Imagination leads the way!

We started out this week with another Star Student presentation.  You will receive a poster and directions when it is time for your child to complete it and we will cover about half of our class this semester and the other half second semester.  The children always do a nice job telling us about the people and items in their Star Poster and it's a great way for the class to get to know each other better.

Since this was our last week with a focus on Imagination we had some terrific science experiments, art projects, and games that promoted creative thinking!  The first focus was on our little buddy Olaf from Frozen. 
 The children talked about what happens to a snow man when it gets warm and after we talked about melting snow, we created a 'melting Olaf' in a water bottle.

The children were given the parts of Olaf (white pom pons for his body, black pom pons for the coal and pipe cleaners for a carrot nose and stick arms.)  Once they put all of Olaf in the water bottle, we added the water and a little bit of "Magic" (glitter) and used a glue gun to seal the lid shut and topped it with duct tape (just in case).  Then, the 'Summer Storm' could begin!

Our large motor activity for Monday was jumping from circle to circle down the hallway imagining we were on Mickey Mouse Clubhouse.  Some children wanted to only find large circles, some only medium and others only small.  This helped us build vocabulary and allowed the children to have the freedom to decide how they wanted to play this game.

We structured free play this week with stations for the children to rotate through; restaurant, architect and costume role playing. We chose these three areas of the room and allowed the children time to play in each area.  
The restaurant was a huge hit as some children wanted to be the chef, waiter/waitress or customer.  This is easy to recreate at home and you don't even need toy food!  Children have amazing ways they show their creativity and if you ask them for ideas, they can come up with some pretty cool ways to role play.

 At home, my five-year-old and I play restaurant and all she has is a pad of paper and pencil and brings my imaginary food order to me on books that she carries down the hall like a tray!  See what your little one can come up with at home, you will be surprised at the creativity.

Our workshop area hosted some children practicing the art of building with our toys, however, venture to any children's museum and you will see children wearing goggles while building with real wood, hammers and nails!  All they need is a little guidance and supervision in these instances and they can safely create all sorts of fun inventions!  
The high school teachers will be taking a field trip on one of our non-preschool days coming up this month to the the Chicago Children's Museum to see this practice in action.  They bring their cameras (via phone or iPad) and bring back hundreds of pictures of inspiration they see on this trip and create lessons based on what they want to try to incorporate into our program.  
If you want to be inspired, check out the museum's latest exhibits and see what they have to offer!  The first Sunday of each month kids 15 and under are FREE and every Thursday from 5-8 p.m., EVERYONE is FREE.

 

Playing dress up is always a fun time and our preschoolers pretended to be royalty, dragons, dinosaurs, trains, conductors and passengers as well as doctors and patients.  This is another activity that can be recreated at home with borrowed items from mom or dad or a trip to the local Goodwill or Salvation Army to pick up a few cheap costumes to have around the house.  With Halloween coming up, you just might find some true gems in one of these places you can use at home far past October 31st.

We learned the word architect and practiced what it means to create buildings using small blocks, large bricks and our magnetic shapes.  

Some children pay attention to the details and want to sculpt something using their eye for design and others want to see how high they can go before the building falls.  Some organize the pieces before they begin and others see a structure and run to smash it. 

Whatever your child's method, talking to them as they build with any object will not only help develop their vocabulary but also will teach you what concepts they understand and what they are still learning.  This is why play is so important!  

Children do need to learn to play on their own however playing with you is just as important.  It helps them learn to cooperate and take turns as well as builds language skills and shows you what they know and what goes on inside their little minds.  The best way to get to know your preschooler (in my opinion) is to play with them.  Listen to them and ask questions like, "why;" it will teach you both a little something. 

We have been working on our cutting skills during math this week as the children are given math problems with pictures to expose them to the '+' symbol and to teach them when we see this, we count ALL of something to get the total.  You will find as these come home, some of the numbers are hard to recognize, if they make it to the page at all.  

Please keep in mind each child is at a different stage in this skill set and therefore some are more focused on 'shredding' the paper than they are making sure you can read any numbers while others want to make each cut perfect.

Also, some of our preschoolers do not know all their numbers yet and others are still working on counting one item at a time instead of just blurting out random numbers.  The best part of our program is the teacher to student ratio as we work with many of these children one on one or one teacher to two children.  This helps us at school to teach to each child's ability but help from you at home can also benefit your child.  

There are many websites you can access that will give you free age and developmentally appropriate materials you can print out at home to practice more.  If you don't have a printer, you can still give your student materials to cut and count from around your house.  Play dough and straws are perfect for cutting and you can pull out at objects at home to count and sort.  Reading numbers around the house (microwave count down, clocks, rulers, etc.) is great for numerical recognition too.

Creatively, we talked about superheroes this week and the fact that some of them wear masks.  After, we identified the names of some of these heroes who wear masks, we asked the children to create their own.  It was fun to see what colors the children wanted to use and how they wanted to paint and decorate them.  Maybe some of these great works of art will make a reappearance for Halloween!

We practiced our 'Cool Bear Hunt' song by Dr. Jean again this week, have you been practicing at home?  It's a fun song with a 'scary' ending perfect for the approaching time of year.

