December 9-13

It was another great week in preschool! There's was lots to do and never enough time. We worked on our letter of the week Ss and measuring. We have touched on measuring several times, but this time we measured with something new...ourselves! I had the students lay on their back and we measured how many preschools wide our classroom was. We talked about how when we measure, we start on one end and each of them needed to be lined up and touching so we could get the right number. They really enjoyed that activity! Our elf has also been up to some fun. We have spotted him on top of the Christmas tree, painting on the counter, and sleeping in a kleenex box. He even left us some homework one day! Who knows where he'll be this week!

For our small groups we focused on three different areas: letters in their name, counting/making number sets, and cutting. For the name practice activity, the students had to search for the letters in their name to form a tree. It was a great activity for them to find the letters and then place them in the correct order. Our counting activity was placing ornaments (m&m's) on a Christmas tree. Each tree had a number on it and the students had to match the number of ornaments to that number. The last group put their cutting skills to the test. They each had to cut out two candy cane shapes and paint them. The curves in the candy cane were quite challenging but we were amazed at how great they each did! Their hard work and practice is definitely paying off!

We had lots of little projects to work on this past week. Some we can't tell you about yet ;) We've also been busy practicing for our program on Tuesday. We hope that you all can join us! It will be a busy week preparing for the program, finishing projects, and just enjoying this holiday season! We plan to unwind from the craziness with a fun pajama and movie day on Friday! It will be a nice way to celebrate all their hard work and relax before our break begins.

 Measuring the classroom

 Measuring the carpet

 The afternoon class was able to walk through the lunch room to see the 2nd graders working on their gingerbread houses. It was fun to see them hard at work.

December is Here!

Could it be? Is December already here?! Time is going fast but this month has already been off to a fun start! Our classroom was full of holiday cheer last week. Our classroom now has some lights, a tree, and as of Friday...an elf on the shelf!!! I hear there are many elves at home, too. Our elf left us a note saying that he is the cousin to those elves ;) It's fun to see how excited they get about it and I'm sure you'll hear all about him the next couple weeks.

Last week we worked on the letter Cc and measuring. The theme for many of our activities was gingerbread! We read lots of books about the gingerbread bear, cowboy, and even gingerbread pirates. Our dramatic play center turned into a gingerbread house. Inside, the students got to play with gingerbread playdough and use cookie cutters and cookie sheets to make cookies. They loved it! And I think we will be finding pieces of playdough for weeks to come.  Our sensory table will filled with gingerbread cookie mix as many of you probably found evidence of. Sorry for the extra powder-filled clothing that many of them came home with! For our small groups, the students measured objects with gingerbread men cutouts, did a gingerbread man sequencing activity, and worked on a listening activity with coloring. They had to listen to the directions on what color of crayon to use on their coloring page. They all did a wonderful job with it and used their "listening ears" very well! To keep the holiday spirit going, our science Friday was an experiment with candy canes. The placed a small candy cane into different liquids: water, lemon juice, Mt. Dew, rubbing alcohol, baby oil, and vinegar. We talked about our new science word, dissolve, and watched to see what would happen. By the end of each class, the candy canes in the water, lemon juice, Mt. Dew, and vinegar had completely dissolved. The candy canes in the baby oil and rubbing alcohol were unchanged. I left them there over the weekend so we will see what we find with those this week!

We have lots of exciting things to cram into the next two weeks. We will be making some more holiday crafts and activities and begin to prepare for our preschool holiday program. The program will be on Dec. 17th for both sections and we will get some more information out to you soon! We will continue on with our letter and numbers of the week with letter Ss and #7/8. Hopefully we get some slightly warmer temperatures this week so we can go outside and enjoy the snow! If you could send along snow pants and boots with your student, that would be great! That ensures that if we do get to go outside, they can go out and have fun in the snow! And a reminder that if we run into any 2 hr delay days, the morning class will not come in for preschool that day. The afternoon class will go on as usual. Hopefully we don't have to worry about that too many times this winter! Stay warm!

 Measuring with gingerbread men

 Gingerbread sequencing activity

Making some "cookies" in the dramatic play center 

 Gingerbread cookie mix in the sensory table

 Our listening activity coloring page at small groups

 Science Friday with our candy cane experiment

The morning class named our elf "Cheekies

 The afternoon class named the elf "Mr. Twinkle Toes"

Happy Thanksgiving!

