February 11 -14

Love was in the air during our Valentine's week of school!

We continued our math theme a bit and read many counting books this week. "Ten Rubber Duckies" was a huge hit! Ask your child about the "move over" part. That was their favorite! They love to help Mrs. Reid read.

We decorated our Valentine's Day bags on Monday and Tuesday. We made a cute little dog out of hearts and circles. We also played a game with shape dice. Each child rolled a dice with shapes on it, then picked the corresponding shape out of our pile. We went around in a circle and identified the shapes and colors as we rolled and picked. When everyone had rolled the dice four or five times, we built something with our shapes and glued it onto a peice of paper. Some kids made houses, rocket ships, and part of monsters. Super fun!

We also worked on patterns a little this week. After discussing that a pattern is something that repeats and practicing, we glued red and pink hearts on a strip of paper to make our own patterns. Some patterns were simple AB patterns while others were AABB patterns and even AAB patterns emerged! Smart preschoolers.

We worked on writing some poetry this week. Basically each student thought of two rhyming words and I helped them put it into a (very short) poem and then they drew a picture. This got them thinking about how poems are different from stories and I was pleased to see how many children can produce a rhyme.

The morning class worked on their pencil grip this week. It's an important skill to learn in preschool and one that is not always easy to learn.

Mrs. Reid

February 4 - 8

This week our theme was magical math. We worked on measuring, sorting by size, identifying small, medium, and large, and charted our growth.

We are certainly not ready for regular rulers, so we made our own! To go with our Valentine's Day theme next week, we used rows of hearts to measure various items. Children used rows of hearts to measure how many hearts long an item was. Morning kids worked on counting and afternoon kids drew a picture of each thing they measured then wrote the number of hearts long it was next to it. The product was basically a paper with scribbles and a few random numbers, but hey, it really got the kids thinking about what it means to measure something.

We introduced the new center in our room. It is the Math and Science Center. Because we've been talking so much about measuring, I have placed some measuring tools in a basket there along with a small and large pom pom sort. This center will change throughout the rest of the year to incorporate science and math themes.

We've been singing some counting games during the day as well. A simple one goes like this:

One, two, three, four, five
One, two, three, four, five
One, two, three, four, five
I can count to five!

Six, seven, eight, nine, ten
Six, seven, eight, nine, ten
Six, seven, eight, nine, ten
I can count to ten!

We also learned to sing:
1,2 buckle my shoe
3, 4 shut the door
5, 6 pick up sticks
7, 8 lay them straight
9, 10 a big fat hen!

The P.M class really enjoyed our Reward Day which was a camp out in our classroom! We voted for the next reward day which will be a costume party! It will take us a month or two to fill up our jar, but I'll keep you posted on the progress. Enjoy the pictures!

REMINDER - PTO Raffle

Jessica Powers is putting together our PTO Raffle Basket (wine and dine theme) for Arts Night in April. We were hoping to get donations for this basket by Feb. 7th, which is quickly approaching. This is a great way to support our PTO. They are responsible for putting together many positive events for our school and community.

Any amount that you can donate would be greatly appreciated. You may send it in your child's communication folder. If you have connections to any restaurants in the area that may be willing to donate, please let Jessica Powers or myself know.

Thanks again for all of your support. We are looking forward to Arts Night in April!

For those new to our school, Arts Night is a night where the children of SES perform songs and display their artwork. Our preschool class will sing a special song on the stage as well! It really is a great night with plenty to engage in. It's one of my favorite events of the year!


Best,
Aleshia Reid

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

Week of Jan. 7 - 10

This week in Preschool our theme was winter! We have spent some time talking about the changes that winter brings to our environment and also spent some time playing fun winter themed games.

This week in groups, we worked on building our names (for A.M students) using puzzle peice letters, rhyming (for P.M students) finding rhyme matches and double checking our work by seeing if puzzle peice rhymes fit together. These of course were our literacy games. We also played a snowflake match game (much like a memory game) where students had to find two snowflakes that looked alike. We also read a fun book called "Snowmen At Night" by Caralyn Buehner then made up our own snowman stories as a shared writing activity. A shared writing activity is when children think up the ideas and Mrs. Reid writes them all down for the kiddos to see! They were a riot!

For our art project this week, we used black, brown, and orange oil pastels to create a snowman drawing then we dipped cotton balls into white paint to make our snowman scene look snowy! So cute and fun! They have been hung up near cubbies for your viewing pleasure!

Next week we will continue talking about winter but our focus will be on bears and other hibernating animals. We will read "The Three Little Bears" and have some fun with our book! Looking forward to a week that is not too crazy, not too dull, but JUST RIGHT! :)

Our Short Week After Winter Brea

Our week back from winter break was a short one, but action packed as always.

Miss Kate and I could not get over how much our students have grown and matured! We certainly were happy to see them back at school on Wednesday.

Wednesday and Thursday we started our Winter Unit. During music on Wednesday our morning class pretended to ice skate on paper plates for "freeze skating" (a new version of freeze dancing).

Both classes read our "January" poem. It's all about rhyming! Our afternoon class is getting so good at rhyming and we've been talking lately about beginning sounds of words. Something really quick and easy you can do in the car with your "not-so-little-one" (anymore!) is this:

Say a word like "mop" tell your child you will switch the "m" sound for  the "t" sound and ask them what the word is. For example, "mop" becomes "top". We will be working on this concept for the next few weeks in school. This is more so for the afternoon group but I'm sure some of our morning crew would catch on quickly too!

Other things we accomplished this week were, a letter search (snowman style), and a mitten match game. Students played a memory type game where they tried to find a matching mitten by color or pattern.

On Thursday, we substituted a science project in place of art, as we sometimes do. Children had a blast experimenting with ice cubes. We felt how they were hard, cold, melting, and creating water in our cups. We sprinkled food colored salt onto our ice cubes and noted how it made our cube melt. We held our ice cubes up and noticed that once it began to melt, the blue salt made it's way into the middle of our ice cubes! So much fun! (sorry for any blue hands at home!) We also squeezed red, warm, salt water onto our ice cubes and noted how that made the ice cube melt faster.

We're looking forward to a full week of fun this coming week! January already!
I keep reminding our afternoon group that they will soon be in Kindergarten! They are so ready!

Thank you so much to those of you who were so thoughtful over the holiday season. Many of you donated to our classroom and it is much appreciated.

Mrs. Reid