February, 2/9/10 - 2/11/10

Tuesday, 2/9/10

Snow Day - AGAIN

Wednesday, 2/10/10, Ms. Chrissie's corner

Another snow day challenged our problem solving skills....as teachers! Your children came through with flying colors!! We worked like big Kindergarteners today as we learned about the Polar regions, penguins & camouflage. Camouflage was our big word of the day! I was so proud of them for learning it and remembering what it means! Ask your child to tell you what they know about penguins! You will be surprised to hear how tall and Emperor penguin is, the name of the smallest penguin, what animals hunt penguins, where penguins live, and why penguins are black & white! We learned ALL that today at morning meeting! And we did the Body Rock! Does it get any better than that?!

We made the cutest colony of adult and baby 3D penguins! It was an all day project for the class. Half the class finished before lunch, and the rest finished after we played in the gym. Everyone had a lot of fun making their penguin blend in with the dark seas as seen if a predator such as an orca was looking down at its back because the water is so cold it is quite dark. But if a shark or a sea lion were swimming below a penguin and looking up at its tummy, the penguin blends in with the light reflected from the Antarctic seas and gives it camouflage. Our class had such a good time re-enacting the diving and swimming away from predators (and shaking the rice in their shaker penguins tummies) that several 3D penguins lost their ability to SEE the prey coming at them. We had to put several eyes back on and remind our friends not to play with their art project! Look for the adorable photos of our colony of kids and their "feathered" friends.

After lunch we reviewed our knowledge of the Antarctic and penguins. Yep, we were still quite "in the know" and ready to brainstorm about the all important question: "Why are penguins black and white?" The answers were varied, and in the words of preschoolers - "So they can blend in" summed it up best. I asked them what that big word was that means blending in with the habitat... some shouted "Camouflage"! So we all kissed our brains.

At the end of the day we played with some mirrored prisms/glaciers making more 3D art with nifty items such as a variety of sequins, crystals, pom poms, stars, colored paperclips, tiny teddy bears, rubber bands.... there were so many things to choose from. Some of our friends used each and every item on the table. It looked like their glacier had picked up everything in its path! Be sure to look at the photos of their creations!

Thursday, 2/11/10

Finally I was with the children again. I don't like only seeing them once a week. Today was festive. We decorated Valentine boxes for our goodies in the afternoon. It was an easy child directed art project that the children enjoyed. Two friends even volunteered to decorate our friend Lauren's box who we missed having with us that day.

During Morning Meeting the kids were full of Penguin facts for me that they had learned the day before with Ms. Chrissie. They knew that a penguin could be as tall as 4 feet. That they lived in areas like Antarctica, "at the bottom of the globe". And they knew why a Penguin is black and white. Ask them at home and see if they can still tell you. :) Camouflage! We read 'Without You'. A very sweet story about a baby Penguin spending time with dad while mom is away. The daddy penguin takes great care of the baby and where would this baby be with out his parents. What was fun was to explore the idea that the mommy penguin knows only her child's voice. Our experiment with Ms Chrissie at our Valentines party was fun. Ms. Chrissie gathered voices on a tape recorder that we played at the party. The kids had to guess who was speaking just by listening. :) A great exercise in using our senses.

We measured and painted a 4 foot penguin. The whole class took turns painting our life size Emperor penguin friend. He will be hung in our block center where the children will be asked to build a 4 foot block tower.

We made our Heart Penguins and penguin finger prints during AM Centers. This was a our special valentine project to our parents. They kids did a good job of finding the various sized hearts needed to create their penguin.

During lunch we gave back our sound bag items and then read an adorable story, 'SPLAT". This is a story about a kitty cat on Valentines Day. Yes, a detour from our Penguin study, but too cute to pass up on Valentines Day. :)

Speaking of Valentines day, thank you parents for bringing all the goodies and for helping set up our party. They kids really enjoyed giving their Valentines to each other and I will admit that all my treats are long gone. :) Yummy!

