Israel, England and the USA

We had lots of fun this last week before break! On Tuesday we traveled the Israel and learned all about Hanukkah. We had lots of fun making our own menorahs and talking about the history and traditions of Hanukkah. I hope everyone has had a chance to play the dreidel game at home!

Wednesday was all about England, which is where Christmas cards originated. The kids really enjoyed making their own cards!

Thursday was our class party and all about Christmas traditions in the USA. We played pin the nose on the snowman,

made our snowmen,

made ornaments and played lots of fun games!

It has been a fun month! The kids' suitcases are now yours to do what you want with them.

Have a wonderful break and I will see everyone January 6th!

Mexico, Brazil and Sweden

This week was lots of fun learning about different holidays and ways of celebrating! We also got to learn about the letter O this week, which is always a lot of fun. Most kids pick up on O pretty quickly, which gives us room to do some fun activities! This week we made an 'O Ocean' in the classroom and thought up different things that start with O that could go in our ocean. We also experimented with different ways to use our bodies to make the letter O.

On Tuesday this week we traveled to Mexico. There are so many different holidays, festivals and traditions in Mexico that it's hard to decide what to teach about! We talked about several festivals, including my personal favorite, Night of the Radishes. People in Oaxaca, Mexico make some pretty amazing radish sculptures! We also got to try a traditional Mexican holiday treat, bunuelos (fried tortillas covered in cinnamon sugar). Since pinatas are common at Christmas time in Mexico, we made pictures of pinatas!

Wednesday we got to visit Brazil. We also got to try another treat, Panettone. A cake that can only be purchased at Christmas time in Brazil. It was less popular than the previous days' treat, not many of the kids liked it. We also got to talk about the fact that Christmas happens during the summer in Brazil, so their holiday celebrations often include going to the beach, barbecuing and fireworks. We made pictures of fireworks, or at least gave it our best attempt! We used straws to blow paint into a firework shape, which turned out to be pretty tricky.

Thursday this week was all about Sweden and St. Lucia Day. We talked about the traditional foods that they eat on St. Lucia Day and made our own pictures of Lucia.

Italy and Germany

This week was the beginning of our Christmas Around the World unit. 

We started out in Italy on Wednesday, talking about La Befana who brings gifts to the kids in Italy. Each of the kids got to make their own broomstick just like the one Befana rides! 

On Thursday we traveled a short distance to Germany. So many of our Christmas traditions stared in Germany that it was hard to choose just a few to focus on! We learned about how candy canes, which were invented in Germany, are made and made some candy canes of our own, reinforcing the patterns we learned about last week. We also made salt dough ornaments, as children in Germany often do!

We also got to learn about another German holiday, St. Nikolaus day, when St. Nikolaus comes and fills the childrens' shoes with treats. He was even kind enough to stop by preschool and left treats in the kids' shoes!

We also incorporated Christmas in our learning as we talked about the number 6 and the letter L. We got to do a fun number review with this alphabet roll and color game. The kids rolled dice and then colored the gingerbread man who matched the number they rolled. They did an awesome job!

Thanksgiving!

This week was all about Thanksgiving. On Tuesday we incorporated Thanksgiving into our lesson on patterns by making turkey patterns and turkey feather patterns.

We also had our final visitor for the month! Greg Hadley came in to talk to the kids about being a pilot. They got to see some of the tools that a pilot uses, learned about how an airplane flies and about the many different jobs a pilot can have. 

Wednesday was our Thanksgiving party. We made turkeys to show what we're grateful for and learned about the first Thanksgiving.

The Letter M and More!

This week we got to learn about triangles and the letter M. M is a fun letter to learn about because it's easy to make the M sound and there are so many good words that start with M!

Two of my favorite activities for the week were the letter M maze and our M monsters!

On Tuesday this week, the morning class had a special visitor! Randy Smith came to talk to us about his job as a power plant operator. The kids got to learn a lot about how power is generated and how it gets to our homes. They also learned about conserving power and water. It was really neat!

The afternoon class got to learn about construction workers on Tuesday. We talked about the many different tools that construction workers use for their job, from tractors to hammers and screwdrivers. We got to practice being construction workers by building our own things out of Lego's. It was really neat to watch the kids figure out how to snap the Lego's together and using their creativity to build things!

On Wednesday we were lucky enough to have another special visitor. Michelle Butters came to talk to us about her job in insurance claims. She talks to us about what happens when there is a car accident. We learned about what the police and tow trucks do and what the insurance company does to help people who have been in an accident. The kids loved it!

Thursday was one of my personal favorite days of the year, our trip to the fire station!

It is always so neat for the kids to get to see what fire fighters do every day. Of course, being able to climb in and investigate the truck is also super cool. This was my first year going and the first time they have gotten a call while we were there, so that was kind of fun!

At class on Thursday we talked a lot about fire safety and did a fire drill. If you haven't had the opportunity to do so recently, please take some time to talk to your child about how they would get out of your house if there were a fire and where your family would meet up outside. We talked about 911 and when it is appropriate to call that number. I think they understood when it's appropriate to call, but most of them had trouble remembering the number for more than a few minutes at a time, so that might be a good thing to review at home as well!

