Preschool Winter Fun!

Hello everyone! We have had a lot of exciting things going on in the classroom over these cold winter months! The weather prevented us from going outside as much as we would have liked, but it did not stop us from spending our days exploring and learning. Check out some of our activities!

We finished our unit on patterns with a grande pattern finale! We took a stack of purple and orange papers and each took a turn picking a color and standing in a pattern line. Everyone did such a fantastic job checking to see who was next to them and what color they had and in the end we made an orange-purple- A/B pattern line. We placed our papers on the floor and sang an orange-purple pattern song while we walked across our pattern. 

We have started a unit on counting and number correspondence. We were all so excited to count Fruit Loops with our counting cards. After we finished all of the counting cards everyone was still so interested in using the Fruit Loops for an activity that we decided to make Fruit Loop necklaces. Some friends were curious as to how many Fruit Loops they could fit on their necklace and so we helped each other to count them all.

During our "How Things Move" unit we re-introduced painting with cars! Everyone was interested to see the different designs they could make painting with the car wheels. Some friends even noticed that the car wheels made different size lines, there was some very interesting conversations around the different parts of cars.

During "How Things Move" we have had a lot of opportunities to make our own roadways and road maps throughout the classroom for our cars!

 We can't forget to share our mountain driving scene! It was fun to learn about the different "terrains" that cars and trucks can move on. "Terrain" was such a fun word to learn!

We were also very excited to explore parachutes during our "How Things Move Unit"! Each friend had the chance to make a parachute, while we were making them we all discussed what pieces we would need and made some guesses as to how parachutes work. Miss Joy had a lot of helpful information to share about parachutes, it was very interesting! In the end the children were able to go into the loft and test out there parachute. Some friends even decided that they wanted to see how the parachutes moved when we put little people inside of them. We asked, did they fall down faster or slower? This was an interesting debate, we all had some very different ideas.

  We couldn't leave boats and water out of our "How Things Move" unit! Miss Karin helped everyone check out some interesting boat designs and everyone was able to make a plan to build a boat out of aluminum foil. After the boats were made we used straws to create wind and check out how they moved through the water. We also introduced different sized hollow balls and rocks into the water to check out which items would sink and which would float. The children were curious to see which items their boats would be able to hold above water, and which  items caused the boats to sink. The children decided that the boats would sink because the rocks were too heavy.

 One of the most exciting activities during our "How Things Move" unit was creating a ball maze out of play dough. After we created the ball maze by rolling up the play dough we took out some straws to see if we could roll the balls around the maze without using our hands!

In the science area the children have been very interested in matching and catagorizing animals. A few friends were very excited to discover that we had the same sea shells and ocean animals in the classroom as they could see in one of our big books. They spent a lot of time that day searching through the big book and finding the matching animals and sea shells in the classroom. When we found a match we would read the animal name and we learned a little bit about each animal.

A few friends were also very interested in making a "Big Fat Hairy Spider" after we sang a few rounds of "The Itsy Bitsy Spider" together.

Miss Karin has been helping friends learn about how we can take care of plants- because they are living things as well. There has been some great discussion about the differences between plants and people- like plants do not eat sandwhiches but people do! We discovered that both plants and people drink water, we just do it differently. We have all had the chance to help take care of our plants by watering them and "pruning" them. Miss Karin explained to everyone what pruning is, and why and how we can do it.

Painting has been a big interest in our art area lately! Check us out working on some colorful painting creations!

We were so interested in painting that we even painted ourselves some colorful toast for a snack! So much fun! Some friends were even painting toast for each other and the teachers and friends in the toddler classroom. It was so thoughtful to think of other people who were not able to join in on the experience!

Our "Big and Small" unit was also a lot of fun. The activities in our "Big and Small" unit focused on what we could find or make in the classroom and then determining whether it was bigger or smaller than our own bodies.

 Another interest in the classroom has been building and woodworking! We introduced woodworking which has been full of discussion around safety and how we can keep our bodies safe while using tools. We have also had a lot of fun fantasy filled discussions around what we could fix with our tools! We have such wonderful imaginations!

This group of friends had a really good time working together to match all of the letters on clothes pins to the letters on these flash cards. There was such great team work!

 Last but not least, in February we explored "100 Acts of Kindness." We introduced the topic by each taking turns during our morning meeting to pay a friend a complement. We discussed what a complement was, and even explored how we would feel if we were paid a compliment. Miss Karin and Miss Joy introduced our "100 Acts of Kindness" heart and we decided that each time someone in the classroom performed an act of kindness they would fill in a heart. We were wondering if we could reach 100 hearts by the end of February. We are happy to report that everyone had the chance to fill in some hearts and that our goal of 100 hearts during February was met.

 Thanks for checking out what we have been working on! We look forward to spending a fun filled spring with everyone!

December Fun!

Hello everyone! Wow, is it snowy and cold now! We are excited to see all of the snow, if only it would warm up so we could really go outside and explore it. Soon enough we know we will have the chance. We have been keeping ourselves very busy. Check out all of the new things we are learning as we explore!

We have been exploring literacy in a number of different ways! We recently completed a unit on illustrations/illustrators where we created a class book of our own illustrations and then were able to explore and make our own illustration flip books. At the end of our unit Miss Joy read a book that she created for her class called "Playing and Learning". We were so excited to see that our pictures were part of the illustrations!

Making Our Illustration Flip Books:

Recently we have been really exploring the letter "A" in a variety of ways. We have also begun talking about capital/uppercase (BIG) and lowercase (LITTLE) letters. We have been playing games, and doing projects to help us to recognize and identify these different forms of the letter "A". Some of our friends are already very familiar with the letter a and have been working on recognizing words that begin with the letter "A". Check out some of our work:

Our most recent math unit has focused on patterns. The children were introduced to  A/B patterns through a few large and small group activities, and then had the opportunity to make their own patterns. Their favorite activity during this unit was to decorate a string of holiday lights in an A/B pattern using paint and corks. We asked that the children try really hard to make an A/B pattern with two colors of their choice, and then they had the opportunity to make their own creations using all of the colors!

We had a lot of fun one day exploring catapults! The children sat down in a small group with materials and pictures of catapults and had some discussion around how those catapults were made. After some thinking each child made an individual plan about how they could make their catapult with Miss Karin. They gathered the materials in their plan and then sat down to form their catapults! It was so much fun to test them out! When some of them didn't work as well as we would have liked, it was okay, we tried something new!

Our most recent science unit has been all about exploring weather! We did a super fun experiment where we created a snow storm inside water bottles. Check it out:

At the end of the day we decided to have a talent show! It was so much fun! We had a great time cheering each other on and supporting all of our friends as they shared their talent. We had musicians, singers, dancers, instrument players, and story tellers!

STAY TUNED TO SEE WHAT WE LEARN AND DO NEXT!