BLASTOFF!

If only it were actually warm enough outside to melt a snowman....

BRRRRRRRRR! Its a cold one out there on this Thursday afternoon. We are warming up in preschool by setting our minds to brighter things. Today this included crafting a snowman who just sat in the sun way to long. Poor guy...he can send some of that sun our way! I would gladly exchange it for the frigid wind we have been having! 

Next we set off on a lengthy flight to space. 

5-4-3-2-1....BLASTOFF!!!! 

Today marked the very first day of our solar system exploration. We kicked off our learning by reading oodles upon oodles of books explaining everything in space. The kids also put together a demonstration on how when the earth rotates our day changes from a sunny day to a dark night. We learned TONS of big, important words that will come up throughout our space study. Go ahead and ask your kids if they recognize any of these words after today: planet, big dipper, commit, constellation, Venus, Mars, Mars rover, Neptune, Pluto, Earth, Saturn, moon, stars, and sun. These may seem like huge words for a preschooler but you would be shocked how well the kids were able to point them out! They were working really hard at this. I am excited to continue on and see how far they will come! 

To add to our learning we have also covered letter (Y,y) and number six over the past couple of days. With each of these we went over what things come in groups of six and what words begin with Y.

 

Homework: Continue working on the days of the week. Also, search your bookshelves for any books that may be on space and choose those for bed time. Getting extra reading time on our lesson will make things a lot easier for your preschool. 

Have a great week! Thanks for reading!

Warmly, 

-Megan

Thursday Cheers.

Happy Thursday Everyone! 

I hope you are all having a great week! Only one more day until you all get to enjoy your children for the weekend! Yay!

I want to start off by congratulating most of you for bringing back your child's homework from Monday. I was also impressed by the improvement in being able to go through the days of the week with more ease. Everyone has just about got it down, we are just struggling a tad on remembering to add in Thursday, but practice makes perfect. So lets keeping working at it!  

This week in the school the kids have been busy at work with lots of fun activity's. Wednesday, we spent our time learning the shape of a crescent. To become familiar with the shape we crafted a unique collage made completely of crescent shaped moons. In the end it was really fun to see how each child's collage differed from another even though we all used the same materials. Once our masterpieces were perfected the kids and I went onto our next activity of creating a counting mitten book. Adding to our theme of mittens,everyone joyfully chimed in on our new song of the day. 

Mittens, Mittens, Mittens
 Thumbs in the thumb place, 
fingers all together,
this is the song we sing in winter weather,
when it is cold, it doesn't matter wither
mittens are wool or made of finest leather,
 Thumbs in the thumb place, 
fingers all together,
this is the song we sing in winter weather.

Thursday, the kids continued on perfecting their skills of memorizing the days of the week. Aside from that we also worked further on learning more of letter (Nn), and our patter of the month: blue, white, and yellow. Our craft of the day was spent making a fun snowman that they are oh so excited to show each of you!

That's all for now! I hope you all have a great weekend! Dress extra warm I hear its suppose to be a cold one! 
-Megan

Musical Tots.

A day full of Music is a day full of fun! 

Six Little Ducky's                                                  

Six little ducks that I once knew,                              
Fat ones, skinny ones, fair ones too,
but the one little duck
with the feathers on his back,
he led the others with a
Quack, quack, quack (x2)

 Along Came Mr. Alligator
Six little monkeys sitting in a tree
teasing Mr. Alligator "You cant catch me, You cant catch me"
Along came Mr. Alligator quiet  as can be
and he snatched that monkey right out of the tree.
(Continue count down from six until you don't have any monkeys left)

These are just two of the songs we have been working on throughout this week. The kids LOVE getting to chant the lyrics aloud while gesturing fun hand motions. It has also been fun for Mary and I to see how good the kids memorization skills have gotten over the past few months.

Aside from our impressive musical skills the kids have also been hard at work learning all sorts of great new things. This week we focused on learning letters I and N, along with number six. With each new day and each new lesson the concept of fallowing directions has been stressed. Together the kids have gone through many worksheets where they were expected to fallow the directions on how to color and decorate there work. For the most part everyone did a very good job with this. As a result we were lucky enough to end our week on a high note. We spent our last morning before the weekend sewing (yes sewing) together our very own pair of mittens that went along with our story "The Mitten".

Homework: Practice saying the days of the week ( this has been a bit of a struggle). Brainstorm things that begin with letters "I" and "N". Practice writing them as well, along with number six. The kids were also sent home with a lined piece a paper with there names on it. There job is to write their names as many times as possible along the lines. Note: make sure they are making each letter to fall on the correct line. They are expected to bring each sheet back to our next Preschool lesson which is Wednesday morning.
Thanks for reading!
-Megan

Snowy Days!

No two are quite the same,

each unique in there own and special way

Some are big, yet some are small

creating joyous, playful fun for all

Yes, you guessed it my dearest star 

were taking snowflakes 

for those near and far. 

Yesterday, marked the snowiest, snow day yet this year for your preschooler! Which if you think back to the weather we were having that statement may seem a bit goofy. While the temperatures outside may have been rising. The kids and I set off on a snowy expedition. We started out our day by going over the color of the week. Can you guess it? I will give you a little hint. Its the color of the snow. Our list went on and on, brainstorming everything we could possibily think of that wear's the color white. 

To show our lesson of the day, that no two snowflakes are exactly the same the kids and I put our sissors and glue to work. We spent the next hour crafting two different kinds of snowflakes. The kids LOVED in the end when they got to compare there own flakes to eveyone elses. This gave them the chance to see how really no two were exactly the same, even though we all used the same tools. 

Here is a fun websight you can use if your looking for some fun wintery crafts. 

 http://www.everythingpreschool.com/themes/snow/art.htm

Enjoy!

-Megan!  

 

 

2013!

Today marks a day of lots of new changes in your preschoolers lives.The year 2013 has finally arrived, and with it tags along a new month, new pattern (ABC) and of course the first day back after a long Christmas break. 
To lighten the load of all the new changes we spent our time in preschool today reviewing our work from December. Below is a list of everything that we went over. Feel free to continue on with our review from home. 

December review book content:
Colors: Green and Gold.
Letters: Kk, Ss, Jj
Pattern: ABB
Number: Five
Shape: Triangle 

As part of our review we completed two separate worksheets aside from making our review booklets. The first involved having to find what picture went with what letter. For this we used the letters K, S, and J.  

Our second worksheet had a similar task but instead of using letters  we worked with the number five. Your child's job was to count how many objects were printed on each picture and then decide if that number was greater or lower then five.

To end our day we took another step back in time and finished our "Little Traveler Book", which if you dont recall was started the week before we left for break. This book was a fun way to look at how people around the world celebrate Christmas in there own ways. With each page we looked at a different country and what Christmas traditions originated there. 

Here is a list of  different countries we studied and what they are famous for starting.

•  Germany: Originated the Christmas tree, and gingerbread.  
• England: stockings, Christmas cards along with Christmas carols.  
• Holland: Santa Claus
• Italy: presents
• Israel: menorah, and the dreidel
• Mexico: poinsettia 
• Sweden:  wreath and candles 

As you can see a lot of the things many of us use to celebrate Christmas now are similar to those all over the world. Pretty neat in the eyes of a preschooler! 

Thanks for reading!  
(remember to review!) 
-Megs