Letter L and Occupations

This week we got to learn all about the letter L. The kids did such a good job identifying words that start with L. I was very impressed with them! They also had lots of fun writing the letter since (in their words) it's "easy-peasy lemon squeezy"!

We have been having so much fun this month with all of our visitors coming to teach us about their jobs.

Last week we got to have Marcella Maher teach us about being a florist. The kids got to hold so many different flowers and help to arrange them. I know I heard all about the flowers (especially snap dragons) from my kids for days afterward! As part of her lesson, she asked the kids what their favorite flowers were and I was so impressed by all the answers they gave! Almost every student had a different favorite flower.

This week we got to have two visitors! On Wednesday, Jaime Flood came and taught us about being a speech pathologist. She taught the kids all about the different ages of people a speech pathologist works with and what she does with each age group. The kids got to learn a little bit about the brain, a fun song about letter songs and they even got to practice making the letter L sound. It was so neat!

On Thursday this week our visitor was Wendi Blair who came to teach us about being a fitness coach. She talked to the kids about what foods are healthy and about making sure that we are eating lots of different colors of food. She also showed the kids some exercises they can do to stay healthy. They had tons of fun!

D is for Dinosaur

This week was all about the letter D, which is perfect for learning about dinosaurs! We had lots of fun with dinosaur related letter D activities!

We also had lots of mysteries to solve this week! On Tuesday we found this footprint beneath our rug and figured out what kind of dinosaur was in our classroom by observing the shape of the print and measuring it. It turned out to be an Apatosaurus footprint. We also discovered that all 8 kids could sit inside it!

Our next mystery was some white lumps we found in the backyard. The kids decided that they looked like eggs. Since vinegar dissolves eggshells, we put them in vinegar to test their theory. It worked and they each found their own dinosaur inside!

On Wednesday we got to imagine what it would be like to have our own pet dinosaurs. The kids each made  a picture of their pet and told me a little bit about their dinosaur!

On Friday we talked about how big the dinosaurs were and made some measurements in the backyard. We found that a Stegosaurus was as long as all 8 kids put together! The kids really wanted to measure out a T-rex, but based on the Stegosaurus measurement, we decided that a T-Rex would be as big as my backyard and my neighbor's yard put together. The kids decided that a T-Rex would probably not make a very good pet.  

After that we got to have some fun painting dinosaurs!

Dinosaurs

This week we got to learn about the letter c with a fun adventure of camping and catching catfish! The kids did such a good job of keeping the catfish with the letter c on them and throwing back the rest.

After they were all caught the kids got to cook their catfish while we learned some more words that start with c.

We also practiced matching with the alphabet using some dinosaur eggs. (Sorry, I have no idea why this picture loaded sideways and I can't get it to load the right way.)

On Thursday we learned about squares and used this fun dinosaur game to practice counting and number recognition.

On Tuesday we got to make our gifts for our grandparents. I hope every gets a chance to help their kids deliver the gifts this weekend!

On Wednesday we started to really learn about dinosaurs and made dinosaurs of our own that were also great scissors skills and gluing practice.

On Thursday we learned a little about why we don't see dinosaurs on the earth anymore and played some dinosaur games. The kids found dinosaur prints with numbers on them all over our classroom and then we put them in order and played a cakewalk type game with them

Don't forget, next week is Spirit Week!

The 5 Senses

A huge thank you to all the parents for sending your students' spotlight items with them this month. It was so fun to get to know all the kids! Next week we will be starting show and tell. Be sure to check the newsletter for your child's assigned day!

This week we had lots of fun learning about the letter B and words that start with B (including body!). We also learned about shapes and the number 1.

We finished up our body unit this week by talking about the 5 senses.

On Tuesday we tested our sense of touch and taste by wearing blindfolds and trying to figure out what different items were. The kids were all super good at it! The only one that stumped them a little bit was a piece of yarn. They got some good observations on that one as they were trying to figure out exactly what it was.

We also explored our bodies through some fun games like Simon Says and Tissue Dancing. For Tissue Dancing each child got a tissue to put on their head and tried to keep it there while dancing. It was a lot harder than they expected it to be! Some kids tried ripping it in half to see if that would make it easier and some tried crinkling it up in a ball. It was fun to see them experiment with it!

Fingers, Toes, Eyes and Ears

We started this week off by learning all about our fingers and toes!

The kids helped me make a venn-diagram showing all the things they already knew about their fingers and toes. After that we explored them some more by making puppets, trying to pick things up without our fingers and walk without our toes. We also talked about left and right and played Twister! Left and right is a tough concept at this age and comes with lots of repetition. Help your child out with this by referring to their shoes by right and left as they are putting them on and specifying right hand/foot or left hand/foot when you are talking to them!

On Thursday, we moved up to faces and started talking about eyes and ears. We had lots of fun using our eyes and ears to play 'I Spy' and 'Telephone'. 

We also learned about the letter A this week. I hope everyone has had a chance to read 'Aachoo Andy' with their child. The kids had so much fun with that! 

We talked about circles as well and worked on recognizing them and ordering them from smallest to largest. We also got some fine motor skill practice as we strung the circles onto necklaces.