Our hallway adventures this week mixed with some of our pre-reading activities as the children chose a note card with a verb on it, they had to act out that verb at start the obstacle course.  From there they found another note card with the name of an animal on it which gave a clue to how the preschooler had to complete the course by acting like a cat, bear, lion, frog, etc.
Does this mean my preschooler should know how to read?  No.  This activity is encouraging children to practice making letter sounds while teachers sound out the word.  This process creates excitement about reading whatever is on the card as the children look forward to playing the character/animal in the obstacle course.
We also encouraged reading by allowing the children to create 'fun words'.  The children were given blocks with various consonants on them and smaller blocks with vowels written on them.  In small groups, the children each chose a block and the teacher stacked them on top of each other to reveal words that usually did NOT make any sense.
  This activity is NOT about creating real words we use or see but getting the children excited about creating words in general and understanding the concept of sounding them out, spelling them, etc.  
If your child knows how to write letters, encourage them to make 'fun words' at home on paper and sound them out with your child.  Remember, reading can't happen until it's exciting and fun and this game is an easy one to play to get them laughing and enjoying the idea of reading.

October is upon us and with that a change in our monthly theme.  The teachers started incorporating our discussions of fall into our lessons this week as we asked the children to paint a pumpkin for us.  We provided orange and green paints, looked at photos of pumpkins and a painting of one as well then set them free to see if they could create one with a paint brush.  
Some created an orange blob topped with a little bit of green, others used only green and some mixed the colors together.  
We were pleased to see some of the children create a circular figure with orange paint and a rectangular figure at the top of the circle and worked with others on holding the paint brush most effectively.  As we checked for understanding directions and the concept of pumpkins. You will see painting and drawing samples from your child in his/her case study at the end of this semester and then again at the end of the school year.  Wherever your child falls on the spectrum above, we will be working this year on improvement in fine motor skills and fluency of understanding concepts.



This year the case studies will be able to be viewed electronically as well as in printed/book form.  Please complete this quick survey to let us know how you would like to receive your child's case study.  Electronically would be sent to you in January and May via email and will offer audio clips of your child talking about their work while printed copies will be ordered and given to you in May at Graduation.  We want to give you want you want this year, so please check out Shutterfly's book options to understand and see what these gifts may offer then complete your request here.
While some of our children were painting their pumpkins, others were working on building a tower as high as it could go then knocking it down again.  This was a lesson in patience, math and sharing and the children had a lot of fun working with the teachers to see how high they could build a tower.

We had a birthday this week and enjoyed a cupcake treat in between lessons, thanks to the birthday girl for that!

Once we got cleaned up, we got back to work practicing our writing skills by tracing lines to get animals into their homes.  These type of worksheets aren't just fun ways to talk about animals and where they might live, but they help the child practice the motions writing letters uses without writing letters.  

If your child is not a fan of practicing writing letters and numbers, these kinds of activities are great because they do them (typically with more success than tracing letters) and have fun focusing on getting the animal home instead of creating specific letters or numbers.

We ended this week with two science activities; one to take home and one just for school.  The children talked about polar bears and where they live, what they look like and how they might stay warm.  Then, they rotated groups through these two science experiments.

One group imagined they were way up north with polar bears and talked about how cold it would be and the icy water that would be nearby.  Then, they took turns placing one hand in the ice water bin while they put the other hand in a baggie filled with fat (Crisco) in the ice water bin.  The children didn't get Crisco on them because of how we built the bags (see here) but they were able to talk about which hand was colder (the one not in the bag) and then we talked about how a polar bear has this kind of layer under his fur to keep warm in the icy weather.

The other group of children were busy making waves in water bottles as they talked about how water moves in the ocean and added blue watercolor paint to their 1/2 filled water bottles followed by filling them up with vegetable oil before bringing them to be sealed with hot glue to avoid leaks.  These waves went home with the children and you can recreate them easily for other siblings by placing water, food coloring and then vegetable oil into the bottle.

What's Coming Up?

There will be NO PRESCHOOL on Monday, October 6th due to a change in the high school schedule as we practice some safety drills.  We will see our little Pirates on Wednesday!

This coming week is Homecoming at Palatine High School so when you arrive on Wednesday, we hope to see your child dressed up with us in true school spirit.  The high school students are going to be dressed to 'Walk the Runway' in their fanciest or trendiest outfits however, if you would rather send your child to school in honor of 'Pajama Day' (which is Monday, when we won't be meeting) or in honor of Tuesday's theme, 'Support Our Troops', you are welcome to do any of these with your child.  Thursday will be 'Save the World as a Superhero Day' so you are welcome to this as well.  However, Friday is ALWAYS Superfan Friday and Pirates are always encouraged to wear Palatine Pirate Gear or at least red.  Here's the link to the high school homecoming schedule in case you have further questions.

Friday, October 10th will be a change in our high school bell schedule due to our Homecoming Royal Rally Assembly so while drop off will be the same faces you see each day, pick up will be with the teachers you will meet next semester.  I will be out supervising the pick up to make sure everyone goes home with the correct families, but I wanted to make you aware of the change for that day.