Finally! A new preschool post! As always, we've been busy little bees the past couple weeks. One big highlight was the pumpkin patch field trip. The weather was perfect and there was so much fun stuff to do. I'm working on putting together some pictures from the field trip and I'll try to share those with you all soon! It was also great to see so many of you at our big open house. I love seeing how proud the students are to show off all their work to their families and to show everyone around their room. It was definitely a fun evening!
We have continued talking all about fall and especially pumpkins! The kitchen center has now turned into our very own pumpkin patch. We took a closer look at the inside and outside of the pumpkins as well. It was fun to see them dig around in the inside of the pumpkins and to hear how they describe how it looks and feels in their own words. Another new exciting thing this past week was introducing the iPads to the students! We started learning how to use them and all the rules that go with it in a small group and then they were able to explore with them during center time. It's amazing how much they already know about them at such a young age! Our other small groups worked on counting and the letters in their name. For counting, the students had to count out real pumpkins seeds and match the amount of seeds to a pumpkin that had a number written on it. For their name practice we played the name erase game. On a marker board we helped them write out their name. Miss Lynne then held up letters of the alphabet one at a time, and if the students had that letter in their name they had to erase that letter off their board. It was fun to see who could keep letters on their board the longest.
We also had some exciting "Science Fridays"! Last week we went on a fall walk outside. The students were partnered up and each pair was given a clipboard with certain fall items to look for. It was great to see them work as a team and look for each thing along the way. The other fun science activity was predicting items that would sink or float in a tub of water. The students were pretty surprised that our apple and little pumpkin actually floated. Each student had a sink/float card and before each object they held up the card that they thought it would be. It's fun to let them think about each object and why or why not they think it might sink. It always amazes me how well they can predict and come up with valid reasons for their ideas.
Each class has now experienced their first fire drills! Both classes did such a great job and followed all directions really well. As you can imagine, it's a pretty loud noise but they all handled it just fine! The two classes have also learned the valuable lesson of how it is always a good idea to clean up at center time quickly. We learned that if we don't do our jobs right away, we might lose out on something fun later which is usually recess. I think they'll catch onto this idea fast because losing recess was a pretty big deal :)
This week we will continue some fun fall activities and practice our new skill that was introduced last week...rhyming! The students will also have the chance to practice making letters with our foam pieces (big lines, little lines, big curves, and little curves). I'm sure we will have lots of great things to share at the end of the week.
