Our PreSchool Blog

learning about our firefighters

This month we are learning about community helpers.  This week we are talking about fire fighters and how they help us.  The kids love dressing up and playing the role of a fire fighter who saves the day!  One of the best parts is putting on the special fire boots!  I’m pretty sure Connor and Melanie spent the whole class time walking around in those boots!

The chartreuse wigglers literally glow in the dark and are at the sensory table all this week

The Sensory Table is quite a hit this week with our creepy crawling, night crawlers. These glow in the dark worms have made themselves a home in our Sensory Table Center for the next few days and the kids sure love handling these wiggly, squiggly creatures!

The colorful clips and clothespins hanging around the preschool classroom might seem odd at first glance but the system and reasoning behind them has added a whole new sense of responsibility and indenpendence in the students. At each of our many Centers there is a Center Sign along with its matching, brightly colored clips. Each of these centers offers a wide variety of ever changing themed choices ranging from Dramatic Play and ABC Centers to Bookmaking and Block Centers. During our Free Choice time you can witness the students participating in any number of activities; whether they are playing a game individually or taking turns with a friend the centers are always a place for FUN as well as academic growth and development.

You may have heard a teacher asking the question, “Do you have a clip on your clothes?” once or twice. Placing a clip on our clothes is chosing to play at a center and while at that center it is the preschooler’s responsibility to play a game or work together on an activity with friends. When a child is finished visiting a center it is their job to make sure they have put their tools and toys away so that the next child to chose that center may come play. They put the clip back on the Center Sign and move onto their next center of choice.
The children have done a fantastic job picking up the new ways to enjoy and take care of our classroom. Great work, preschoolers!

Our Tuesday class did step one in their two part art process to make their first forest animal…the moose.  The kids giggled and laughed their way through getting their foot painted with brown paint and stepping down to make the head of the moose.  We will complete the project on Thursday by adding our handprints for antlers.  Look for these cool creations to be hanging in our classroom next week and don’t be surprised if your little one comes home with a yellow tinged foot!

Ms. Lori taught the children how to create their own log cabins in the block center last week.  Today the kids began making their own cabins in the “woods.”  Wondering what your child is learning at the block center?  The block center is ideal for large motor development and coordination skills as the children, lift, move, and stack the blocks.  They are acquiring critical social skills as they work, share, and talk with other children while they create with blocks and block accessories.  Children are also acquiring knowledge and skills which will provide an important foundation for later learning.  The children solve problems and gain confidence while working with the blocks.  Building with blocks helps children learn what numbers stand for, and it encourages children to practice scientific, trial-and-error thinking.  Other learning opportunities in this center include critical-thinking and decision making skills, making comparisons (more/less, taller/shorter), recognizing shapes, classification of objects (by shape, size, color, etc), matching and sorting, experimenting with balance, seriation, equivalence and creativitiy.  Never knew the children could learn so much from a collection of blocks!

What does your child learn in the block center?

We practiced writing our names today in sand.  This is a great activity to do at home, you can simply use salt if you don’t have any sand available.  We placed about a 1/3 of a cup of sand in a shallow tray (a baking sheet will work but you need to use more sand/salt) and gently shook it to make an even layer of sand for our writing area.  We placed a name card on the table in front of us to help us with our lowercase letters (remember to always have your child use an uppercase letter for the first letter of their name and lowercase letters for the remainder of the letters in their name).  We then used our fingers and off we went!  This was huge hit, the big question was, “CAN I DO IT AGAIN?  PLEASE?”  This is a great way to help your child practice the letter of the week at home too!  Letter Hh is our letter this week and don’t forget the lowercase h!  For another letter activity that is a hit in the classroom you can do at home, just click the picture!

Practicing Letters in the Sand

Today we took a journey to our first country of the year, Canada!  If you were with us last year, it may seem that we haven’t gone too far, but we thought we would stay close by and study something relatively similar to our own country.  In our Pre-K class we talked about the different habitats that are found in Canada, including the Arctic habitat where we would found the Snowy Owl, the Mountains, and the Forests where we would find Bears, wolverines, bald eagles, etc.  We also talked about the ocean as a habitat.  We will focus on the Forest habitat during the month of October.  In our Preschool class we talked only about the forest habitat and what animals we would find there.  In both classes we located our own country on the map as well as Canada.  This will be something that will be repeated throughout the year with each country we visit.  The kid’s always love “traveling” and learning about new places and especially the animals that we find there!

Traveling to Canada

putting out the flames

This week our sensory table was transformed into a place where firefighters are needed!  There were huge red flames in the table and the children’s jobs were to squirt the flames with water to put them out.  Not only it is fun to squirt water out of the bottles but it is also good practice for strengthening the muscles in the children’s hands.

What is more fun than driving cars through paint to make letters!  Today the early 3’s children had the chance to make the letter of the week “H” with cars!  They took the cars, covered the wheels in paint and drove over the letter H.

During the month of October we talk about fire safety.  Today Jessica was our group time helper and modeled what a fire fighter wears when on duty.  We went through each item of clothing as she put it on and talked about how fire fighters stay protected.  These items are also in our dramatic play area so all the children were excited to get their chance to be a fire fighter!