Our PreSchool Blog

We continued with our second book, Farm Animaals  in K prep reading groups. The children workied hard to track each word in the repetitive text that introduces a new sight word each week. The sight word we worked on this week is the word, is. Sight words are words that are used most frequently in text. The reason that they are called “sight” words is because the goal is for your child to begin to recognize these words instantly, at first sight. These are very important to master because they account for up to 75% of the words used in beginning children’s books. These words, typically, are not words that can be “sounded out,” therefore need to be learned by sight. Many of the readers will be printed for the students to take home to continue rereading to help improve fluency and sight word recognition.

The month of November is all about the farm! We have different centers that reflect our farm theme, such as the Farmer’s Market center, to the art center where they stuck cotton balls on a sheep! Below you can see some of our November centers and activities.

Stringing farm animals for some good fine motor practice

Learning the colors of these farm animals and the noises they make

Farmer’s Market, where they sort the fruits and vegetables by color into their baskets

Playing pretend with our new farm and farm animals

Farm Train Table

Farm animal manipulatives

And, always the favorite–our farm animal sensory bin with a corn kernel base!

Sticking cotton balls to our sticky sheep at the art center

Howdy, ya’ll! Our 2-3 year old summer playdate series started off wonderfully, with fun on the farm!

Throughout the week, we talked about all of the different farm animals you find on a farm, and what we get from farms. They were great farmers, and even got to “milk” a pretend cow 🙂

Outside fun with the parachute and popping up the beach balls!

Pigs on the farm day! Complete with pin the tail on the piggy and a “pigs in the mud” snack with chocolate pudding and pink marshmallows

Of course we had our weekly visit from the Kona Ice Truck!

Cool Critters came to visit us one day and we got to meet and interact with some different animals!

Ducks in the pond using water beads, which is a great sensory tool, and rubber duckies

Friday party day! What’s a party without cupcakes, piñatas and balloons!?

Thanks for sending your kids to play with us this summer! See you at the next playdate 🙂

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.

There’s a chicken on your head!!!

Eggs come in all colors and sizes!

In our discovery tubs the toddlers found farm animals, corn, straw, birdseed and tongs.

When kids use tongs, they have to learn to “separate” the two sides of their hands (thumb/index finger side and middle/ring/pinky finger side), which is a great for developing hand skills, necessary for cutting with scissors and writing with pencils.  Tong play can begin as early as toddlerhood and can progress to more refined use of kiddie chopsticks and tiny tweezers as kids progress through elementary school. It’s never too late to have fun with tongs! *

For more great activities to do with Tongs check out http://mamaot.com/2012/10/16/ways-to-play-with-tongs/.

*information provided by  50 Fun Ways to Play with Tongs

Today we had a special visitor at our school.  The toddlers loved petting the chicken.

Thank you to everyone who came out on Friday for our first annual Harvest Festival!  We are so lucky to have such wonderful families here at Tots and we always look forward to the times we get to spend with everyone outside of the classroom.  There were some GREAT costumes!  Thanks everyone!

Feeding the Goats

AARG!

Apple Prints

Dinosaur Fun

Happy Halloween!

Feeding the Bunny

With a cherry on top....

Memories for a Lifetime!