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