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!