Our PreSchool Blog

Thanksgiving is just days away and we have already begun cooking in the Creative Tots kitchen!  Today our little chefs whipped up a delicious pumpkin pie.  As a chef, it is important to know what ingredients you are using, and how much to put in.  Each child helped to measure, pour, stir, and even crack eggs as we made our pie filling.  After pouring the filling into the pie crust, we popped it in the oven and enjoyed the sweet smell.  Thanksgiving is a time to appreciate all of the good people and things in your life.  We read a story about the first Thanksgiving, and discussed what we are thankful for and why.  We hope that everyone has a wonderful Thanksgiving!

Sorting was everywhere today in the PreK classroom.  We got our life size grid out at group time and sorted our shoes and even sorted ourselves!  The children decided that they could sort their shoes by color, type, size, and laces/no laces.  We also sorted ourselves by hair color…sorting is fun!

Laces/No Laces

Hair Color

We fine tuned our sorting skills today by identifying and sorting our buttons by their various attributes.  The children decided to sort them by color, size, shape, number of holes, and number of sides.  Sorting is a great activity to do at home.  You can sort most anything!

We explored math today in preschool during small groups.  We talked about different constellations (or parts of constellations) during group time and viewed them on the smartboard.   Then, we tried our hand at creating our own “Number Constellations.”  We used our fine motor skills (important for successful writing in the future) and poked holes in black paper to create different numbers.  Then we traveled over to the light table to view our creations.

Math is always a little more fun when there is food involved!  This time, we used paper plate pumpkin pies (next Tuesday we will be baking the real thing!).  Everyone loves add a little whipped cream to make a pie extra delicious.  Using some cotton balls and our imaginations, the boys and girls topped their pies according to the number in the middle of the pie.  Ms. Lori challenged the children by starting with lower numbers, then switching them out for higher numbers.  By the end of this activity, we were all ready for yummy Thanksgiving treats!

Counting and number recognition are two very important mathematical foundations.  Putting those together and practicing those skills brings a child’s thought process to the next level.  For example, some of the older children were able to recognize the six dots on the die with out counting them, and then identify the number six on the paper and stamp it.  These types of hands on activities are excellent practice to those children who are still working on building up their math skills.

We explored and discovered the science of leaves today during small groups.  First, we observed the details of our leaf an drew a sketch making sure to include all the details we saw.  Next, we found the “area” of our leaf by covering it with pennies.  Some leaves had an area of 8 pennies while others had an area of 15!  We had leaves of all sizes!  Lastly, we made our leaves float in a bowl of water and found how many pennies it took to sink them!  The children recorded their finding on their own science log.