February 2013 - Groundhogs, Valentines and President's Day

In February our overall theme was Friendship but there were lots of other things to learn and talk about.

Books we read - "10 Grouchy Groundhogs", "Happy Valentines Day, Mouse", "I love you stinky face", "I love you forever", "A Pocket full of Kisses", "The Day it rained Hearts", "Construction Zone", and "At the Supermarket".

We learned a new song,  "Won't you be my valentine? Valentine? Valentine?  Won't you be my Valentine, Be a Friend of Mine." (London Bridges tune) and we worked on our "ABC sounds" song.  Original music but the lyrics are "1,2,3,4, when we learn these sounds you'll see, ready to read then we will be aa (short sound of the letter)  apple, b b ball, c c cat and dd doll, e e egg and f f fan, g g goat and h h hand"  You get the idea and you'll hear us sing it at graduation.

Just before Groundhog day we learned about Puxatony Phil and we predicted whether he would see his shadow.  We made shadow animals on the walls of our preschool and played flashlight tag.  We crawled through tunnels like a groundhog.

To celebrate Valentine's day we did rubbings of sand paper hearts, decorated foam door hangers with stickers and foam shapes, practiced writing "I love you", did a Valentine's color by number picture, decorated mailboxes, made pasta friendship bracelets, counted and sorted conversation hearts and had a party with treats, games and valentine exchanges.

We also learned about George Washington just before President's Day.  We made a cherry tree by painting the trunk and then glueing leaves and cherries on it.  We introduced our first digraph "Ch" is for the cherry tree.

January 2013 - Snow and the Solar system

January was really cold and there was plenty of snow so we did units on "Signs of Winter"  and "Snow".  We painted the snow outside with water bottles filled with colored water, made snowflakes inside with paper, glue and glitter and brought snow inside the classroom by the bucket full.  We predicted what would happen to the snow inside and what would be left behind.  (In case you're wondering our snow was fairly dry in January and 1 bucket of snow turned into 1/2 bucket of water.)  We talked about where animals go during the winter and the clothing we need to wear during cold weather.

We read books like "The Magical Snowman", "Hibernation Station" and "The Snowy Day."  Because our overall theme for the month was RESPONSIBILITY we also read "I am responsible", "All by Myself", "It's milking time", "When I grow up", "Just a Mess" and "I was so mad".

Next we left the cold of earth behind and had a unit on the "Solar System".  We made a mobile of the planets, reviewed the letters P for planets, S for Solar System, A for Astronaut and M for Moon.  We traveled with Mrs. Frizzle on the Magic School Bus to our solar system, painted pictures of the sun and sang songs like "Zoom, zoom, zoom, We're going to the moon (repeat) If you'd like to take a trip, climb aboard my rocket ship, zoom, zoom, zoom"  sung to Three Blind Mice.  We also learned the "Responsibility" song.  Lyrics are "Come on do what you're supposed to do, responsibility is following through" (repeat twice).  We found this on Youtube.

A New Class offered January-May 2013

Do you know a three-year old who needs to get out of the house this winter, meet new friends, learn lots of new concepts and give you a break from another "why" question?

Registration is now being accepted for a class beginning on January 3, 2013. (Oops, this is really Wed. Jan. 2) This class will meet Monday and Wednesdays from 12:30-3:00 and is especially designed for 3 year old children. The curriculum will be similar to our regular curriculum (see tab) but will move a little more slowly and will change activities frequently to accommodate the attention spans of this younger group.  Give me a call for more information or to register.  713-8113

November....a time for Gratitude!

 The theme for November is GRATITUDE of course!  We've been practicing saying "please" and "thank you", discussed the things we're grateful for, learned about the Pilgrims and the history of Thanksgiving, had a Thanksgiving feast and we began having centers day each week.

In phonics we learned:

       K is for kite and kitten

       L is for lamb, lion and leaves

       M is for monkey, mouse and Mayflower

       N is for nose, noodles and net

       O is for octopus

       P is for poodle, pilgrim

       Q is for queen, quilt and q-tips

       R is for rail, rat and rockets

In math we added pages 12-15.  We added a new game in which the kids help identify which number I have removed from the number line.   We count how many times they can jump on the trampoline (we stop at 20 because they have endless energy).  We count when we played "Hide turkey hide".  We count to 5 slowly as we glue each item to our cornucopia of thanks.  We counted leaves, squares on the quilt and the pilgrim children in books.  We are making math a part of every day.

We learned some new songs and one of the parents asked me to post lyrics so they can help reinforce the songs so here goes:

A fingerplay chant - Five little leaves hanging from a tree, Along came a breeze and blew one free, The little leaf fell without a sound, There are four on the tree and one on the ground.  Four little leaves..........

Song to "London bridges" - All the leaves are falling down, falling down, falling down.  All the leaves are falling down, It is fall.  Take a rake and rake them up.......     Make a pile and jump right in

Sung to "If you're happy and you know it"  Gobble, gobble, gobble, gobble said the bird (Repeat) Mr. Turkey gobble gobbles and his tail goes wobble, wobble.  Gobble, gobble, gobble, gobble said the bird.

