Our PreSchool Blog

A turkey is a funny bird

The children have been using bright and beautiful water colors to create turkey feathers.  This week we have been talking about the Thanksgiving holiday and they couldn’t wait to create their own turkeys! Here is a song we have been singing that you can try to sing at home!

(to the tune of “Pop Goes the Weasel”)

A Turkey is a funny bird

His head goes Wobble, Wobble

He only knows one word…

Gobble, Gobble, Gobble!

sensory table colored pasta

This week our sensory table is full of colorful noodles! The kids have been digging their hands in this colorful pasta and scooping and dumping it!  They have been using spoons to scoop the noodles into the bowls and pretend they are making soup!  Since all of the noodles are different colors this has been a great way to practice our color recognition as well!

N is for necklace

This afternoon at group time we learned the letter “N”.  For our art project today we made necklaces for the letter “N”.  Here you can see Rutva, Caroline and Connor working so hard at stringing the beads onto their necklaces.  They did a wonderful job working with those fine motor skills to make beautiful necklaces!

children created and extended their own patterns

Our focus in math during the month of November is patterning.  The children were introduced to patterning last year during their preschool classes and this year the children are creating their own patterns and extending them independently.  The children used different types of manipulatives today to create various patterns.  Some children were still most comfortable doing a simple AB pattern based on color while some children created more complicated patterns based on size or type of animal (using the pet manipulatives set).  Using everyday objects in the kitchen are a great way to reinforce patterning at home.

sand painting the letter "Bb"

Today and the rest of this week we will continue to focus on the letter Bb. The preschoolers used small paint brushes to paint their upper and lower case Bb’s with sticky glue. We talked about the shape of the letter and of course the sound that the letter Bb says. Once the letters were completely painted with glue we sprinkled them with bright blue sand. Using several different approaches in our letter Bb practice allows us to have repeated exposure to the letter and therefore better recognition. Not to mention, we’re having fun doing so!

As a farewell to Fall and the month of October, the PreK class explored the interesting parts of some of our classroom’s pumpkins. We opened up some of our Science Center’s ghords and pumpkins and learned about each one of their different parts. From the gooey pulp inside and the curving ribbed lines outside, we really enjoyed taking a closer look at the pumpkins. Once we  were finished exploring the kids were given lables and their own picture of a pumpkin. Together we takled about all of its parts and put each lable next to its corresponding part. We also have our pumpkins and ghords in the sensory table this week, the children can have one last chance to scoop out the seeds and gooey insides!

taking inventory

the anatomy of a pumpkin

The toddler class had so much fun this morning creating their Pumpkin Pie with the letter “P” on it!  Edie loved sprinkling cinnamon all over her pumpkin pie and as you can see Owen took a really good sniff of his cinnamon!

supervised scissor practice is key to developing important fine motor skills

Today we continued to practice our scissors skills with our happy face jack-o-lanterns. The preschoolers were given a strip of orange card stock with six pumpkins to snip out. We talked about how to safely hold our scissors, where our fingers and thumbs should be positioned while we’re cutting, and how to effectively “open and close” our hands to manuever our scissors just right in order to make a clean cut. We practice our scissor skills regularly with many different cutting materials to keep the task fun and exciting. When the students were finished cutting out their happy jack-O-lanterns we glued them into their green pumpkin patches. Great development with such a simple activity!

This month we are talking about community helpers.  This week we are focusing on the denstist and mailman.  Today during group time we asked everyone who had been to the dentist before and how important it is to take  care of our teeth!  We also played a game with teeth!  Each tooth had either a shape or letter on it.  The kids had to close their eyes while Ms. Sarah hide the baby tooth behind one of the labeled teeth.  When they opened their eyes, each child had a chance to guess where the tooth was hidden by describing which tooth they thought it was behind.  This was a great activity for practicing letter recognition and our shapes and colors!

shapes and letters at the dentist

more cooking today, this time . . . pumpkin pie!

We made Pumpkin Pie in a bag today!  The children helped to measure and pour all of the ingredients into our special plastic bag.  The best part was that after we zipped up the bag, everyone had a turn to mush and mix everything together with their hands!  It was so exciting for them to see what it felt like as they were mixing the cold pumpkin pudding.  To make the crust of the pie, the kids also crushed up graham crackers on the table.