Our PreSchool Blog

This morning in preschool we had lots of Halloween fun! We made a spider web from tape and threw cotton balls to see how many “bugs” our web could catch. This is a very easy activity to play in a door way at home. Good hand-eye coordination practice as well!

Fine motor, fine motor, fine motor! We put those little muscles to work while making a Halloween jack-o-lantern.

Hope everyone had a blast at the Harvest Festival on Friday! What a great turnout!

Enjoy Trick-or-Treating tonight!!

To continue with our theme of farm this month, we talked about sheep at group time today. We read the story,”Sam Sheep Can’t Sleep” and practiced singing “Baa Baa Black Sheep”. Then, during art time we painted our hands black to make the sheep body. Once the paint dried, the boys and girls used their fine motor skills to pull apart and place cotton balls on the body.They turned out great, see the final product below!

We are working on vertical and horizontal lines in the early 3’s room so we raced our cars down horizontal and vertical racetracks! The children loved going forward and backward on the tracks with their cars. This pre-writing activity is a fun way to help your child learn to control their fine motor muscles since they have to keep the car on the narrow track.

The Early 3’s wrapped up the month of October’s color orange by exploring the fruit named after the color! We discussed how an orange smells, used our fine motor muscles to squeeze the juice out, and then used our taste buds to taste the juice. Nothing like fresh squeezed orange juice!

Squeezing, squishing, and crumbling; a recipe for building strong fine motor muscles! Our Early 3’s worked their fine motor muscles hard today as they squeezed farm animals, squished play-doh, and crumbled paper cats!

The cold weather and rain couldn’t stop the early 3’s students from having a good time! We had a blast playing in a swimming pool filled with balls! Some of us dove, dug, and even took a little rest in the ball pit.

Today the Toddlers read “Mrs. Wishy Washy” during group time. The children like to interact and make washing sounds as the animals get baths! During art, the boys and girls used their fine motor skills to grasp the stampers as well as their hand and eye coordination to place the “mud” on the pigs. We also reviewed the colors pink and brown.

“Oh, lovely mud,” said the pig and he rolled in it!

The boys and girls look forward to music and movement every day. They love to “shake out their sillies” and “drive in their cars”. Once a week we have the pleasure of having Ms. Joanie and her special guest, Elmo play music with us! Music helps children develop memory skills and language and literacy skills. Music and Movement helps develop listening skills, auditory discrimination, and concentration. Young children use this time to express feelings and emotions while increasing self esteem. Check out the children using their fine motor skills to strum the guitar as they sing along to some of their favorite songs!

The Toddler class was able to spend some time outside today… enjoying the amazing fall weather! The playground is a natural place for physical development as well as for social and emotional development. Young children need challenging playground experiences to develop early self-confidence along with large muscle skills and coordination. The boys and girls are learning to share and take turns… they’re making new friends along the way!

Since we’ve been talking about water, we couldn’t leave out the ocean and all of the creatures that call it home! During group time we read “Mister Seahorse” by Eric Carle. The boys and girls were fascinated by the hidden fish in the pictures. During art center, we reviewed our colors and the boys and girls used their fine motor skills to sponge paint all over the paper. They loved the mess they were making and we loved the product that came out… check out our very own Mr. Seahorse!