What do I want to do when I grow up?

This week we worked hard at learning what grown ups do when they work hard.  If you ask a preschooler what their parent does for a career they will usually tell you, "work."  If you then ask where they work the child will usually tell you, "they work at their job."  This is the type of conversation that helps support why we talk about various careers each year in school.  This week the kids in preschool learned the word career and how it can represent the same concept as a job or work.

We talked a lot about scientists this week and how many types of scientists there are out there in the world.  We created experiments that helped us study the changes that chemicals make to other objects.  Some of these experiments had us testing which ingredients would clean pennies best while others were all about mixing ingredients together to see what changes we could make to those materials.

Some of these experiments involved making lava lamps with vegetable oil, water, food coloring and alka-seltzer.  Others involved us building volcanoes.  Typically, the teachers demonstrate how to do the experiment at one table and then send the children to the other tables in the room to repeat the same experiment on their own to check for their ability to follow directions.

We did some dramatic play this week as well and acted as doctors and veterinarians taking care of babies and animals while using a real stethoscope to check for heart beats.  We also looked at real x-rays and tried to guess what body part we were looking at when we looked at the bones.

We also practiced fixing things with our tool center and making food for a make shift restaurant as chefs and wait staff in our kitchen area.  The children worked at cooperative play with the teachers in the program and were helped to learn how to play cooperatively with their peers.  With a young group of preschoolers such as ours cooperative play is a work in progress so activities like structured dramatic play helps teachers model appropriate play so that during free play time the children can pick up where we left off.

This week we were automotive designers and built police cars out of wheels and sirens and blue paint and stars.  These are currently hanging in our preschool room for us to enjoy along with our graph that was made during math time about which careers our preschoolers want to take on when they grow up; right now Power Rangers and police officers are the majority.

We are working on our fine motor skills a lot each day and cutting with scissors is a huge skill to acquire before going to kindergarten.  Our teachers are working one on one with the children as they have down time to keep documenting their progress in this area.  However, we also work on cutting in groups and this week we did so as we acted out the roles of hair stylists.

Cutting materials like paper towel rolls, straws and play doh help the children improve these skills easier than paper at first because they are easier to hold than a piece of paper.  We will continue to work on these skills at school both with paper and other objects but strongly recommend supervised work with scissors at home as well to improve these skills.

Writing and cutting go hand in hand as they work many of the same muscles in the hand.  The children are working on writing letters but for many this is a difficult task to take on as they have limited motor control.  So, while we will continue to do letter writing activities each day, don't dismiss your child's work because he or she is making scribbles instead of letters at this point.  The first writing any one of us adults ever did was scribbles; it's where we all got our start and is still important.

At home many parents expect their child to work on just writing letters but this is a hard task to complete when we need to work more on how to hold a writing utensil firmly to leave strong marks on a page.  Playing with play doh, putting beads on a string, coloring in a coloring book, putting stickers on pages, and working with legos all are ways to work these little muscle groups that are more fun than just trying to write some letters.  Keep up those other fun activities and home and you will see the children more eager to write once those muscles get stronger.

Another activity we did this week to work on our small motor skills and literacy skills was to draw in shaving cream on the tables.  The children love working with their hands and they cleaned our tables at the same time.  All you need is shaving cream and a large surface and you are set!  The children were shown various letters then asked to draw those with their fingers in the shaving cream.  

We also ripped up paper streamers and tissue paper this week to build muscle strength as we tore 'fire colored' paper to glue down to fill in the letter Ff for fire fighters when we talked about that career.

 We created astronauts this week with paper plates after talking about that career and worked on added the correct amount of meatballs to our spaghetti pots after a discussion about chefs.

We learned some phonics of various career related words at circle time when we identified the first sound of words like doctor and nurse then found the words with a D or N next to them and hung them on the wall with the appropriate picture of the corresponding career.

There are many ways artists can make their living so we tried our hand at free painting this week with tape art.  The children placed tape in various places on their paper and then painted over it to mix colors and look for changes on their paper with this added texture. 

We read a lot of books this week about gardeners and doctors and becoming a teacher too.  The high schoolers loved hearing the children tell them that they were silly because they can't want to become teachers, they already ARE teachers!  It's so great to hear the children validate all the hard work the teachers of our program put in each week to make Pirate Pete Preschool such a success!

We can't always stay sitting, we need to move and this week we had fire fighter training with an obstacle course that involved keeping their balance on balance beams and crawling through tunnels to 'save the day.'

We 'drove' outside this week on scooters and directed the 'traffic' of the people on their way to work as we rode around outside enjoying the wonderful weather this week.

Besides driving on scooters and working those legs, we practiced a variety of sports as we learned the word athlete and the importance of practicing skills to improve over time.  We played basketball and soccer to name a few.  More of these types of activities will come during sports week but it was nice to see them excited about this upcoming topic as we played in the room too.

