Thanks for a Great Week!

This week was short and sweet and while we had many children out enjoying vacations we also had a good time with those who were here.

The nurse came back on Monday for the vision tests I told you about last week.  She will be visiting next week for make ups and double checks.  If you would like a copy of your child's form for any reason, please email me and I'll send a copy home for you to keep.  Otherwise the records will stay here at school.

After our terrific Star of the Week poster presentation, we heard about how the vision game would be played with the nurse and practiced together.  Then while students took turns playing the vision game with the nurse, we started our first project of the week with turkeys to hang on the refrigerator at home.  

We examined and learned about cranberries and after dissection, we learned what 'harvest' objects would sink and float and then we 'harvested' the cranberries the way they might in the real world.  

When it was time for math on Monday, we passed around pages with numbers and visual cues for the children to glue the correct amount of feathers to the page that corresponded with the number they saw.  

Today in math we counted and showed number recognition with Thanksgiving meal objects.



Pilgrims, Native Americans and the Mayflower were reviewed today as we looked at the history of Thanksgiving and then read a story about what Thanksgiving might look like in today's world.  

Since Thanksgiving is usually linked to family we sang Dr. Jean's "My Mother is a Baker" and practiced it a few times this week.  The children love it so get it and practice it at home!  You just may see it come graduation time!

Food and Thanksgiving are so closely related to each other that we couldn't just have one cranberry experiment this week.  We also talked about apples and how they turn brown when cut open.  The children were given pieces of apples and were allowed to manipulate them any way they wished (many chose to try to smash them and make applesauce.)  We broke them apart more, counted seeds, peeled the skin of the apples away and talked about what parts they liked to eat best.  We left some cut up apples out and watched them get more and more brown as the day went on.  I challenged them all to do the same at home and see what happens!

Lastly, we made centerpieces for your Thanksgiving tables that should be able to stand on their own this weekend.  I hope you all enjoy your time off and we will see you on Monday!

What's Coming Up?
We will be talking about Community Helpers next week and visiting our Palatine High School Media Center to hear from our librarians on Wednesday, the 4th.

Spring 2014 tuition is due Friday, December 6th  (for current AM preschoolers)  If I don't have it by then or haven't spoken with you about payment arrangements I will be opening up spaces the following week.

Dino-mite Preschool Fun

We went back in time this week to the land of dinosaurs and had a roaring good time!  

Since the word dinosaur starts with letter D our first project was to make a dinosaur out of the letter D!  The kids had a great time cutting out the heads, scales and tales and gluing them onto their letter D's on Monday.

We focused on number recognition and object recognition with amounts as we counted dinosaurs and then had to find the correct number that corresponds with the amount in that row.  When counting with your children at home, the store, anywhere, please be sure to help your child touch the objects and count slowly.  It's age appropriate for them to want to just guess the amount and race through counting to a set number in their head as opposed to the amount shown so help them get into good mathematical practices by touching the objects to help them keep track of the amounts they see.

We reviewed some 'old favorite' songs this week and watched some sing along dino tunes as well.  If you are looking for songs our preschoolers enjoy, search for anything by Dr. Jean, the kids (and teachers) enjoy "Tooty Ta" and "We're Going on a Bear Hunt."  Later in the year you will see more posts about music and fun songs the kids enjoy.

For one of our science activities this week, we became archaeologists  when the children were able to break open some fossils we made with Crayola Kraft Dough (ahead of time) then the kids were given 'scrapers' (forks) and (toy) hammers to break open the fossils and find dinosaurs to take home.  They also then were given that same clay, which was still soft, and they were able to make fossils themselves using the dinosaurs they found in class.

We talked about what animals are born in eggs and then made a take-away art project where the children were able to make a 'dino-egg' that opened to show the baby dinosaur inside to help them remember our discussions in class.

