Welcome to 2016 Pirate Pete Preschoolers!

We had a great start to the new semester at Pirate Pete Preschool!  Our morning preschoolers remember all of our Welcome and Days of the Week songs and reminded us we are in a new year (2016) as well.  
The afternoon preschoolers are learning all of our routines and songs to start the day and were excellent helpers at the the Today Board too as they learned about the month, weather and seasons. 

The afternoon preschoolers also worked on doing a scavenger hunt together to learn the parts of the room like our attendance wall and cubbies. We use these things each day and it was nice to take the time to learn about these places our classroom and what they are used for. 

We learned about the blocks and costume areas as well as the play kitchen.  The toughest part of the day is always hearing the clean up song to start an activity and know it's time to pause our play time to get back to learning other ways.  

We also got a new rug for our circle time area and the morning and afternoon preschoolers played on the newly decorated part of our room. 

Because we are Pirate Pete Preschool, after hearing a story about bringing a mouse to school, the children in the morning made pirate hats to bring home and play pirates as we welcomed them back to our ship. 

Inserting the pipe cleaner connectors to the holes in the hat and adding special decorations made this activity one that supports fine motor or finger muscle skills which aid in better writing and cutting. 

The children were also instructed in the morning to sort "gems" from pirate treasures by sorting colored tiles into color patterns given to them by their teachers. 

We walked on balance beams, crawled through tunnels and jumped on floor pads to have adventures in the classroom. The morning children then used a 'magic' solution (vinegar) to bubble up hidden treasures of their own to place in sandy water bottles to take home and enjoy. 

To re-create this fun at home, just place baking soda and water in ice cube trays (you can color them too if you want) and drop in a few coins or sparkle or something in each ice cube space then have them freeze over night.  When you take them out the next day, place them into a bowl then squirt, spray or pour vinegar onto the treasure chests and watch them fizz and reveal the treasure!

We built pirate ships and used a variety of shapes to create ships to sail on blue water all while practicing cutting to cut out their ships and glue posts, flags and windows to the boat as well. 

The afternoon preschoolers did a great job teaching their teachers about their families as they drew us pictures of the people in their families and explained to us who each person or animal in the drawing was in relation to themselves.  

We like to get drawings like these on record because the drawings of family we see at the end of the year often have more detail and more control in them and we love to look for skill improvement.

Speaking of improvement, each day we work on a Letter of the Day and by the time the end of the year rolls around, we will see their fine motor skills improve and the letters they write will be better and better!  Each day students are chosen to help model how to draw the letter of the day on the board then everyone goes to the tables to practice the letter altogether.

After letter of the day in the afternoon we made small All About Me books at the tables with the teachers as the children practiced writing and talking to the teachers by answering questions about themselves, their likes and dislikes as well as their families.  

Some pages allowed for the children to write on their own and others allowed them to draw and some needed teachers to write down whatever the preschooler said.  Projects like these are our favorites because we get to record the magic of children's answers to questions that surprise us!

To promote writing for all the children, we also created a letter writing activity where the children traced out the first letter of each of our preschoolers to be able to see what letters are common among them.  We have many children who have the same first letter in their name and it was awesome to see this all in one place.

Even though we had a short first week back, our morning preschoolers are eager to be back in the grove and have jumped right back into our schedule and the afternoon preschoolers each came into class all smiles with strong faces and no tears by the second day of class!  We were so impressed!

Since Friday was the last day of school before Valentine's Day we dedicated the day to our family and friends and loving others and started things out by painting and decorating hearts to share with a special someone for Valentine's Day.  These were still wet when we left school so they will be going home next week for everyone to enjoy.

After speaking about the shape that people refer to this time of year, we talked about love and things we love to eat, play and do then working with teachers to answer questions to save and remember later in life about how much we loved pizza, our pets and certain toys.

We did a little candy heart math with hearts that had a variety of numbers written inside them and the children had to place the correct amount of candy hearts on each written heart on the paper.  If you have piles of left over candy hearts at home, try this activity this week; just draw a heart and write a number inside it to see if the children can place the correct amount within the heart after recognizing the number.

We did a little room decorating with some Valentine penguins as the children had to identify the parts of the penguin's body and count how many hearts would make up the penguin.  We now have these hanging around the room for a little while but they will go home at the end of the month for you to enjoy.

Later we jumped for joy on our new circle time rug and we practiced hopping on one and two feet onto a heart path set up like hopscotch. 

We worked on making lovely lava lamps with small water bottles filled with baby oil and water mixed together then we added red water color paint (you can do food coloring at home) along with a variety of beads and other 'do-dads' for decoration.  Then to make it 'bubble up' we dropped in some Alka-Seltzer tablets and closed the lids to watch things move!  One preschooler came up with the idea to turn his bottle upside down and watch the beads and things bubble up to the top and we all had a blast during science!

The morning preschool group wasn't the only group to have fun with science this week!  We made lovely goo out of glue and liquid starch with a little bit of water color paint used for making it whatever color each child loves.  

We started mixing these in ziploc baggies then scooped out the 'goo' into bins to mix better and allow it to squish in our fingers!  It was such a fun time!

We practiced writing by tracing the words "I LOVE" and a heart.  Some preschoolers then wrote another word with help from teachers while others told teachers what they loved and the teachers wrote that on their Valentines.  These came home on Friday for the children to pass out to family or friends near home.

The afternoon preschoolers then worked on decorating their Valentine bags with various stickers sporting hearts of all kinds and creatures holding hearts of all colors.  Each child had to find his/her name on a bag placed on the tables then were able to draw and place stickers anywhere they wanted to be used in our Valentine exchange.

While the teachers began to open the fully decorated bags in preparation for the exchange, the children were able to use hearts to decorate a Valentine's Day picture frame complete with photos we took on the first day of school.  (If your preschooler didn't have a photo, feel free to insert one to keep this item for the memory books!)

Once we finished decorating frames to take home we headed over to our cubbies to take out the Valentines everyone prepared at home.  Both the morning and afternoon Valentine exchanges were run in the same fashion in the room.  

We set all the open Valentine containers around the circle rug and then the teachers held the pile of Valentines and handed them one at a time to the children to place in everyone's bags.  
As we walked in a circle the craziness was kept contained then we placed the containers in the children's cubbies to sing the goodbye song and head out to go home.

What's Coming Up?

• There is no preschool Monday, February 15th due to President's Day and Friday, February 19th due to the State Gymnastics meet at Palatine High School.
  
• We WILL have preschool Wednesday, February 17th and are expecting some special guests to come talk to us about safety.
  
• We will be back into a normal three day school week starting February 22nd as we talk about careers and community helpers!