March 4 - 8; Eric Carle's Hungry Caterpillar

It felt so nice to have one strong focus point this week. We studied Eric Carle's book "The Very Hungry Caterpillar". There were new things we learned each time we read the book. We worked on sequencing the items the hungry caterpillar ate and discussed the life stages of a caterpillar. First the egg, then the caterpillar, then he gets fat, makes a cocoon, and then at the end, turns into a beautiful butterfly.

Some Eric Carle inspired activities we did this week were:

Each child filled in with "writing" what their hungry caterpillar might eat. Then drew a picture to accompany. We will have this book for you next week (except if we have a snowday friday!). We'll keep it near the fish, so you can find your child's page and check it out.

We did some caterpillar math. Some students used round counters while other used circle stickers to count. There were numbers in front of our caterpillars then corresponding circle outlines. Kids practiced counting the circles then took a look at the number. I'm hoping the afternoon class learned some number recognition in the process and for the morning class, they just solidified their counting skills.

We practiced writing our names on our very own constuction paper hungry caterpillar cut out. For the morning class, many of them are just beginning to independently write their names (some letters might need a creative eye to be seen!) and some of them are still practicing with hand over hand help (a teacher places their hand over the childs hand to help them form muscle memory of how the letters of their name are formed). We will hang them up on the wall for parents to see.

Using pictures of the foods the caterpillar ate, we worked in groups to sequence the book. For example, the caterpillar ate one apple first, then two pears, then three plums, four strawberries, five oranges, then a whole bunch of sweets, and finally a leaf to settle his stomach.

We also used our finger prints to make a hungry caterpillar. We then found pictures of food to glue next to our caterpillar to show what he might eat.

Next week, we will continue to look at some Eric Carle books and sequence a variety of stories.
Mrs. Reid

Feb. 25 - 28 Dr. Seuss Week!

We celebrated Dr. Seuss this week! One thing I love about Dr. Seuss is his creativity and imagination. His books and ideas lend themselves to many fun preschool activities. Some things we did this week were:

Making our wonderful Cat in the Hat hats. This was a great opportunity for children to practice painting a red and white patterm, just like the Cat!

We also measured truffula trees! There were some that were tall and some that were small. We used rubix cubes to count how many cubes high each of the trees were, then we practiced ordering them from largest to smallest.

The morning class worked on color matching after we red the book "Red Fish, Blue Fish" by Dr. Seuss. They are getting quite good at matching, so we played a memory game using colored fish!

At snack time, we graphed colored goldfish for snack. I was so impressed with preschoolers as they sorted, graphed, and counted their goldfish before eating them!

Afternoon students worked on rhyming words by producing words that rhyme with "cat". Teachers recorded ideas onto a hat cut out and the kids colored them however they liked. Rhyming is an important early literacy skill and it's great to see the kids getting excited about it.

On Thursday, we made Dr. Seuss's Oobleck! We mixed water with cornstarch which makes an oobleck that feels like a solid when squished then feels like a liquid when left to rest.

Next week, we will be beginning a new author study about Eric Carle with particular focus on "The Very Hungry Caterpillar".

Mrs. Reid

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