Our PreSchool Blog

Does your child use scissors at home?  We have been learning all about scissor safety and how to use and hold scissors in preschool.

1st… Safety!

• We never use scissors on anything except for paper or another material that is provided by a teacher.
• When walking with scissors, we hold the metal part in our hands so that if we were to fall, we are safe.
• we never point scissors at anyone

Tips for Holding and Using Scissors

• Out thumb goes in the little hole and our other fingers go in the bigger hole.
• Our thumb stays up, we don’t want to flip our hands over when cutting.
• We try and keep our elbow down and by our side, while focusing on turning the paper, now our arm!

We are working hard on this skill and our goal is to have this skill mastered by mid-winter!!

We have been working on our prewriting and fine motor skills in the PM preschool and preschool prep classes! We are getting our hands ready to write!

A phrase that is used frequently in preschool is Fine Motor.  This is an extremely important skill for 3 and 4 year olds to practice and practice and practice some more!  Fine Motor skills are those that work the small muscles in their hands.  They are used for things that we grownups take for granted each day, for example; using eating utensils, buttoning our shirt, sipping our coat, and writing our name.

We do lots of activities each week that help our students build these skills so that we can prepare them for independent activities such as the ones listed above!

This activity is a fun one as we work our small finger muscles to pick up tiny pom poms with small tongs and transfer them without using our other hand at all!  Our students loved it!

We had our first music class of the year with, the one and only, Ms. Joanie! The kids just loved her! She comes once a week to sing with the kids, let them play/learn new instruments, and teach them music vocabulary!

Music is very important for our preschoolers. It ignites all areas of  child development (intellectual, social, emotional, motor, language). Music helps the body and mind work together, and can teach them sounds and meanings of words.

We are working hard with our letters!  We are learning to recognize them, name them, give their sounds, and build them.

Before we start learning to write letters it is important for children to really know what a letter looks like, and what kinds of lines it contains.  So for example, uppercase A is made of only straight lines but lowercase a is made of a curved line and a straight line.

We work hard to learn to build them the correct way, to make the transition to writing them much easier.  Starting at the top and going down is always important!

In the PM Preschool and Preschool Prep classes, we have been planning our days around a children’s book and integrating other curriculum objectives into that theme.

For example, we read Pete The Cat as a class and the kids were able to snack on some of the different foods Pete steps in to help retell the story (strawberries, blueberries, chocolate- in place of mud, and water).  To incorporate letter recognition, we had the children feed letters to our Pete The Cat Character Box. If it was not a letter we had learned yet, the children would say “goodness no!”- just like in the story. To continue with this theme, we had a question of the day for the children: “What color would you turn your shoes? What would you need to step in to turn them this color?”

We were able to integrate literacy, letter recognition, sense of taste, color recognition, and story retelling!

Sensory play is extremely important for children to engage in!  It allows them to learn and explore in a way that allows them to be successful.  There are many things in life, especially at school where children can do things in a “right way” and a “wrong way.”  Sensory play can be whatever a child wants it to be, and they can just be creative and have fun!  Sensory play is also a great way to engage in learning and allows children to engage in multiple senses.  When this occurs, children are able to learn more!  Playdoh is a great resource and one that we use frequently in preschool.  We mold it into shapes, letters and numbers and while we do this we are feeling the material, seeing the material become something specific and learning while having fun.  We can squish it, roll it, squeeze it, and flatten it which helps us work our hand muscles.

This month we have been learning all about the square.

We learned that squares have 4 sides and that they are all the same size.

We have been building with squares, finding squares in the classroom and making square collages!

Here are some awesome resources for you to use at home to continue learning about the square!

The Storybots Square Song

Searching For Squares Video

The preschool PM and preschool prep classes have been hard at work! We are starting to learn new letters, shapes, numbers, colors and more! We are also learning a lot about our classmates! It’s been a fun first few weeks at Creative Tots!

Fly swatting our numbers and letters!

A is for apple!

Hand painting activity- We learned that we are all different and when we work together we can make something beautiful! We also learned that we can mix colors and create a whole NEW color, and we all thought that was pretty cool! (just check out the smiles on those faces!)

Making friendship cookies!

We learned that even though eggs are different colors, they are the same on the inside, just like us!

We graphed our eye color for our “All About Me” study!

What a great first week of school at Creative Tots!! In the PM Preschool and Preschool Prep classes, we had an ice cream themed week inspired by the book “Should I Share My Ice Cream?” By Mo Willems. The students learned about sharing, while meeting new friends and enjoying some delicious ice cream! What a great start to the year with an even better group of kids!

We started the afternoon with ice cream sensory tubs!

We found our own name tags and made necklaces out of them!

We had our ice cream snack outside in the sun!

We practiced sharing our own ice cream with friends! 

Then we had a dance party!

Our question of the day was a tough one…choosing between chocolate, strawberry and vanilla ice cream.