Fall is here!

Our official fall theme kicked off with a shorter week this October and a terrific Star Student presentation after our daily Today Board and Welcome Songs were sung.  

Each day, we practice the concept of spelling in order to understand what the idea of spelling something even means.  However, this week we decided to work on spelling some pretty important words...the preschooler's names!  

The children were each handed a special bag containing Popsicle sticks with a different letter written on each one.  As the children pulled out their sticks, they saw all of the letters of their name jumbled in this pile of sticks. Each child worked with teachers to find and recognize the letters of their name and glued the sticks on their page in the correct order.

Some of our more experienced preschoolers didn't need much help because they knew how to spell their name or they have only a few letters to work with, however some of our newer preschoolers or the children with longer names were super excited about putting together the letters in the exact order necessary to spell the name they see on their name tag.  

In fact, some children checked for corrections using their name tags (many often take off their name tags when writing their names to be sure they have the correct order as well). Feel free to work on writing or just spelling your child's name with him/her using blocks, Popsicle sticks, toy cars, anything you place letters on and can scramble.

We heard a story about a pumpkin patch as well as a Very Busy Spider this week as we get the fall theme rolling. The children love predicting what will happen next and when reading books by authors as great as Eric Carle, they often ask to hear the story again. This week we were making spiders with our hand prints to hang in our classroom! (Look to our ceiling at the Halloween party to check out their handiwork.)

After our pumpkin patch story, we made our own pumpkin patches as the children used green and orange paint to create a patch of their own design. 

Sometimes the children do not like to touch the paint when we are using our hands; this can be a normal phase in development and we do not force them to put paint on their hands. 

When these issues arise we offer them crayons in the same colors as the paint and the children draw while the rest of the group paints. Remember art is a time for creativity and fun and pressuring a child who is not ready to use paint isn't something we support. 

By the end of the year, everyone is willing to touch the paint and get a little messy, some just take longer to get used to the idea than others. 

Some of our preschoolers wanted to only put glue on this next project, and the teachers got a little messy instead.  I was so excited to create this week's monster project!  

This is the time of year we start to see monster costumes in stores and on television and we saw this as the perfect time to help the children make a cute little monster they can enjoy with their families to keep from getting scared of anything they might see out and about this month.

Thanks to everyone who brought in baby food jars; we found these are a good size for tea candles and now that we have painted them with glue and rolled them in colored Epsom salts then topped them with googley eyes they are ready to hang out in your living rooms in a safe place to view them glowing on a cool fall evening. 

You probably saw some math patterns come home with pumpkins and leaves as we have been talking about these a lot in school now.  The children did a nice job talking about the patterns with their teachers to figure out what would go next in each row. The next time you go out to play or rake the leaves, collect a few to bring into the house and you can set up a similar pattern game with your child using the world around him/her.

We practiced spelling the word 'FALL' first on paper with crayons and then using fall shapes and objects like leaves, pumpkins, squash, and more. Why do we use all capitol letters?  Remember learning any language requires visual recognition as well as verbal understanding and an upper case 'A' and a lower case 'a' mean the same thing but look totally different.

So, sometimes we will use only uppercase letters for a project somewhere in the room and then show the children the same word in lower case someplace else in the room.  Instead of memorizing 26 letters of the alphabet, they are really learning more than that because so many letters in our language look different as an uppercase letter as opposed to lower case.  Activities like this help the children focus on sounding out a word instead of learning all the letter symbols which make up that word.

While some of our preschoolers were creating their words, the rest played a game with the teachers by walking around the a circle of images we see in the fall. When the teacher shouted, "stop," the children had to find the object that matched the picture she was holding. 

Once the children matched the object on the floor to the object in her hand, they talked about it then moved on to the next image.  We talked about the changing weather and how we have to start wearing coats, how we are seeing the leaves change color and fall, people play football and other fall sports and spiders and other creepy critters start looking for warm homes to come in from the cold. 

We did a few "P" projects this week as we talked about the sound 'P' makes and what things start with that letter. We noticed Pumba from, The Lion King, started with letter p and that pumpkin did as well. This was our transition to math where the children were given a pumpkin with a number written on it and "seeds". 

They had to count out and paste the correct number of seeds that corresponded to the number on their pumpkin.  Many enjoyed finding a pumpkin with the number that represented their age.  They took pride in recognizing that number and showing the teachers they understood 'how many' that number represented.

Next, we talked about decorations people start to put out as we drive around this month and we talked about mummies. We learned how when a person is wrapped up, they might be called a mummy so we would try to "wrap" a mummy in tape. This was such a fun small motor activity for the kids and they took a long time tearing their tape and placing it on their mummies in just the right spots. 

Did you know you can get scotch tape at the local dollar store?  It's true and you will be amazing that something so cheap can give your child hours of fun pulling off pieces of tape and placing them on things. 
So, instead of teaching them to put tape all over our walls or furniture, we gave them a paper man cut out and told them to make him a mummy!  Give it a try, they love it!

One thing you might see in the background of some of our photos is a teacher and preschooler working one on one together away from the rest of the group. This is when the teacher is working on materials and checkpoints for the case study they will put together for families at the end of the year.  

Based on the work they see from your child, observations they make and conversations they have, they will complete a report card for your child at the end of this semester to give you a check point to refer to as we move to the spring semester.  If you haven't yet done so, please complete this form telling us if you would like your child's portfolio online or given to you in hard copy form. 

What's Coming Up?

• There is no school on Monday, October 13th in observance of Columbus Day.
  
• We will work with our children this month talking about seasons (mainly but not limited to fall) as well as weather, animals (and their patterns of living that change due to weather conditions.
  
• Palatine High School's Trick or Treat with Pirate Pete will take place on Thursday, October 30th from 5:00-6:30 PM.
  
• Our Preschool Halloween Party will be on Friday, October 31st from 9:30 - 10:45 AM.  Invitations and details will go home on this Friday in preschooler cubbies.