's mailboxes. We'll celebrate some more the Monday after vacation!

Have a fabulous February Vacation and see you Monday the 24th!

-Miss Kate and Miss Amanda

Our week in Preschool! February 3rd-7th

Hello!

It's that blogging time of the week once again!
I hope that everyone had a good relaxing snow day. The kids were pretty adorable slooooowly wading through the deep snow today...

We learned about penguins this week-where they live, what they eat, whether they can fly or not. The kids learned a new penguin song at Meeting/Circle Time to the tune of "I'm a Little Teapot." It goes like this:

I'm A Little Penguin

I'm a little penguin black and white
I like to waddle across the ice
When I reach the water I dive right in
I hunt for fish as I swim, swim swim

There are motions to go along with this, including the sign language for black and white which the kids can show you at home! They really like this one and usually want to sing it more than once. We've also still been singing our "Days of the Week" song, snapping and clapping away. Preschoolers were really into our "new" and "different" calendar this week now that it's February and we're still having Calendar Helpers at every Meeting.

We practiced some literacy with Syllable Duck-Duck Goose again this week and played some rhyming games. Some students also got to play a snowflake matching game with Miss Amanda! There ended up being a couple of Art Projects this week, which was fun. First, we read "Polar Bear, Polar Bear What do you Hear?" (and got to make animal noises to go along with the pictures) then kids got to make paper plate "masks," choosing either lions or elephants out of paper, yarn and buttons!

Our Thursday Art Project was part of our Penguin Unit. Kids used black and white paint, construction paper beaks and googly eyes to make mini penguins out of egg carton pieces that will be going home on Monday once they dry!

Next week we'll be focusing on love and friendship for Valentine's Day and will have a "Friendship Celebration" on Thursday.

Have a great weekend,

Miss Kate and Miss Amanda

The Week of January 27-30

Greetings Preschool Families,

We had a great week here in Preschool despite our tiny class sizes! Hoping that everyone is feeling better very soon.

Our theme this week in class was "Animals in Winter." Mrs. Kidder, our school librarian, showed us a neat video of a hibernating bear and we read alot about what animals around us here in New England do in the wintertime (including a quick shout out to Groundhog Day, including a Groundhog puppet visitor). Students got to make their own "Animals in Winter" pictures that we made into a book and for our Art Project on Thursday we used cardboard stamps and black paint to make bear and bird tracks! (Perhaps this will explain that painty black creation in your preschooler's folder). We then made our OWN tracks by tracing our shoe prints onto a long piece of white paper and writing our names underneath!

For Group Time, kids got to work on Math skills by sorting pattern blocks by shape and color, and for Literacy we worked on identifying the letters in our names and recognizing letters of the alphabet (and even their sounds!) with colorful flashcards.

We've also been playing "Syllable Duck-Duck Goose" in the gym, which is really fun. Kids are shown a picture, we say the word and clap it out as a class, and then the tagger splits the word into syllables as they tap kids heads. (Ie. el-e-phant) And then...let the running ensue!

It's been really nice to see the preschoolers starting to play together more on the playground, shoveling away with their mini snow shovels. Sounds like they'll get an opportunity for more shoveling after this weekend!

See you all Monday!

-Miss Kate and Miss Amanda

A short week! January 21-23

Our week may have been short but our time in school was full this week!
Since we weren't able to go outside we got to do some extra Art Projects, including making maracas out of toilet paper rolls, wax paper and rice (AM); snowy scenes with blue paint and salt (PM), and our own colorful mittens after reading Jan Brett's book "The Mitten" (both classes).

We learned a "Days of the Week" song at circle-time this week that some of the PM kids may remember from last year. It goes like this (to the tune of "The Adams Family Theme Song"):

DAYS OF THE WEEK

Days of the week (snap, snap or clap, clap)-repeat 5 times-
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/clap, snap/clap) -repeat 5 times-

We'll be singing this some more this week to really get the hang of it!

Group time this week was spent exploring wooden curves and lines blocks as part of our "Handwriting without Tears" program. We talked about the difference between a curve and a line, as well as big and little, and kids were shown upper-case letters to make with their blocks (C, O, L, D, and P). Then they got to "freestyle" and play around to make whatever letters they wanted to!

For Math time we played a counting game with tiny cookies. Kids practiced looking at numbers, counting out cookies and were given basic number problems. "If I have 5 cookies and take away 1 then how many do I have left?"

We'll be learning more about animals in winter this coming week and will make our own Animals in Winter book as a class! See you all Monday!

-Miss Kate and Miss Amanda

Our week at Preschool: January 13-17

There was lots of activity in Preschool this week!

We have been talking alot about winter and the January calendar this week and just started having a Calendar Helper job at Circle Time/Meeting! The Calendar Helper gets to tell the class what the weather is outside and then points to the calendar numbers as we count all together. The kids are VERY excited about this new addition.

Our poem of the week was "The Chubby Little Snowman." Some of the students memorized it, but if you'd like to read it with them (and do the motions)here you go:

The Chubby Little Snowman

The chubby little snowman (put arms out like a big belly)
Had a carrot nose (put finger on nose)
Along came a bunny (make little bunny ears with two fingers)
And what do you suppose? (Shrug up shoulders)
That hungry little bunny (rub tummy)
Looking for its lunch (put hand over eyes)
Ate the snowman's carrot nose (make big chomping arms)
Nibble, nibble, crunch, crunch!! (move hands like a duckbill)

Kids got to draw pictures and write their own variations of "Golidilocks and the Three Bears" (loosely interpreted) for group time this week. You can find these hanging on the wall of our classroom! We also got to be "scientists" by using eye droppers to explore mixing different shades of food coloring and water. This was a great hands-on activity that really held everyone's focus!

On Wednesday and Thursday we played a mitten matching game for math group time and for literacy the kids wrote their names in sand. (Fun but tricky!)We also made our dress up area into a Doctor's Office this week. This is providing some really entertaining dialogue to eavesdrop in on: "Hey-could you get me a new finger? We lost one!" The kids are really getting into their roles as professionals :)

For our Thursday Art Project this week the AM class made toothpick and marshmallow sculptures-dogs, robots and stars to name a few- and the PM class made their own maraca shakers out of toilet paper roles and rice. Add some paint, glitter and feathers and you have one bedazzled musical instument!

Let's hope for another week of outside play time!

Have a great long weekend and see you all soon!!

Welcome Back! Our week of 1/6-1/9

Happy 2014 everyone!

And welcome to Miss Amanda! Amanda Linzi joined our class this week and will be with us until Mrs. Reid gets back. She is a great addition to the classroom and has fit right in already.

This week we read several versions of "Golidilocks and the Three Bears" and students got to choose their own bear (Mama, Papa or Baby) to make out of tissue paper for our Thursday Art Project. See if they know what "Golidlocks did first" or "how many bears" there are at home!

We talked alot about Winter and our January calendar, as well as reading a January poem from the book "Chicken Soup with Rice." We also got to practice our Yoga at Morning Meeting. The kids are getting to be experts!

For group time both AM and PM kids practiced writing their names on white boards and with silver crayons (super fancy) on black construction paper and for Math they got to make "caves" out of play dough and use little plastic counting bears to put in/take out of the cave to practice their early addition/subtraction skills.


It was so nice to have a full week back at school! Looking forward to seeing everyone on Monday for a week of some outdoor play!