Our PreSchool Blog

We are making great progress in our patterning skills.  Some children have progressed into extending their patterns much further this week while others began making more difficult patterns independently.  We observed some of the children choosing to create their own patterns at the art center this week with the halloween stickers available.  In small groups we used our fall felt stickers to create fun fall patterns to take home and share our progress with you.  We will be wrapping up our patterning unit next week and will revisit it at the end of the year.

patterning independently

reading time today

We love to read books in our early 3’s class!  Carson asked his friends to join him so he could read them a story about 5 little pumpkins.  It was so fun watching him read each page and act out all of the pictures.  Joey also took some time to sit and relax in our reading center to read a book.  It is so wonderful to watch them take steps at becoming readers!

This afternoon the early 3’s practiced tracing the letter P on our art table.  They used roller paints to trace over the letter P’s on the table.  Not only is it fun to use the roller paints but it was great writing practice for them!

practicing printing skills with roller paints

letter sorting

The kids were so intrigued today when we did our coloring sorting activity.  We had a bunch of different color bears and six different color bowls.  Our job was to work together to put the bears in the right color bowl.  Each child had a turn to take a bear and find the right home for him.  They did a wonderful job sorting the bears!  They couldn’t wait until it was their turn to take a bear!  We had many friends help each other to make sure the bears were put into the right bowls.

Ms. Laurel joined us today for Yoga class and of course she brought her yoga music with her.  One of the children’s FAVORITE songs is “Tick Tock Little Yoga Clock.”  You might have heard you’re little one singing it around the house.  Next week we will start using our NEW kid’s yoga mats that Ms. Laurel found for our school.  Thank you, Ms. Laurel!  Ask your child to show you some of their favorite yoga poses….warrior pose seems to be the favorite!

Our Pre-K class had a special art class with Ms. Penny on Wednesday.  She taught us that artists create all kinds of art, not just paintings.  We learned about Edgar Degas, a famous artist, who was not only a painter but also a sculptor!  His famous sculpture was Little Dancer.  Then, we tried our hand at sculpting.  Our sculptures will be displayed at the art show on November 13th.

The toddler class had so much fun this morning creating their Pumpkin Pie with the letter “P” on it!  Edie loved sprinkling cinnamon all over her pumpkin pie and as you can see Owen took a really good sniff of his cinnamon!

In our early 3’s class, we have a writing center where the children are free to sit and make their very own books.  Throughout the year we have been talking about authors of the books we read and how we can all be authors.  It is important for children to start the writing process using pictures to express their thoughts and ideas.  Today Emma told us that she was making a book about “trains”. Andrew was so excited to show us that he wrote the “letter P” in his book.  It is so much fun to watch them “read” their stories to us and to be confident in themselves as they begin to write!

supervised scissor practice is key to developing important fine motor skills

Today we continued to practice our scissors skills with our happy face jack-o-lanterns. The preschoolers were given a strip of orange card stock with six pumpkins to snip out. We talked about how to safely hold our scissors, where our fingers and thumbs should be positioned while we’re cutting, and how to effectively “open and close” our hands to manuever our scissors just right in order to make a clean cut. We practice our scissor skills regularly with many different cutting materials to keep the task fun and exciting. When the students were finished cutting out their happy jack-O-lanterns we glued them into their green pumpkin patches. Great development with such a simple activity!

play-dough sculptures

The kids had a wonderful time with play dough this morning!  They were using their creative minds to turn their play dough into many different things.  Morgan turned his play dough into a pair of glasses and Audrey made hers into a hat!