Disney Fun!

Disney week did not disappoint us this week and neither did our first Star of the Week presentation of the year.  Each child will have the opportunity to be the Star of the Week; the Star of the Week gets to fill out and decorate a poster and present it to their classmates and teachers.  The poster is displayed for the entire week on a bulletin board inside the classroom!  

Here the kids are tracing different shapes and lines that go along with the Alice in Wonderland movie.  This activity really tested their dexterity and tracing skills!  Remember that writing is all about the movements we make with pen to paper or crayon to paper so even if your child is not writing letters clearly yet, these types of activities are great to help them work on these fine motor skills without them feeling like they are 'working' on letters.

 For this math activity, each child received a piece of paper with a number on it. Then, they counted out and glued that number of balloons above a picture of a house to mimic the house from the movie, Up.  

The kids got to make their own Mike Wazowski from Monsters, Inc. by glueing one eye, two ears, and three teeth onto a green paper plate. During this project, we practiced simple maths skills and discussed the proper amount of glue to put on each piece of Mike! 

After the Mike Wazowski art project, we talked about how different our bodies are from Mike's body.  This led into singing and dancing along to "A Tooty Ta", a popular song in the preschool that asks us to move various parts of our bodies!  This is a hit song every year among not only the kids, but the teachers and all our preschooler families. 

The preschoolers took turns writing letters of the alphabet in a tray of salt.  This helped to strengthen pre-writing skills as well as our ability to share and patiently wait for our turn during an activity.  If you have salt at home, flour or sugar, pour some onto a plate and enjoy drawing in it! 

Later, the children had so much fun bowling and knocking over Olaf pins!  The goal of this game was to knock down as many pins as possible during each turn. Everyone loved the little break from the intense learning of the day and enjoyed moving around during the gross motor bowling game!  

Here the kids are playing an iPad game called VinyImation where they get to design a Mickey or Minnie person. They were given the option to paint the characters with their fingertips, or select a pre-made design. They were also allowed to add accessories such as a hat, bow, or glasses to their characters.  Learning how to use technology is a part of our curriculum now and we range in activities with technology from storytelling using iPads to playing games to learn how to use touch pad tech features.

On Wednesday this week each preschooler played a small motor game.  Small motor skills involve pinching or using the fingers in a way to increase their small muscle control.  By playing these games the children will improve their writing, cutting and painting skills without doing any of those actions!  The children found it challenging to pick up and throw all of the different sized Pom-Pom balls into the small Dixie cups.  

While half of the children were playing the small motor game, the other half were making Mickey Mouse sun-catchers.  They glued pink, blue, yellow, and orange pieces of tissue paper to the outline of Mickey's head. Then one of the teachers read a story about Minnie Mouse and a rainbow which tested the children on color identification.  

We also practiced our pre-reading skills this week by spelling out different Disney characters' names!  These word puzzles exercised the children's minds as they tried all different letter combinations as they matched the letters to the order in the word above.

As we prepared our final science activity the children were given all the colors that represent the emotions in one of Disney's latest films; Inside Out.  The children had to identify each color then mixed them all together as they talked about how important it is to feel every emotion represented in the film and activity.

The science activity for Friday was exciting as we melted ice cubes with vinegar in tin trays to find treasure!  The children pushed the ice cubes around the trays with spoons in order to discover what was in their treasure chest.  Everyone was very excited to take home the penny that came out of the ice cube!

Using some construction paper and noise makers, we got to make our own Pascal chameleons from Disney's Tangled!  We talked about how chameleons change color and catch flies with their long tongues.  The children absolutely loved pretending to be chameleons!  

We also pretended to be Mickey Mouse today after we made red hats with black ears as we role played these traditional Disney characters. 

To practice our math skills, we sorted paper clips that matched the colors on our Mickey Mouse head sheets of paper and figured out which color had the most, the least, etc.

For fine motor skill time on Friday the children were given Play-Doh in the shape of Mickey Mouse and were allowed to decorate it however they choose practicing the pincher grasp as they used google eyes, sequins and other small decorations.

