Miss Stacey's Preschool Classroom: December 2013

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.

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!