Our PreSchool Blog

Running Deer and Dancing Moon visited our classroom today to teach us about the Native Americans of the Southwest.  We have been talking about the pilgrims traveling to America and meeting the Native Americans that already lived there.  This was a great connection to what we have been learning about the first Thanksgiving.  We had the opportunity to visit four learning centers during their visit as well as hear a old Native American Cautionary Tale.  We learned about a variety of hunting tools they used to survive and how they made them out of items found in nature in around where they lived.  We also learned about the importance of corn.  We shelled corn and ground it into cornmeal using a mano and matate.  In the jewelry center we discovered the different types of items they used to create their jewelry, then tried our hand at making our own piece of jewelry to take home using duck feathers.  Lastly, we shucked our own corn and ate right off the cob for a snack.

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.

The PreK class has been working hard on their big book this past week and a half.  They were the authors and illustrators of the book, All About the Farm.  They had a chance to read it to the Early 3’s class today after lunch and they did an absolutely wonderful job!  Way to go!

The preschoolers explored all different types of harvest vegetables from the farm today.  Cutting them open we found that some have seeds while others do not.  Some are soft and easy to cut through while others are hard and tougher to cut.  Some have prickles on the outside leaves and some even have a large pit in the middle!  Vegetables of all kinds were the exploration of the day!  We had a ball!

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.

During our small groups today the children enjoyed learning the colors of the rainbow.  Our focus this week will be on rapid recognition of color words.  During reading groups we were introduced to many color words in our reading book, Birds.  We used the initial sound in each word to determine each color.  This would be a great time for you to add the basic color words to your sight word practice during nightly homework (red, orange, yellow, green, blue and purple).

The kids then had a ball reading, writing then stamping each color sight word into their own booklet.  We will work on these booklets this week and bring them home on Thursday.

To help cement what we learned today we played a game of color matching using our color sight word cards and our colorful sorting bowls from the math center.

We finished our reading group book on Friday…I Can Moo! We used a second color of highlighting tape to find our last sight word, you.  Next week our focus will turn to color words.

The toddlers are working hard on their art show pieces, but needed the Pre-K children’s help to prepare for the big day.  The toddlers have created their own Very Busy Spider from Eric Carle’s popular children’s book.  The Pre-K students created spider webs for them to display their spider’s on for the art show.  They were very excited to help and their spiderwebs were beautiful.  Stop in the toddler room to take a peek at their creations on Friday at the art show.