Our PreSchool Blog

Our small groups on Monday:

{group #1}

We started our “Handwriting Without Tears” curriculum this week! Our first activity was introduced in whole group time and practiced in small groups. The children had to practice forming the letters “A” and “B” with magnetic wood pieces. We talked about “big lines” “curved lines” “small lines” etc. This helps the children break down writing out a letter into simple steps. For an “A” we say: “Big Line, Big Line, Little Line!”

{group #2}

This group was centered around our shape of the month: RECTANGLE! Check out the various ways we made rectangles!

{group #3}

This group focused on our numbers for this month {1 and 2} as well as one-to-one correspondence and fine motor development. The children had to roll the die {which only had one or two dots on each side}, count the dots, and put the corresponding amount of beads into their bowl.

Motor skills are movements and actions of the muscles. They are categorized in two groups: gross motor skills and fine motor skills. Gross motor skills generally refer to movements involving larger muscles, like those in the arms, legs, feet or the entire body (used for walking, jumping and so on). Fine motor skills generally refer to movements involving smaller muscles, like those in hands, wrists and fingers (such as those used for holding a crayon or toy). *

Play dough Improves Fine Motor Skills

Squishing, squeezing, stretching and molding play dough helps to build muscle strength in the fingers and hands. This in turn makes it easier to complete fine motor activities like holding a pencil and cutting with scissors later on.

Dancing improves Gross Motor Skills

Jumping, stretching, dancing and ribbon twirling helps build muscle strength throughout the entire body.  We also tapped wooden sticks to the tempo of Miss Joanie’s guitar, working on rhythm as we danced to “We are the Dinosaurs,” a classroom favorite!

* information taken from www.leapfrog.com

On Friday, we continued our “How We Go” transportation theme with HOT AIR BALLOONS! We read the book “Up, Up, Up”…Our question of the day was: “Which hot air balloon is your favorite?” {the blue hot air balloon got the most votes!} We do the question of the day to give the children a chance to interact during group…and I use it as a chance for them to recognize their names when I hold up their little person. “H-A-N-N-A-H…..who is H-A-N-N-A-H?” {“me!!!”} “Hannah, Which is your favorite hot air balloon?” This also gives the other children a chance to learn/practice their classmates’ names.

Next we talked about hot the air that is used to make a hot air balloon fly is HOT. Cold air is what makes it sink in the sky. I got a hair dryer and a grocery bag to demonstrate how the hot air blows into the balloon to inflate it, lifting it into the air.

In one of our small groups, the children decorated hot air balloons. They used their fine motor skills to glue tissue paper onto their “balloon.” In another group, we painted butcher paper with combs to make the hot air balloon basket. While we painted with combs, we practiced pre-writing words like “up”, “down”, “across”, “straight lines”, “curvy lines”, etc. This will help the children develop the vocabulary necessary for learning to write. {i.e. “Today we are making a ‘B’…it has a big straight line and two little curves.”}

Ms. Sarah

The preschoolers have been reviewing everything we have learned this school year! They were able to use stickers to review letters, numbers, colors, and shapes we have learned. We even practiced our names. Exploring with stickers was great fine motor practice and a fun way to talk about everything we have covered this school year.

We learned about the amazing click beetle today during out country study of Brazil!  We learned about its cool ability to click its head and POP like a piece of pop corn from its back to land on its feet.  When we finish our click beetles they will do the same!  Click on the click beetle below to see the video of the click beetle in action!