What's Coming Up?  

• Remember we will not have school this Monday, September 28th as the school will be having a change of schedule that day.
• When we arrive back at school on Wednesday, September 30th, we will be talking about the arts through music, stories, writing, and art in all its varieties!
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• *Thanks as always to our wonderful High School Interns (Emily, Rachel & Shannon) for working on this blog post!

Welcome to the start of a new year!

We had a terrific first week of preschool!  On our first day, we reviewed the Welcome and Days of the Weeks songs and identified and discussed various classroom objects that we will be using this year like the Today Board where we talk about the day, the week, the month and the year along with the season and weather.  

We had a lot of fun guessing what the objects were based on a zoomed-in picture of each one!  

We learned about the parts of the preschool room today and rotated stations on Mrs. Stary's command.  The kitchen was crowded because cooking for the teachers was an exciting challenge!  Some preschoolers enjoy creating their own food creations out of our Play-Doh as well (pizza is the class favorite). While at the train table, we learned about different automobiles and traffic patterns, others chose to take a quiet moment to read with their teachers.

The block center is a great way for us to use our imaginations!  We love building tall towers and elaborate castles but knocking our own creations down is one of our favorite parts! 

There are so many options in the preschool room!  The sensory table always has interesting objects to feel and measure.  The tool and costume stations allow us to be anything that we want to be!  From a skillful builder, to a beautiful princess, or even a dangerous dragon!

Every preschool day, there is a letter of the day. For the first day of school, the letter was A. After a series of pictures that start with the letter are shown, a teacher will demonstrate how to make a capital A and a lower case a.  Then, we practice making the sounds and anyone with an A in their name gets to make the letter of the day on the board before we all go to the tables to practice individually too. 

We heard a few stories this week about school and all the types of people who go to school and how it makes them feel.  It brought up good discussions about how we should behave at school as well as how we might feel as we go through the course of our school day.

One activity we did on the first day of school was play with a parachute. The kids loved to make waves and bounce bean bags off the parachute. It definitely put a smile on everyone's face and gave us all a good upper body work out too.  People often think they can't do the parachute at home but if you have a sheet, you most certainly can!  Head outside with a sheet and a few pairs of bundled socks and you can re-create our classroom activity at home!

We learned about our fingerprints and discussed how each every one of us is different as we had each child place every finger on an ink pad then press their finger prints on to a hand.  We then used magnify glasses to view how each finger print looked different from all the rest in the room.

After discussing and analyzing our finger prints, we came to the conclusion each of us has many talents. Some of us are good at soccer, some are good at hula hooping, and some are good at balancing on a beam! 

After talking about what makes us all different this week, we also talked about the different families we come from and decided to show off who lives in our homes.  We noticed while some people live with one parent, others have grandparents in their homes and many have babies.  

We then made pennants out of things that represent us, like various toys, sports and included Pirate Pete for our school spirit!  Each preschooler had the choice of which items they wanted to cut out and glue to their pennant to hang up at home.

We also studied our letters and matched upper and lower case letters together and spelled out words related to school with the teachers.  We drew pictures of our families and explained all the images we drew before placing them in our cubbies to move on to the last activity of the week.

To close out the week of learned about one another and understand we have some similarities and some differences, we talked about apples.  We discussed the many varieties of color and taste then asked the children to color their own sun catcher apple in whatever colors they enjoy eating.  Some children chose red, others green and a few yellow.  We also had some technicolored apples with all three colors used.  Hang these up in the window at home to enjoy this fall apple season!

As the year continues, we really hope that every week can bring fun and exciting experiences that will help us learn and grow!  

What's Coming Up?

• This coming week, we will be using children's movies and television shows as a way to make learning fun!  Look for classic characters to be used to work one pre-reading and math concepts!

• Monday, September 28 there will be no preschool, it will be a two day week due to a change in the high school schedule.

*Thanks to our Program interns (Emily, Rachel & Shannon) for working on this week's blog post!