We had a visitor thanks to Dino Dan and his pterodactyl.  There are many Dino Dan apps but this one shows a pterodactyl fling around the room and as we put it on our big screen, the kids loved trying to catch it as it 'flew' around the room.  Check it out on your phone or ipad!

We made brachiosaurus with paper plates as well and had a good time deciding what eyes to add to it and what color to make them.  With a little cut here and glue there, the circle plates turned into terrific dinos!

There are great dinosaur apps for kids to get to be archaeologists at home and learn more about dinosaur names and the correct way to pronounce them.  Puzzles and matching games are out there as well but the archaeology game was the class favorite for the week.


We had a great Star of the Week presented and a special guest this week as well!  The school nurse came by on Friday and will return again on Monday and Wednesday for hearing and vision tests.  She introduced the machine to the children and then let them play the listening game with me while I put the headphones on and listened for the beeps as the took turns pushing the button to make the noise for me.  After that, as the day went on, we brought the kids to our kitchen with a friend as they listened for the beeps for the hearing game.  Monday she will be coming back for our vision tests and will do make ups where needed.  Once I have the paperwork from her, I'll be sending you copies for your records.

What's Coming Up?

This week we will have preschool Monday and Wednesday with Friday off for the Thanksgiving Holiday.  We will be talking about Thanksgiving this week and have many fun things in store for the kids.

Registration for our Spring Afternoon Session is in full swing so please pass along this link for Mailing List Sign Up as we take names for the MWF session running from 1:00 - 2:30.

Don't forget the $200 tuition for the Spring AM Session is due by December 6th and follow me on Pinterest or Twitter for more ideas you can do at home with your kids about any and all of our themes for this year in preschool!

Technology and Toddlers???

I'll be honest, I didn't have my first phone until my senior year of high school and just got rid of my land line last year.  But if you were to see me tonight working on this blog post you would find my laptop, iPad and iPhone all out and ready to use!

People refer to technology as the new "way of the world" and in the world of early childhood education I see no exception to that rule.  Our Advanced Early Childhood Education teachers have been working with iPads this year in our 1:1 setting.  We are now blending technology more into our preschool program as we take what we learned and start to apply it more with children ages 3 - 5.  A recent assignment brought wonderful discussions and sharing in our classes as we searched and found our "Top Choices" for preschooler games on the iPad.

 Special Note:
Some of these might be available on your smart phones parents so even if you don't have an iPad, you might have a chance to allow your child to try some of these games when you are out and about standing in line at the grocery store, riding in the car on the way to visit family this winter or just having family fun on a Friday night.  Please note this is a post recommending materials we find might enhance skills for school or allow for creativity where supplies are limited.  These materials should be used in supervised, limited amounts as active children are the most healthy children.  Here you will find information from the American Academy of Pediatrics about how and when to use technology to help your child, not take over your child.  The apps you are will read about should be used in limited amounts each day as social skills and physical activity still need to be developed in these young children.  For more information about the Let's Move Program, please click here.

For any of the apps listed below, search for the title listed to find games in iTunes or your app search engine.

If you are looking for programs to help your child with recognizing and/or writing letters, these are some terrific apps we have found will work as you review and practice pre-reading and writing skills with your child:
Little Speller
Elmo Letters
123 Tracing (to practice wring numbers)

Learning vocabulary in Spanish is fun with Fun Spanish too! (They also have Fun English if your child is learning English)

Apps that will help read to your child or allow for your child to try reading on his/her own include: Disney Storybook and many others.

Apps that allow a more artistic side to shine through with either drawing or storytelling would be:
Toontastic Stories (kids love this one because THEY create the story)
Drawing Desk
Fantasy Land
Disney Creativity Studio 2

There are many apps that offer a variety of options to play and do from puzzles to sorting math games and science information.  
We enjoyed:
PBS Kids
Khan Academy
Ocean Games

Edukiddies (there are many Edu apps with these characters dealing with nutrition to hygiene and more)
Preschool and Kindergarten learning games
iLearn programs are also terrific for a variety of ages and grades

If there are apps you would like to share, please email me and let me know, and if you are interested in others, don't hesitate to ask.  I often Tweet  links I find to other recommendation sites and have done so this very evening.  