Sung to "The Muffin Man"  Taken from Scholastic Calendar songs   "Oh the days are growing short, (hum end of line)Oh the days are growing short, Now that it's November.

We'll have a great Thanksgiving Feast (hum to end of phrase) We'll have a great thanksgiving feast On the last Thursday of November.  

In art we made scratch and sniff paint (when we were studying N is for nose). We made "I am grateful for....." turkeys. The kids added feathers and dictated to me what they were thankful for.  We made toilet paper roll indians and pilgrims for their tables.    We made pilgrim hats for our Thanksgiving feast.  We made cornucpias with pictures cut from magazines of their blessings.  We made a cute monkey when we studied the M sound.  We did leaf rubbings and studied the different shapes and sizes of leaves we collected on our grateful walk.  We made a quilt of paper squares on our classroom wall and then each child made their own quilt to be added to their alphabet book (which we will complete by Christmas).  We did an open ended paint project with Q tips.  I supplied the supplies and the kids supplied the enthusiasm and creativity.

Miss Cindy's preschool in western Ada county uses art, music, movement, free play, reading, writing and math fun to encourage young learners.

   

Pumpkins, dress up and ghosts....oh my!

October's theme was CREATIVITY and we got very creative this month.  We played dress up, took our first fieldtrip to the Farmstead, learned about a really brave man, Christopher Columbus, had a Halloween party and got really comfortable with one another and the preschool routine.

In Phonics we learned:
        F is for fan, fall and fish
        G is for goat, ghost,
        H is for Halloween, hand and harvest
        I is for inchworm and igloo
        J is for Jack-a-lantern and jam, 
        S is for spider and sun

In math we added pages to our counting books for 7-11.  Our books include writing the number, coloring objects or gluing objects to the page and seeing the number word.  We started doing some simple addition while playing the apple game and the ladybug game.  We sorted and graphed halloween candy.  We played a game where they searched the school room for the numbers 1-8 on the walls and ran to the correct number that was called out.

We learned the songs "Monster day", "I'm a mean old witch", "Five little pumpkins", and "The Itsy, bitsy spider".

We read the books "The Falling leaves and the Scarecrow", "Fall brings", "Going on a Ghost Hunt", "Strega Nona's Harvest", "When the Leaf blew in", "Alpha Oops", "H is for Halloween", "Pick a pumpkin, Mrs. Milly", "The Little Old Lady who wasn't afraid of anything", "The Magic School Bus in the Bat Cave",  "Pick a perfect Pumpkin", "The Best Halloween Hunt Ever", "Scaredycrow" and a few books about imaginative like "Harold and the Purple Crayon", "Quick as a Cricket", "Higher, Higher" and "Not a box".  Reading aloud gives the children opportunities to predict what will happen, to listen for comprehension and to discuss the story lines and characters.  I often ask "What would you do if you were (a certain character)?"

In art we made Fall wreaths, ghosts, a "Fall Brings" booklet, a table top Christopher Columbus (along with reading a book about Columbus), a haunted house, spider hats, and Halloween macaroni necklaces.

September - Sometimes learning is messy :)

September – A brand new class of cutie patooties!  There are four young gentlemen and five young ladies.  Although they were excited for school to begin there were a couple that were nervous that first day…….some of them were even the kids J!  The theme for the month is “Courage”.  We focused on new beginnings like going to school, making new friends and acquiring new skills.  Here are a few things we learned:

Phonics – A is for alligator, ants and apples

                  B is for bubbles (in your milk), balloons, ball, bears   We even ate BAGELS on B day

                  C is for cat, cookie monster and cookies      We made COOKIES on C day

                  D is for dinosaurs, doll

                  E is for egg, elephant

We learned new songs like “The ants go marching one by one”,  “Five little monkeys”,  “C is for cookie”, “Dinosaur baseball game” “If you’re a tyransaurus swing your tail” (tune If you’re happy) and our welcome song “Here we are together”.

We made pages for our counting book 1-6, sorted objects, identified recurring patterns on our calendar and counted ants, dinosaurs, bubbles, apples and eggs.

We read "Little Quack", "Pippins Big Jump", "Ten Apples up on top", "The Kissing Hand", "Brave Irene", "Goldilocks and the Three Bears", "If you give a mouse a cookie", "How do Dinosaurs Eat their food?", "The Cow loves Cookies", "An Egg is Quiet",  "How do dinosaurs clean their rooms?", and "Green Eggs and 

Ham".

I believe that the best moments of learning are often MESSY so we had discovery moments like blowing up balloons with a 2 liter bottle filled with baking soda and vinegar, being archeologists and melting ice cubes that had dinosaurs frozen inside (See pictures above), baking cookies, blowing bubbles in our chocolate milk, digging for dinosaur bones in our rice bucket, blowing soap bubbles in the backyard and searching for plastic eggs that contained animals other than birds (ie. reptiles).  

Preschool is on for April 2, 2012

Preschool will be held on Monday, April 2. My jury number probably won't be called until Thursday, so we will most likely be able to hold preschool Wednesday too. Plan on that unless you hear from me! Thanks, Cindy