Our PreSchool Blog

The preschool class celebrated their Thanksgiving Feast last week.  The week leading up to it, we learned a little about the first Thanksgiving and prepared almost all of the food that we ate.

We made homemade applesauce in the crockpot.  We got to crank the apple peeler and break the slices apart.

We made individual pumpkin pie cheesecakes and we got to smell the yummy pumpkin!

We prepared green beans by snapping the yucky ends off.

We made homemade bread by mixing it in a Ziploc bag.  We squished it in the bag to get it all mixed up after taking turns adding the ingredients.

We also made our own butter by shaking heavy cream.  We had to shake for a VERY LONG time!

Then on Monday and Tuesday we got enjoy all our hard work and eat the food we made as well as some turkey and mashed potatoes!  We wore special pilgrim hats too and had such a fun time!

The preschool prep class made apple sauce with Ms. Susan today. We had fun peeling and coring the apples! What a delicious treat!

We had fun learning about different farm animals! We listened to the sounds they make, their colors, and sorted between the big animals and little animals. In art, we did “H” is for “horse” and put cotton balls onto sticky paper to make fluffy sheep. We also cleaned our animals with toothbrushes and sponges to practice fine motor skills.

One of the activities we like to do in the preschool class are these sticker pages.  This activity is great for quite a few skills and our students really love them!

On top of them being fun to do because what kid doesn’t like to play with stickers, they are a great prewriting activity!  We always practice doing them in order (not skipping all over the page) and when possible we work from left to right.  They are also a great fine motor skill.  The work that goes into getting the sticker off the sticker sheet is a good fine motor skill in itself, but it then takes it up a notch that they have to fit it in the tiny little circle on the page.

Such a fun and helpful activity!

For the month of November, we will be focusing on the use of our five senses: touch, taste, sight, smell, and sound. Early education focuses a lot of learning through sensory play and active learning because our senses are some of our most useful learning tools! It is important for toddlers to continue to develop their different senses, as well as to learn the use of their senses, because that is their means of processing the world around them. Use of the five senses can help children link their senses to recalling memories, which helps with overall cognitive development.

With our toddlers, we made pumpkin muffins as a class, and we used our senses to explore what we were making along the way. Here goes some multi-sensory learning!

Ms. Kristen had some already made muffins in the Mystery Can, and our friends listened to the sound it made in the can. We then started making our muffins, by adding each ingredient in a big plastic bag, one step at a time. Our friends got to smell each ingredient we were adding (yum, cinnamon!) throughout the process.

After adding all of our ingredients, it was time to mix the batter together. Each of our friends got to take a turn (yay, sharing!) mixing our muffin batter in the bag. They loved how squishy and soft it felt!

After putting the batter into the pan, our friends got to add their own chocolate chips on top–we always love to sneak in some fine motor skills 😉

They used their sense of taste at snack time, when they got to enjoy what they helped make!

We had such a fun time celebrating both Thursday and Friday!

We threw “bugs” at a spider web.

We made play dough monsters.

We also got to make a candy corn craft and practiced a little color matching in the process!

We also had some yummy snacks!

Last week while we were completing our fall assessments, we got to do stations in class!  These allow students to work more independently and review various skills in a fun way!

To work on our fine motor skills, we transferred pumpkin seeds using tongs!

We got to do some fun art exploration by painting with spiders!

We practiced our cutting skills by cutting spaghetti!

A big skill we work on and learn to do is to trace!  This is a great prewriting skill and key before beginning KPrep.  We practiced our tracing skills this week by tracing both pumpkins and leaves.

To work on color matching, we practiced matching up popsicle sticks to the correct color on the boards and it also helped us with fine motor because we had to match them up just right!

We also worked on our gluing skills and our number matching skills!

We had so much fun working independently and growing as preschool students!

Hello, parents! We know that some of our toddlers may not be able to tell you what a typical morning looks like in our toddler room, so we want to show you! Here at Creative Tots we follow a daily schedule. Following a daily schedule is beneficial in several ways, such as giving them a sense of familiarity, and helping them to learn self-discipline and independence. Below you can find our schedule and some pictures of our toddler friends going about their daily tasks!

9:00-9:25 | Morning Tables and Free Choice

9:30-9:40 | Whole Group Story Time

9:40-10:00 | Outside

10:00-10:20 | Pre-Academic Group Time (10 minutes in each)

10:20-10:30 | Snack Time

10:30-10:50 | Art/Discovery Tables

10:50-11:10 | Outside

11:15-11:25 | Music and Movement

11:25-11:30 | Dismissal

(After school, we’re sure our friends look forward to their lunches and naps!)

The Preschool Prep class has been doing such a great job in small groups this month! We have been focusing on the letters A and B, numbers 1 and 2, the color yellow and the circle.  We have also been doing a lot of name building activities!

It’s Friday! We enjoyed our zoo themed party and yummy cupcakes! Cannot believe it is the end of summer camp!