One last bit of advice, please be sure to test games out before you just hand over your learning tool to them, be sure it's something you feel they can handle and also something safe!

Happy Searching!

The Magic of Preschool!

Disney Week is the most popular week in preschool among the preschoolers because there is just so much out there for them to do!  In fact, because this is a theme they all enjoy, we do it twice a year; once in the fall and then again in the spring.

This time, we started out Disney Week with some fun discussions about which Disney movies and shows are favored by the preschoolers.  We shared a Star of the Week poster and introduced the games and projects for the days ahead.
 
Winnie the Pooh is a timeless character children still enjoy today so we made puppets out of red paper bags and Winnie the Pooh faces for the children to enjoy at home.  If you are looking for another project to do at home, you can get orange paper bags (or color a brown or white one) and print out a picture of Tigger.  Then the dramatic play can go even further!

We are looking for more ways to incorporate technology with our youngsters and this week (thanks to Disney) we enjoyed story time with Disney Apps that read to us!  I'll be posting more information about Apps in the next blog but wanted to share these two with you now.

Toy Story Read Along with Disney Digital Books and Disney Storytime were the apps we were able to check out from the app store this week on our iPads.  Both of these apps have the option to allow an older child to read the story him/herself, but in the case of our preschoolers, we chose the Read to Me option to hear the story.  These books contain sound affects and highlight the words as they are read throughout the story.  If you remember the Read Along Books from the days when I was a child, you could say this is the "new version" of an "old trick."  While we choose free apps to work with in school, if your child enjoys these you may look into paying for more stories like this to read to them in the car on those long holiday trips coming up.

As stated earlier, Disney has terrific age appropriate games for boys and girls and we took technology time to have gaming stations this week with the kids.  Each teacher took out his/her iPad and played various Disney Games with the children.  All of these games were approved by our class on a non-preschool day first and the children are monitored the entire time they play.  These are two pieces of advice with technology and small children I share with you today.  Please be sure to try games yourself first and then supervise their play until you are comfortable letting the child explore on his or her own.  Technology is a wonderful and powerful tool, but it is our responsibility to teach children how to use it appropriately.

 The Apps we chose to use this week were: Toontastic Jr. Stories (Shrek), Disney Creativity Studio and Disney Princess Palace Pets.  More details will follow in the next blog about other apps we have used with the children or recommend for home.

As terrific as technology is, there is extreme power in reading actual BOOKS to your child as well.  We not only read a Bambi story in small groups this week, we also had many children requesting stories to be read to them during free play time as well.  The wonderful connection a person makes to children as a book is read together is something that has been passed down for generations, the love of learning and reading is encouraged the old fashioned way each day in Pirate Pete Preschool during instruction and free times through books and playing puppet shows, dramatic play and more.

We made magical necklaces this week to work on our patterns and fine motor skills like the ones in various books and movies from Disney.  The children were able to wear them or take them home for someone to share the magic from school. It's important they all have the opportunity to do projects like this, it's not just a "girl thing," it's a math and pre-writing activity.  As children learn about the world around them, it's nice to remind them anyone can make objects like these magic necklaces and support them as they enjoy the process.

Last week, I talked about process verses product and this week after we read our Monsters Inc. story we passed out any creative supplies we had and the children had the freedom to create any monster they would like.  These are the types of projects the kids enjoy most, just take out some glue, sparkles, feathers, paper, googly eyes, toilet paper rolls and they will really impress you!  I leave you with the many monsters we enjoyed on Friday!

 

 

What's Coming Up?

Dinosaur Week will be coming up Monday followed by Thanksgiving Week the last week of November.  We have preschool Monday and Wednesday the week of Thanksgiving with only taking Friday the 29th of November off for the holiday.