What's Coming Up?

This coming week we will be talking about the outdoors and going camping.  We are planning a ton of fun activities to go with this theme and can't wait!

Don't forget to make plans for the week of October 9th as we will take that week off for a 'fall break' due to the many crazy schedules that week at the high school.

Getting to know our new Pirates!

This week we learned about some very special people, our Pirate Pete Preschoolers!  The children heard a variety of stories at various times this week that focused on children, their families and our feelings.  Sometimes we read books in class and other times we we heard drawing stories and puppet shows.  The children are all practicing their listening skills at the circle and are doing a great job participating during question time.

We also had some time on i-Pads this week as we played games that involved dressing for the day and taking care of virtual baby sisters and learned how to help care for them by feeding, bathing and helping take naps.  The children talked about what each character in the games needed and worked on providing those skills to care for the family members in their games.  We talked about how good it feels to take care of others and what all people need to do each day.

We played some dice games using a home made dice a teacher made that held images to 'read' that would ask the 'thrower'  to answer a question about themselves like their favorite toy, game, food, animal, etc.  This way as people took turns throwing the die we were able to learn more about one another.

We are still working on our letters of the day as we do each day of the year and the children are doing a great job adjusting to the procedures we hold with guessing the letter by watching images and then watching the teacher demonstrate how to draw the letters then allowing children who have that letter in the beginning of their name come up and draw it at the front of the room as well.  Don't be surprised if your younger child is bringing home paper with more scribbles than letters.  That is age appropriate and it will improve with time.  Right now they are working on the fine motor muscle development needed to write later on.

We are learned more songs now as well, My Mother is a Baker, The Cool Bear Hunt, 5 Little Monkeys and Head, Shoulders, Knees and Toes.  We will be singing these songs as well as others throughout the year.  Many of these listed are the class favorites and this is why we start the year with them. 

Each day when the children walk in they are expected to find their name three times; on the attendance wall to mark themselves at school, in their cubby to put away their belongings and then their name tags to wear.  Many of the children are doing wonderfully with this and to help reinforce this we worked on writing and reading their names this week.  The children had to find their names on the paper at the tables and then trace the letters below to write it and then sort the pre-cut-out letters and glue them down in order of their name.  We will do this throughout the year at times to help chart the progress.

As we talked about emotions and the various feelings we all feel sometimes, we used the Disney movie Inside Out to help the children identify the various emotions by matching the image of the emotion with the word that was written in the color of the emotion in a puzzle.  This helps with phonics for future reading skills and allows the children success but matching puzzle pieces instead of the words.

 This week we also reinforced the ideas from the movie Inside Out with some Skittle science; each colored piece of candy represents a different feeling and the children were asked to place the candy around the edge of a plate in whatever order they wanted, then teachers poured warm water over them and we were able to watch the colors bleed together to show the beauty of feeling lots of emotions.

Next we reinforced this concept by placing the colors of the emotions on the table and giving each child a silhouette of a human head.  We listened to a variety of Disney songs and decided what emotion the characters singing were feeling and then chose the appropriate color to use to color to the beat of the music with the crayon.

 We played some of the teachers favorite preschool games to learn what options we will have during free play time.  We have sequencing cards to practice concepts of first, second and third.  We also built objects out of geometric shapes, magnetic tiles and then looked with magnify glasses at animal x-rays and various plants and insects.

Our teachers checked for understanding of the various emotions and linked the facial expressions to the emotions, we were given situations and asked how we would feel if our brother took our favorite toy and broke it, if it was raining outside and we wanted to play and if we were given a brand new puppy.  The children showed various facial expressions and then were shown more and asked to identify the expression in images shown.

Next we went to the tables and used our small motor muscles to shape pipe cleaners into smiles, frowns, angry and scary mouths as teachers would ask them to show various expressions.

We did some relaxing activities this week too as we made it rain in the classroom by using the rhythm sticks to make the sounds of wind rolling in a storm.  The faster we beat our sticks on the floor the harder the rain would fall and then we made wind again to blow the storm away.

We worked with our teachers on a variety of drawings and paintings of our families this week.  We enjoyed counting the members of our families and then looked around the room for the number that coordinated with then headed over to that number and taped it under that number so we could learn what amount each numeral represents.

The children were able to work on their cutting skills for the first time this year.  Many teachers are helping hold the paper while the children learn to use scissors.  Some of the children are able to hold the paper on their own while cutting but if they do not practice at home we are working on it at school.  

 We had a great spirit week with Pajama Day, Yellow Day and Pirate Pride day!  While every Friday we wear something PHS or red we enjoyed dressing up to show our school spirit.

What's Coming Up?

 This coming week we will be talking about careers.  We are going to be asking what the children want to be when they grow up as well as teach them about the various community helpers in our area as well.