Our PreSchool Blog

Spring has arrived, and we have started learning about bugs and plant life! We read “The Very Hungry Caterpillar” and retold the story with pictures cards.  We then acted out the butterfly life cycle!

Butterfly Life Cycle Part 1: The mama butterfly lays her egg on a leaf.

Butterfly Life Cycle Part 2: A caterpillar emerges from the egg and is out searching for food.

Butterfly Life Cycle Part 3: The caterpillar wraps itself in a cocoon or chrysalis.

Butterfly Life Cycle Part 4: After a couple weeks, the caterpillar breaks from the cocoon and….

…turns into a beautiful butterfly!

We had a blast with our November farm theme in Preschool/Preschool Prep! Below the students are washing the “mud” (brown paint) off of the pigs to reveal a letter to identify!

The Preschool class acted out the story “I Spy on the Farm”. It was a fun and interactive way to retell the story step by step.

After reading “Chicka Chika Boom Boom”, we collected leaves outside that had letters on them and we created our own fall version of the alphabet tree!

Practicing our cutting skills by giving the trolls a haircut!

Matching letters to the correct beginning sounds

Measuring with nonstandard objects

Fine motor fun!

Counting our way through Preschool!

In the PM Preschool and Preschool Prep classes, we have been planning our days around a children’s book and integrating other curriculum objectives into that theme.

For example, we read Pete The Cat as a class and the kids were able to snack on some of the different foods Pete steps in to help retell the story (strawberries, blueberries, chocolate- in place of mud, and water).  To incorporate letter recognition, we had the children feed letters to our Pete The Cat Character Box. If it was not a letter we had learned yet, the children would say “goodness no!”- just like in the story. To continue with this theme, we had a question of the day for the children: “What color would you turn your shoes? What would you need to step in to turn them this color?”

We were able to integrate literacy, letter recognition, sense of taste, color recognition, and story retelling!

What a fun literacy day we had with our “Big Pumpkin” book!

First, we read the story and reenacted it using picture cards.  We then were able to open up a real pumpkin and explore what was inside. Following the pumpkin exploration, we did a pumpkin art project and had a pumpkin snack!

We read the book, Goldilocks and the Three Bears, during reading and writing workshop this week.  Our focus was learning about where the story took place, or the setting.  We discovered that this story took place in the habitat that we have been studying this month, the forest!  After reading it together, we used picture cards to retell the story, step by step.  After retelling the story, we created an illustration of the setting.  The students have been learning about what good illustrators do and how to create a more interesting picture by adding details, colors and words. They participated in their first Author’s Chair experience.  Author’s chair is a chance for students to share their work with the class.   They did an amazing job.  We have quite a few budding illustrators!

We will be focusing on retelling for the remainder of the month, during our reading workshops.  This is a great thing to do with your child after reading each day.  A simple retell (or what happened at the beginning, middle and end) of the story, helps build comprehension and teaches our children to become active readers.

Children become readers on the laps of their parents!