SEEL

This week will be our first of many weeks learning about the alphabet! During this time, we will be doing a lot of activities from the SEEL (Systematic Engaging Early Literacy) program. This is an amazing program that gives the kids great opportunities to learn about the alphabet in a fun and meaningful way. Please take some time to read a little bit about it here.

Every time we do a SEEL lesson in class, your child will bring home a 'SEEL at Home' page. These will give you an activity to do at home that is an extension of our lesson. Some of them are super fun and some do sound super cheesy. Please do as many of them as you can with your child to help reinforce what we are learning in class! It is so good for kids to take the knowledge they have gained in one setting and be able to use it again somewhere else. 

Back to School

We had an amazing first week of school this week! Starting preschool can be a rough transition and everyone did really well!

During the first week we spend a lot of time learning and practicing our rules and procedures. If you want to talk to your child about the preschool rules, they are:

 We will listen and follow directions
We will be kind to others
We will do our best every day
We will raise our hand to talk
We will take care of our things
We will talk quietly
We will use good manners

Another important aspect of the first week of preschool is for the kids to learn to recognize their own name. We have done several projects with our names such as salt art and making our names out of playdough. Starting next week the kids will be tracing their names daily in preparation to be able to write their name on their own!

We have also played a lot of fun games this week! We've done a few matching games, puzzles and getting to know you games!

This week was also the first week of our body unit! We learned 'Head, Shoulders, Knees' and toes and made sure the kids knew all the major body parts. On Thursday everyone got to be traced and draw themselves!

Reading Rocks - Week 2

It has been so much fun to spend the last two weeks playing games and learning with these amazing kids! We played so many games this week, I can't even keep track!

We learned the sounds of all the letters in the alphabet and reviewed them with circle maps and games like the Pancake Flip, 

and Phonics Eggs.

We also learned about blending sounds together into words and how to tap out CVC words.

We learned new sight words and studied them with some bingo,

Go Fish, 

Sight Word Find-A-Fish,

bowling,

Super-word Snap, 

and Don't Eat Pete!

Your child has now learned the words I, a, and, the, see, if, in, is and it. Spend some time this summer reviewing these with your child! Let them point these words out in the books you read, make some flashcards of recreate any of the games we have played at summer camp. Most of the can be quickly put together with items from around the house!

Reading Rocks Week 1

We've had tons of fun this week working on our reading skills!

On Monday we made sure that the kids all know the alphabet by putting a mixed up alphabet back in the right order and being detectives to find all the letters of the alphabet hidden around our classroom!

After that we started the week off right by learning 3 new sight words! We had lots of fun with sight word tic-tac-toe. 

On Tuesday we started on letter sounds by learning about vowels and playing Vowel Leap Frog.

We also added 'the' to our sight word list and practiced them by smashing bags with our sight words on them and playing sight word twister! Sight word Twister is a great way to learn new things and work on motor skills at the same time! Just cover each color on the mat with a word and play like normal. If your child still needs some alphabet work, use letters instead of words!

Wacky Wednesday was a big hit! Thanks for helping your kids dress wacky today! They absolutely loved reading the book "Wacky Wednesday". Next time you go to the library, consider checking that one out. We just didn't have time for the kids to find all the wacky things in the story!

During phonic time today we reviewed our vowel sounds and started on the consonants. We got to reuse our Twister mat by playing Phonics Jump. Each circle has a different letter. I told the kids each a letter sound and they had to find and jump on the letter that makes that sound without stepping on any of the other circles!

Also during phonics time we pulled with all different kinds of letters to make our own wacky words and just play with the alphabet!

After a wacky snack we learned a new sight word, 'see'. We played with our sight words today by making ice cream cones and playing 'Whack the Word'!

Have a great weekend and I will see you all on Monday!

Color, Sound and States of Matter

We had lots of fun with centers this week, playing all our favorite games one last time and getting things solidified before the end of the school year. Please make sure that you continue to read with your child over the summer! That is the very best thing you can do to help them remember what they've learned. Aside from that, play some educational games with them, have them point numbers and letters as you are driving and grocery shopping, and don't forget to look back through to blog if you need ideas for things to do!

We also got to finish up our science lessons this week! 

Monday was all about color. We learned about primary colors and how we can combine them to create secondary colors. We also talked a little about light and how is separates into different colors.

Wednesday was a lesson on sound. We learned about how vibrations create sound and had lots of fun feeling those vibrations by putting our fingers against our throats. We experimented with making high sounds and low sounds.

The kids also got to make their own musical instrument to take home! I'm sure you've been enjoying those, it was definitely not quite here once they finished coloring!

Friday was water day! We started out our day by learning about the states of matter and experimenting with them by mixing baking soda and colored vinegar. 

For our second experiment we talked about how ice melts and brainstormed ways to get the toys out of the block of ice. When punching it was unsuccessful, they decided to put it in the pool and squirt it with squirt guns, which worked much better!

We also got to play a few games! We did a water balloon toss and used our squirt guns to wash the letters of the alphabet off the walls.

The kids had tons of fun experimenting with and playing in the water!