Tuesday, 2/2/10
Snow Day
Wednesday, 2/3/10 (Ms. Chrissie's corner)
With the snow delay, our return to school was a crazy one! Thank you to everyone who arrived with valentine boxes, polar animals and books!
Since the playground was still covered in pristine untouched snow, it was decided all three Pre-K classes would go outside together at 2:00 p.m. and end the day outdoors playing in the snow! Everyone was excited and could hardly wait, despite all the snow days and sledding they had been engaged in during our long weekend.
Our dentist day was rescheduled back in again at 11:45 so we didn't eat lunch first as originally planned in our crazy late start day. It was a wonderful alteration in our day though because that meant that Zaines own dad, Dr. Hutchinson was going to be here, helping us learn important information about brushing and flossing our teeth. All the Pre-K students attended together and thoroughly enjoyed his presentation. Zaine was beaming the entire time, and he definitely knew the right way to brush and floss!
We got all caught up on the latest Knock-Knock jokes and preschool chatter at lunch. It was one of the noisiest lunches ever! Everyone was so glad to be back together socializing. We started the sound bag for our letter of the week: F.
It was a very short day, so we could only touch on our new Polar unit. I read Snowballs, by Lois Ehlert. A story about children who saved all kinds of “stuff” collage items for snowmen they planned to build. They built a snowman to represent everyone in the family. Even a snow cat. :) After reading this book the children made the cutest snowmen out of doilies and craft items! With only a few minutes to spare we left a big mess on the table and rushed out the door so the other classes didn't get to the snow without us!
I was very proud of our class! All of our friends handled multiple changes in schedule and routine without batting an eye. Adaptability and handling change is an important developmental skill for preschoolers to learn. As parents and teachers, we set the example and I can tell you are doing a great job of teaching this necessary life skill early on to your children.
Be sure to look at the photos of the day! You'll see tons of cute children, of course, but also our favorite dentist and Zaine's dad, kids having a blast on the snow covered playground, our snowmen craft hanging on the wall, and a whole bunch more from Thursday!!!
Thursday, 2/4/10
I was so happy to be back with the kids. We tried to squeeze Tuesday and Thursday activities into one day. We started the morning with the writing our names in “snow”. I had plates of shaving cream ready for them to write with their fingers their names and ABC's. My intent was to give the kids a tactile experience while practicing their writing in a new and fun way. And I loved how I saw many of my friends use our ABC letters on the wall as a resource when asked to write the alphabet. We do this again son in our journals. This is a great writing exercise at home for the kids. Have available to them the Alphabet and then give them a blank piece of paper and ask them to write the alphabet. For those friends that like to do “home work” and complain that Ms. Cari didn't put any in their folder, I will give credit for work brought in from home. A great incentive. Tell them that the alphabet they write or their name written out few times on a paper from home will earn them stickers for their chart at school. Just put the work in the “bring back to school” pocket. :)
In honor of our winter unit and our day of freezing and melting experiments we began morning meeting with “The Freeze” dance. I love that the kids really let loose with me now. When I first started with them they would just stare at me when I turned on music to dance to. On Thursday we were all over the room, dancing and jumping and freezing. It was lots of fun!
We read The Hat, by Jan Brett. A fun story about a Hedgehog that gets a stocking stuck on his head and when all the farm animals made fun of him, he cleverly convinced them that he was the cool one. By the end of the story all the farm animals had snagged clothes from the line to wear. We had character masks and winter clothes available for the children to act out and participate while I read the story.
We began centers with cutting bananas, sticking them with popsicle sticks and placing them in cups. Then we poured juice into the cups and took a trip to the kitchen to freeze our pops. The kids predicted that it would take 5 hours to freeze our pops. To freeze our liquid to a solid. Upon returning to our room the kids finally got to explore our new room. There were polar animals, a fake snow box with arctic friends, and white snow cubes and velvet snow cloth to enhance our block center. I also pulled the kids aside two at a time to hone in on their fine motor skills and paint beautiful snow flakes.
We rushed off to music. Rushed back to eat lunch where we gave all our sound bag items back. I read Snow, by Cynthia Rylant. A beautiful tale about snow. We relived our weekends in the snow and shared all the fun things we did as we connected with our story.
Gym time with Jane was quite a work out. We are beginning to train for the Olympics. More on that to come. :)
Our day finished up as busy at it began. Each child was given a piece of ice. We dropped food coloring and salt onto our ice cube. Now the experiment was to watch and see if our ice would melt. Would the salt really eat away at our ice like Ms. Cari said it would. Friends with smaller pieces of ice were able to see the results. But as you can imagine it isn't much fun to stand around and watch ice melt. So it was quickly left behind by most to play in our centers.
At snack time the children made snow men our of marshmallows and pretzel sticks. Ms. Chrissie brought our frozen pops from the kitchen, and yes they did freeze. They were very yummy!
Next week we will dive into our study of Polar animals and the arctic. Penguins will be the first we explore.
See everyone on Tuesday.
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