Our PreSchool Blog

Throughout the year, we have been learning about different country’s habitats.  Everything from the tundra of Greenland to the Great Barrier Reef of Australia taught us how different animals thrive in different living conditions.  This month, we had the zoo come in for a special visit.  This time, we got to pet a baby alligator and a hedgehog!  We learned that alligators like to live in dirty water (yuck!), and hedgehogs live in sand.

A cooking day is upon us once again!  The weather has turned and it’s time to head outside and enjoy the sun and warmth.  Here is an easy snack to put together and bring on those long walks, hikes or car rides:

Talkin’ Trail Mix:

Ingredients:

1 cup Chex Mix

1/2 cup pumpkin seeds

1/2 cup shredded sweetened coconut

1/2 cup dried cranberries

1/2 cup yogurt rasins

1/2 cup chocolate chips

1/2 cup almonds (we did not use these in our mixture today)

Directions:

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F.

On a foil lined baking sheet, combine almonds, pumpkin seeds, and coconut. Bake for 10 to 12 minutes or until coconut is golden brown. Remove from oven and let cool thoroughly.  Combine all of the ingredients into a bowl, mix and enjoy!

Throughout the year we have been working on our shapes, along with our fine motor skills.  Today, the children celebrated spring on this beautiful day by cutting out shapes that had spring pictures on them, and then strung them onto yarn.  The children loved creating their very own spring necklaces!

Our new letters this month are A, G and S.  G can be very tricky to write, and the short /A/ can be difficult to remember.  Using our multisensory approach, the children “built” each letter using our build a word materials, and then transferred that skill onto the chalk board while practicing our writing on our own.

A new month means a new theme!  This month, the children will be traveling to Africa.  We have transformed our room into our very own savannah, along with offering new activities in each center.  Today, we took the time to get acquainted with what’s new in our room.

As we gear up for spring break, we did one last review of the letter Q.  We practiced how to write a Q, the sound it makes, and created our own Q-tip masterpiece!

The animal we focused on today was the jaguar.  Did you know that the jaguar is the largest of all of the cats in the rainforest?  These animals have so many spots, how could we ever count them?  Well, we did just that!  First, we put the spots in numerical order, which practiced our counting to 16 and number recognition skills.  Then, we glued the spots onto our jaguar.

In the rainforest, there are lots of animals that use their tails for practical purposes.  One example is the monkey.  Monkey’s swing from tree to tree using their tails.  Today, Miss Krista, our zoo animal expert, introduced us to two animals that have significant uses for their tails.

Meet Angelina: She is a type of bird called a galaf.  She likes to be in trees with bright pink flowers.  She eats seeds, nuts and fruits.  Her tail has two uses: to balance in trees and to help slow her down to land when she is flying.

Meet Cornflower:  He is a blue tongued lizard.  He uses his tongue to smell.  He eats flies, worms, flowers and loves snails!  His tail is used to help him climb rocks.

Writing our name in new and exciting ways helps keep children motivated to practice writing their names correctly.  Today, Ms. Courtney showed the boys and girls how to use a stamp pad to write their names.  Stamping each letter to mimic the direction that it is written, reinforces the proper way to write, along with the way we read (left to right, top to bottom).

The fine motor skills that Creative Tots preschoolers are capable of is impressive!  These boys and girls have begun to master the skill of cutting.  It is not an easy task, but the children are beginning to follow the lines, as well as realize that moving your hand to grasp the paper at better angles makes the cutting easier.  Check out our very own scissor specialists!