Kicking up a good time!

Monday was our Pirate Pete Preschool Halloween party where we trick or treated after a great story in the library at school.  We enjoyed treats in the classroom after our adventures and wanted to share some great photos before talking about the rest of the week's sports theme.

After a terrific time at our Halloween party on Monday, we enjoyed learning about a variety of sports the rest of the week.  We practiced playing a variety of sports to burn off some of that candy filled energy by kicking different types and sizes of balls to see which ones would go the furthest.  We then used colored cones to help us measure to mix large motor games with science.

We did take a break from our kicking to work those small motor skills by tracing letters and words.  

We learned to identify a golf ball and noticed the difference between a golf ball and other balls used with sports and then painted with golf balls by rolling them in our large tubs to make all kinds of designs as we rocked them back and forth.

We read a few stories this week about good sportsmanship and teamwork and talked about how we can show these skills in school and with our friends. 

This week we also worked on identifying the various types of balls that are used in various sports and then used them to trace our names on paper.  Some children used only specific types of balls like only soccer balls or only volleyballs because those are the types of sports they enjoy most while other preschoolers make patterns instead.

We talked about football and what color a football typically is and then worked on painting footballs to reiterate the color that is not often covered in most other activities.

We then talked about and identified the parts of a football player's uniform and then traced either the starting letter and worked on those phonics or traced the entire word and identified each letter as we wrote them.

We played soccer a lot this week too as many of our preschoolers said they play this game outside of school and told us how much they enjoyed it.  We practiced kicking and getting the ball to go into the soccer net or between the cones that were set up for them.

However, soccer wasn't the only sport we played this week, we also played basketball and learned how to shoot hoops and get the ball to go into the net.  Learning where to stand in order to get it to go into the net is something that takes practice and this week we were on a roll with basketball and positioning ourselves to pass the ball around like in volleyball.  This week we used a beach ball to learn the concepts of volleyball because it moves a little slower in the air than a true volleyball.

After hearing a great Star of the Week presentation we learned about more sports this week that included dancing and long jumping.  The children have loved getting to do so many large motor activities this week, we have been able to do so many more due to the theme than our typical handful of activities.  Hopefully we have been able to burn off some of that Halloween candy energy this week with all of our activities.

 We worked on more hand-eye coordination this week by throwing rings on cones to help hone in the skills of getting objects to land where we want them to so we can improve these skills as in play outside of school.

 In connection to hand-eye coordination within school, we know we need to work with fine motor coordination to build writing skills.  To work on this, after throwing rings on cones, we grabbed crayons and then traced lines on paper to make the crayon follow the path with our eyes and hands at the same time. 

 After sitting, we got up to move again and played musical hula hoops.  This game is a lot of fun and a way to support team building with the kids as they had to join together inside the hoops when the music would stop.  

As the game went on, then we took hula hoops away and the children had to squeeze together to get into fewer and fewer hoops.  It is a lot of fun and gets them to work together as if they were on a team.

Before heading home we worked on two other projects; one about basketball and the other about baseball.  We had to read the number written in the basketball hoop and dot that many circle shaped onto the page.  One thing many of you might notice is that some of the children did not follow these directions.  We had a lot of preschoolers make more dots than required so we are working on building the skills to follow these directions better.  

We also learned this week that baseballs have laces and the children chose what color laces they wanted their baseballs to have and were told to lace up the ball.  Some children took it upon themselves to turn their baseballs into necklaces instead.  In this case, not following the directions to a tee worked out well; the children were still able to work on their fine motor threading skills while at the same time showing their creativity.  We could still check for understanding of these concepts and they were able to do their own thing at the same time.

What's coming up?

This coming week we will be talking about all things Disney.  The kids typically love this week as we talk about many of the characters they know and love and are able to introduce some they don't know yet.  

Don't forget that the week of November 19th we will not have preschool due to the Thanksgiving break.  Save the dates so you know not to come to school that week.