I hope that everyone has a wonderful Thanksgiving! We were busy in preschool preparing for it the past week and a half. We made some fun turkey crafts and talked about what we were thankful for. We also studied the letter Tt which worked out perfectly for turkey and Thanksgiving. We have talked about how when a t and h are together, they sound different than the regular t sound. We get lots of practice with that at calendar time (Tuesday & Thursday). For small groups last week, we made some fun coffee filter turkeys, a "Where is Turkey" book, and practiced writing out names again. It is SO exciting to see so much improvement in their names. They are definitely working hard! For "Science Friday" we made duck calls. Some of you may have been lucky enough to hear them try it out at home and others may not have. It was hard!! Even Miss Stacey had a difficult time making the duck sound with the straw. We talked about how it is vibrations that make the duck noise.

The highlights of the short little week we had this week were acting out a squirrel poem that I read and having a little fall party yesterday. I introduced the poem about the "Five Little Squirrels" using felt squirrels on a felt board. After we tried that out, we let the students pretend to be the squirrels. They thought it was pretty funny and loved it! Yesterday (Tuesday), we have a fun little fall party and did three fun small groups. The first group was making a pattern headband. We talk about patterns frequently in preschool so it was their turn to try to make their own on the headbands. Our second group made pumpkin pie in a cup. Each student got to smash a graham cracker in a baggie and pour it in a cup. They then spooned in some pumpkin pie pudding and some cool whip. Our own little pumpkin pies! Most of them gobbled them all up. It was a definite hit! Our last fun group was making the potato turkeys. They sure got a laugh out of me telling them that we were going to turn the potato into a turkey and that they could bring them home. We thought they turned out so cute!

I cannot believe it will be December next week. We have lots fun things planned for the three weeks before winter break. One big thing to mention is that preschool will be having a holiday program on Tuesday, December 17th. It will be a short little program in the gym towards the end of each preschool class session (10:30 am & 2:40 pm). We hope that everyone can join us for that! Another special day that we will have is another pajama and movie day on the last day before winter break (Dec. 20). Lots of fun things ahead!

HAPPY THANKSGIVING!

Miss Stacey

 Orbeez (water beads) in the sensory table

 "Where is Turkey" book

 Practicing our duck calls

 Acting out "Five Little Squirrels"

 Making pumpkin pie in a cup

November 7-15

Our November has been off to a great start! Thank you all for such great conferences! It's so fun to catch up and let you see how hard each of your students have been working at school. We have started talking about Thanksgiving (especially turkeys) this week. We read some funny stories about turkeys disguising themselves so that they won't turn into the Thanksgiving turkey and turkeys that were running away from the farms. Each student then got to make their own colorful turkey that is now displayed out in our hallway for all to see. We've also talked about how many people eat a big meal to celebrate the holiday so we turned out kitchen center into a grocery store. It has been a huge hit so far! Next week we will focus more on things that we are thankful for and the real reason for Thanksgiving.

For our small groups this week, we worked on our letter Dd page, played a new game called "Slap Math", and sorted fruit loop cereal onto colored pipe cleaners (orange fruit loops on orange pipe cleaners. For slap math, each student had a card with a certain number of stickers on it. When I held up a number that matched their amount of stickers, they got to slap the table and keep my card. They really enjoyed that part of the game :)

Our "Science Friday" today was fun as usual. This time the students got to take over the experiment completely. We worked on weighing things and comparing which things weighed more, less, and the same. They each got to pick any one item around the room that they wanted. I then randomly called two students up and they got to compare who had a heavier or lighter object by placing their items in the balance tool. They really enjoyed it and liked that they were the ones doing everything by themselves. I left the balances out at center time so they could continue to experiment.

Next week we will continue on talking about Thanksgiving. We keep reading fun stories and focusing on rhyming words. I love how many of them are catching on to it so quickly. Our new letter next week will be Tt and our new number will be #6. As you saw, book orders were sent home today. There are many great books for Christmas gifts in there. I will also send home Dec. book orders soon as well so that all books will get here by Christmas time. Remember to let me know if you don't want your child to see any of the books when they come in. Thank you all for being such wonderful parents and families. We really enjoy having each of these children in our classroom!