Our PreSchool Blog

We celebrated our first Book Party in Preschool!  This was such a fun day and our students had such a blast with this!  All day, our activities were revolved around the book.  We read the story, discussed the days of the week, practiced tracing lines by helping the caterpillar get to his food, and colored a picture.  We made a very hungry caterpillar by sponge painting and we retold the story by feeding the caterpillar all of his foods while counting them as we fed him!  And our favorite activity was during snack time.  We used “caterpillars” and put holes in our food just like the caterpillar did to eat them!

Week two of our sight word study is in full swing.  We are exploring the word…IS!  Some of our students are focusing on the letters i and s in the word along with the sounds they make, while others are using their new sight word while reading simple text, building simple sentences and using it in their writings.

We’re having fun chanting, cheering, dancing and singing our way to a strong sight word base that will grow strong early readers!

In the toddler classroom each month, our toddlers have learning objectives, which you can find in our newsletter that was sent out earlier this month. Every month, they will learn about one letter a week and during the fourth week of the month, we will review the letters we’ve learned. We talk about what each letter looks like, and the sound that the letter makes.

Because children learn while doing, if they want to, during our art time they can make an alphabet  page. So far we have made “‘A’ is for ‘Ant'”, “‘B’ is for ‘Button'”, and “‘C is for ‘Cat'”.

We read the story Perfect Square, a story about a square that got ripped and torn and turned into something new and beautiful.  And then… we made our own creation with our own perfect squares!

It started out as a perfect square until I tore it and then it became an…

ELEPHANT!

and a FENCE!

We practiced counting and number recognition in a fun and tasty way! Yum!

The color we have been focusing on in the toddler classroom this month is the color yellow. We incorporate the color of the month into different small group activities, art projects, and within our centers whenever we can!

For one of our small groups, we found yellow play-dough in Ms. Kristen’s mystery can, and we got to make our own yellow play-dough! Each of our friends took a turn adding different ingredients for our play-dough recipe. They do such a good job waiting for their turn!

It’s so exciting to be able to play with the play-dough you made yourself! 😉

In another small group, we made a yellow collage with glue sticks, yellow shapes, and yellow crayons.

Yellow bean bag toss to practice gross motor skills! Gross motor skills are such an important part of your toddler’s physical development. Having different types of movement activities helps to promote muscle movement, and strengthen coordination.

Yellow color sorting!

We love to do art projects with our friends, especially ones that involve using our senses! Our friends were able to make some lemon prints, using real lemons, which they got to smell and taste before we used them for painting. They were so sour! 🙂

In the toddler classroom, our students have an opportunity for “free play/center time” two times in their morning. This means that they are allowed to choose in which center they would like to play. This time for free choice is a great way for toddlers to use their own independence to pick their activity. We change our centers each month, so our friends will always have new centers to explore. We have so many different centers for them to choose from!

Sensory Tub

Manipulative Center

Art Center

Light Table

Mirror Table

Train Table

Dramatic Play

Kitchen Center

Library Center

Pre-academic Center

Block Center

The Preschool Prep class worked together and made their own play dough! We dyed it yellow for our color of the month, and used it for our sensory table all week!

One of our favorite book characters, Pete the Cat, was the star of our preschool day last week! We started by reading the story and completing a pre-writing activity to help Pete step into the different piles of fruit and mud!  We also made up our own Pete the Cat scenarios.  The kids were able to retell the story outside by getting a little bit messy! The shoes came off and the kids stepped in red paint (representing strawberries), blue paint, (representing blueberries), brown paint (representing mud), and finally the bucket of water to clean off! We ended our day with a snack of strawberries, blueberries, chocolate pudding and water to represent each thing Pete stepped in. What a fun day!

The Preschool Prep class is working hard and having fun learning about letters, shapes, colors, numbers and more!