We will finish up Penguins on Tuesday and then move onto Polar Bears on Wednesday.

Enjoy your snowy Monday.

Cari

February, 2/2/10 - 2/4/10

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.

PreK Updates

Tuesday, January 26, 2010

We began our morning meeting brainstorming about how we should and should not act when Swayze arrived for his visit. The kids understood that too many kids trying to pet him at once would scare Swayze. They remembered that we should pet him on his back or scratch his chin, but that if we pat his head it might make him nervous. We thought about all the things Swayze might be able to do for us. Like going 'over' a jump or 'through' a tunnel. He can 'sit' on the table and he can spin and roll over. I then showed them all the equipment that I had brought for Swayze. Each child had a chance to pretend they were Swayze and show me how they can jump. They even learned how to jump in a 'figure 8'. :)

I introduced the concept of their first and last name and their mailing address. There is much more to be discussed about this. Please go over their address and even your first name with them. It is a safety issue. Also there are some Kindergartens that will ask the children if they know their phone number during testing. We will also get to phone numbers later in the year.

Swayze's visit went really well. The kids did great! I was very proud of them. They were kind and patient with Swayze and all seemed to really enjoy meeting him. Everyone had a chance to ask Swayze to “perform”. He jumped, rolled over, and went through the tunnel many times. He loved all the attention and treats.

Wednesday, January 27, 2010

A note from Chrissie about Wednesday:

We had alot of fun - did the cooking thing with Cara first. Everyone took turns measuring cereal and chocolate chips. We got to see it melt and watch Ms. Cara stir the cereal after she poured the melted chocolate and peanut butter onto the chex. Then she scooped it into two big ziploc bags and sprinkled powered sugar into it and our friends took turns shaking the bags to the count of 5 and passing the bag around until the Puppy Chow turned from brown to white!

After morning meeting we colored our book covers like real illustrators do after first reviewing a few book covers for examples - especially the Three Little Kittens book - had chapel where our class showed exemplary behavior and earned their 10th bone and got to go to the treasure box at the end of the day.

We read the Three Little Kittens and looked for things that we different from real life/fiction, and what was really old fashioned in the story since I explained I had a copy of this exact book at my grandmothers house when I was a preschool aged kid. The looks on their faces imagining that was pretty funny!

Eating Puppy Chow at snack time was pretty exciting. We could hardly wait until it was time for snacks and then some of our friends decided right off they didn't like it (even though I didn't put any pumpkin in it!) and chowed down! We read Eric Carle's book Have You Seen My Cat? and enjoyed looking at the illustrations of various animals, especially cats, so much like the collage cats we did earlier this month.

Thursday, 28, 2010

Thursday we wrapped up our pet unit. We began by journaling about our favorite part about Swayze's visit with us on Tuesday. The children had no problem answering the question. :) During morning meeting as a class we read through our How many dogs? number book. The kids worked all month counting and writing down the numeric number and the written version of the word. It was nice to have a completed book to read. We then read Just like Floss. A very sweet book about a border collie puppy and his natural instincts to herd sheep.

During our morning centers the children made dog collars with their names. They were responsible for finding the letters that form their name. Once the collars were made they then used their name/address resource card to find the dog tag that matched their card. Once found we went over reading their address and identifying the numbers that made up their street address, zip code and phone number. After decorating and attaching the tag to their collars they posed for pictures with their dog collars. It was a fun project. :) 3D noodle dogs were made by those who chose.

Gym was lots of fun with Ms. Jane. She created an agility course. They weaved around poles, climbed up and over obstacles, went through tunnels and ran really fast. :)

At snack time we read Dear Mrs. La Rue: Letters From Obedience School. It was a fun pretend/fiction story about a dramatic dog that was sent off to Obedience school and sent letters home to his owner.

Next week we will begin our journey with Winter and animals that thrive in winter habitats.