Our PreSchool Blog

This week we learned all about the letter R.  We did R is for rainbows and robots and even rockets.  On Friday, we “traveled” to the Rainforest (Hey, another R) and learned about the Red Eyed Tree Frog.

He is a very small frog that lives in the trees and is a bright green with blue and yellow striped sides, orange feet, and bright red eyes!  We read a story about the frog and his habitat and then practiced using real life colors to color our own Red Eyed Tree Frog to take home!

Before we walk we crawl and before we write we build!!!  Before putting writing utensils in children’s hands it is so important for them to understand the shape and the direction in which a letter is created.  We look at letters and see straight lines and when we put them together in a certain way it creates a letter.  Children do not get this concept right away and we work hard in preschool to build the letters with all sorts of items before we practice using pencils!  We trace them in the air with our magic writing finger, we build them with buttons or pom poms or beans, we trace them with our finger in salt trays or in squishy paint bags, and we use the shapes to create them before ever picking up a pencil!  This is such an easy thing to do at home with your kids as well.  Just write the letter on a piece of paper and talk about the types of lines they see.  Give them any material you have laying around your house and have them trace it!  That’s it!

We celebrated a fun “After Snow Day” by making some snowmen in class!  The kids had so much fun making their snowmen and had no idea they were learning and practicing skills in the process!  This activity helped us work on cutting. reviewing circles, building hand strength as we opened and closed our scissors and built fine motor skills as we placed those tiny little circles in just the right place so that it resembled a snowman’s face!  We even worked on following directions as they watched and learned how to draw snowflakes!

The PM Preschool class had fun gearing up for Valentines Day this year! Our lessons were themed specifically for this special holiday!

The kids used their fine motor skills to tear up pieces of paper and glue them into the hearts for this Valentines Day craft, “I love you to pieces”.

Pancakes for snack in our pajamas for letter “P” week! What a fun day!

Making Valentine bracelets and working those fine motor skills!

Building letters with candy hearts (yes we were able to eat a few)!

Valentines Day “sense of hearing” lesson. The children closed their eyes and shook one egg at a time. They had to make their best predictions of what was inside!

Math and fine motor collide in the next number ordering activity!

We have stayed busy in the PM Preschool room this winter! From acting out winter literature, to learning about arctic animals… the kids are having a blast and of course, learning a lot!

Arctic animal bingo!

We focused in on the penguin for our science day! The kids learned that penguins have a layer of blubber to keep them warm. To help them understand this concept, we did an experiment to show the kids what blubber feels like for the penguins! We had two ice cold bowls of water. One bowl had a bag of coconut oil in it, to act as the blubber. They put one hand in each bowl and decided that the bowl with pretend blubber kept them warmer!

We then put a block between our legs so we could waddle like penguins!

We counted goldfish into the penguins belly’s!

5 Little Snowmen Readers Theatre!

Building shapes and open ended creations with toothpicks and marshmallows.

Letter building with “O” shaped cereal

Getting ready to count and build our towers

Getting our bodies involved on a cold winter day, with a gross motor shape hunt!

Melted snowman art!

Counting out “snowballs” with tongs for a fine motor addition!

Hand Strength and cutting practice

We are humbled by the number of votes that were cast to help earn us Most Loved Preschool Award 2018 from Hulafrog. Thank you to all of our amazing families past and present for continuing to spread the word and support us. Year two of this award makes us feel loved!

Our second semester of enrichment classes have begun and Ms. Joanie’s music class is rockin’! As parents, we want to give our children every opportunity for successful growth. Yet, we don’t want them to grow up too fast! Music allows children to savor the best parts of childhood. There are also many benefits of music participation in the early years. Music encourages children to move! Moving is an integral part of preparing the brain to learn. Music also fosters a sense of community and belonging as well as provides an outlet for self-expression. School readiness is closely linked to music readiness. The same skills and experiences necessary for a child to be ready for music lessons when they are older are the same skills and experiences that enhance and even accelerate academic readiness and success.  Listening, identifying patterns, problem-solving, creative thinking, and self-confidence are skills that music develops.

If you would like to join the fun in Ms. Joanie’s Music enrichment class in the studio let us know! We would love to welcome your child into the program.

Now that Thanksgiving has come and gone, we are getting into the holiday spirit!

We started by making open ended creations using red and green gum drops and tooth picks!

We went on a letter hunt in pretend snow! (Even though it happened to be 60 degrees outside at the end of November!)

We painted with star shaped cookie cutters! Our December shape is the star, and color is red.

The students were able to make homemade red, peppermint play-doh! We will use this in class activities throughout December.