Our PreSchool Blog

Yoga at an early age encourages self-esteem and body awareness with a physical activity that’s noncompetitive. Fostering cooperation and compassion—instead of opposition—is a great gift to give our children.

Children derive enormous benefits from yoga. Physically, it enhances their flexibility, strength, coordination, and body awareness. In addition, their concentration and sense of calmness and relaxation improves.

Information taken from the Yoga Journal.

We made Scorpion’s out of straws and beads using a Q-tip to draw on the glue.  Gripping the Q-tip and controlling a tracing movement is a great way to strengthen the “pincher grip.”  Making our fine motor muscle tone stronger will help us to be able to prepare for the task of writing.

The preschoolers used those listening ears to see how well they could follow directions this morning. We practiced letter recognition, letter sounds, crayon grip, and fine motor skills while we were at it!

The preschoolers practiced their listening skills, direction following abilities, and number recognition this morning. This is a simple way to practice at home. Write numbers and letters on a sheet of paper and ask your little one to circle something, trace it, cross it out, underline, etc. Have fun with it!

This week we read an focused our small groups on the adorable story Gingerbread Baby by Jan Brett.

Ms. Cally played “Listen & Color” and helped the preschoolers practice their listening skills. This is great prep for following directions and understanding classroom dynamic. So much of traditional schooling is based on auditory learning. Preschoolers need to practice being able to listen not only to directions, but for directions as well. We structure our classroom to give cues to call attention such as flashing the lights or clapping our hands. This helps create awareness for what is happening around us in the classroom. Ms. Cally instructed the preschoolers to ‘color the star orange’ or ‘find the spoon and color it purple’. This is a great activity to do at home with your little one!

Next with Ms. Lori we practiced our counting skills. Each child had a turn to roll the dice and count how many dots they had. Then we colored the spot on the gingerbread baby that had the matching number on it. This was a fun way to count, work on number recognition and strengthen fine motor muscles!

In Ms. Courtney’s group, the preschoolers practiced number recognition. On each gingerbread baby was a number. Their job was to count the right amount of pom poms to decorate the gingerbread baby. This is a great task for hand-eye coordination.

This was the first of our December Gingerbread Study. We are very excited to explore more stories!

The Early 3’s know what ingredients you need for a good time! They made waves that they can keep forever in a plastic bottle. All you need it a water bottle with blue food coloring, some cool glitter and a little vegetable oil. Oh, and a good strong arm to shake the bottle and make the waves!

The Early 3’s pretended they were birds eating worms today when they used clothespins (birds) to pick up pipe cleaners (worms). This was a fun way to incorporate learning into play. We talked about the ways birds use their beaks to pick up worms and eat them. The children enjoyed picking up the worms and also strengthened their pincher grip!