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!

Catch Up! End of October Fun!

It's time to catch up again! I cannot believe that October has come and gone! We have done lots of fun things at school over the past two weeks. We finished up talking about pumpkins. I'm sure you noticed a lovely decorated pumpkin that was brought home. It was fun to let each student decorate it however they wanted. We have also continued working on rhyming and making patterns. We have a new tricky pattern for the November calendar. I'm anxious to see how quickly they can catch onto it! We also started practicing counting the syllables in their names. That's a hard one to learn. Don't be surprised if they come home clapping out their names. They really seem to think it's a fun "game". Another new thing we talked about was Mat Man. We have a song that talks about all the parts of Mat Man and we lay down each part on the carpet as we sing along (head, eyes, nose, body, arms, hands, etc).

Last week we did some fun Halloween activities. On Thursday we did three small group rotations with some fun games. The first one we had was Halloween BINGO and the students got to use plastic spiders to place on their cards. That made the game so much more fun in their eyes! The next activity was acting out the book "Five Little Pumpkins"while I read it. They each got to use a paper gate and pumpkins to place on it. The last game was a relay race. They had to place a plastic spider on a spoon and walk across the carpet and place it into a plastic pumpkin. We finished up the week with our fun pajama day!

Other big highlights:

Science! The students continue to love our "Science Fridays". Lately we have done a dancing raisins experiment and an experiment where we mixed baby oil, water, and glitter. For dancing raisins, we placed raisins in a bottle of club soda. The raisins first sank to the bottom, and then after a little time, they started floating up to the top and dropped right back down. They sure thought that was a funny to see them "dancing".

Gym! We got out some fun new things at gym the past couple gym days. The first gym time we had three fun new stations: balance beam, bean bag toss, and trampolines! Last week we tried out scooters for the first time! These were a huge hit! We even tried connecting them all together and making one big train. We had so much fun so us teachers even had to try them out. The students enjoyed seeing their teachers act like kids :)

I hope this post brings you up to date with all that we have been up to in preschool!