Welcome Back!

We're back! Our preschool fun is back in full force after a long winter break. The kids were so excited to be back in school and so were the teachers. Last week was kind of a crazy one with only a few days of school because of the bitter cold. We still had time to fit lots of great stuff in! Now that we are in the second half of our school year, we are focusing even more on getting the students ready for another year of preschool, pre-k, or kindergarten next year (even though I tell them all that I love them too much to let them go ;). So we are stepping up our work with numbers, letters, etc. We added a new activity to our carpet time: a morning/afternoon message. Each day there will be a message written on the board for the class to look at and read together. In these messages, we will talk about how each letter has a sound and we we put those sounds together they make words. Those words then make sentences. We have also introduced punctuation (.!?) and capital letters only at the beginning of a sentence. It sounds like a big jump but it has been amazing how fast they have been catching on. They have searched for the three main punctuation marks in books and even in our hallways. It's fun to see how excited they get when they spot them. The period is still commonly known as "the little dot" to them, but we'll keep working on the real word for it! We're also working hard are practicing all the letters and the sounds that they make. We have a new Dr. Jean song that we're singing to help us with that. It's called "Alphardy" (it's to the tune of Jeopardy). These preschoolers are learning more and more each day!

For our small groups last week we had three new fun groups. The first group was an alphabet fishing game. The students used a magnetic fishing pole to "catch" some letter magnets. It was a great way to work on identifying letters and the sounds they make by playing a fun game. I love when they don't even know that they are learning! Our second group was a craft project to help decorate our room for this winter season. They created a snowman head by only tearing pieces of paper. It was a great fine motor activity for their small little hands and each snowman looks unique which I LOVE! Our last group was the students favorite one. They got to play with shaving cream on the table. They each got a big blob of shaving cream to spread around all over the table and play with. After a few minutes of playing, we moved on to practicing their name in it, as well as some letter and numbers. I apologize to my first guinea pig group who did not wear a paint shirt. While I'm sure they smelled great, they went home quite covered in shaving cream! Whoops!

The student just loved being back with their friends. They jumped right back in where they left off a couple weeks ago. We added some new toys and games around the room and added colored rice to our sensory table. They love when we get new things around the room! We worked on our letter Jj and the number 9. We also read some great books about snow and winter. When the weather isn't frigidly cold, we will always plan to head outside so it's very helpful when the kids have their snow pants, boots, and gloves! They are getting faster at getting everything on and all bundled up. Our gym and library schedules will remain the same. Morning class: gym-Thursdays & library-Tuesdays. Afternoon class: gym-Tuesdays & library-Friday. We are looking forward to continuing our fun in preschool!!