First off, we would like to thank our star of the week this week, he did a great job on his poster and we were so excited for him to share information about his family with us! More stars of the week are set to come and if your student doesn't get one by the end of the semester, we will finish our poster presentations in the spring, so don't worry, everyone gets to present to the class!
Our math activity this week was understanding ghosts can be fun characters of our imagination to play with. So, teachers wrote numbers on ghosts cut outs and wrote numbers on them, then created tissue paper ghosts out of napkins and cotton balls and asked the children to sort the ghosts into piles based on the numbers they saw at their tables.
If the ghost on the paper cut out said four, then the preschoolers the needed to count out four tissue paper ghosts and place them on top of the number four paper cut out. This helps teach the children what the concept of a number for actually means. Understanding 'how much' the number four means, will help them in addition and subtraction later in math.
Going along with the theme of ghosts, we talked about the word ghosts are famous for saying, "boo". After sounding out the word, we decided to practice saying it in a silly voice, sad voice, scary voice, and a surprised voice. The children were terrific coming up with ways to use their voices and to show understanding of these words (sad, silly, scary, surprised.) This type of activity not only works on language skills with relation to reading; it also works skills for comprehension. 
The kids had a great time with our small motor game this week too! Teachers took marshmallows and eyes and mouths on them then let them get stale over the course of the week. Then the preschoolers used the marshmallow ghosts to different stacks of various sizes and styles then roll the ball across the table to knock them down. 
This is a similar game you can play at home on the floor if you step up toilet paper rolls to play bowling (with or without the ghost faces). If you are planning on playing the marshmallow ghost game at home, just be sure you let the ghosts get stale; this discourages the children from trying to eat them with marker ink absorbed into them. 
Since this is such a fun week in school, we couldn't go without playing a little bit of freeze tag for large motor this week. We had a terrific time listening for the music to stop and freeze positions. 
However, freeze dance is not only the only game we played this week to get some excersize. The children were allowed to jump through hoops, crawl through tunnels and run in and out of cones to practice their agility. These are always fun events for the children and they love showing off for their teachers.
This was our last week to focus on reminding the children about details that coordinate with the season of fall. So we took a project we did earlier this month and asked to children to make it again with a new twist. This time, the children painted their hands with brown paint, then pressed their hands onto the paper and painted a trunk at the base of their hand to create a tree. 
Once they created their tree, they used our ink pads to make their fingerprints to create leaves falling down off of the tree. The children then discussed with her teachers how our season of fall is linked to the falling of leaves from the trees. 
We also practiced using our language skills to describe a pumpkin after our leaf discussion. The teacher showed the children a real pumpkin and asked the children to describe all the parts of it (how it looked and felt). 
As the children talked about what they saw and felt, the teacher drew pictures and wrote down some of the words the children used so we could review our discoveries at the end of the science and language arts activity.
We talked about how some members of the class eat their pumpkin seeds and how we also can use pumpkin to create pumpkin pie and other foods during the fall. During this discussion we also talked about what parts of the pumpkin were edible and which parts were not safe to eat.
We wanted to have some decorations for our Halloween party on Friday, so we talked to the children a bit more about spiders this week. The teachers made a sample of their own and showed the preschoolers the parts of their spider. We talked about how many legs a real spider has and then asked the children how many legs they would want to put on their creation. 
We then sent the children to the tables to create their works of 'spider' art. Some spiders had two body parts, some had one, some had two eyes, some had five. Some spiders had three legs some had one because the children were allowed to create a spider using their imagination.
We asked the children to leave their spiders at school to dry and then we hung them up for the party on Friday for everyone to enjoy.
Remember, it is always nice this time of year to talk about things that are scary and not scary as well as real and pretend when so much around us is getting ready for Halloween. That's why this week we talked about spiders, monsters, and other items that are considered to be "scary". We have had various versions of these items around our room all month and the children have made projects based on all of these characters all month as well.
However, talking about these types of things brings a better understanding to them and helps the children build better connections to fact and fiction. Children in this age group struggle with what is real and what is imagined (which is why some children fear Chuck E Cheese, Santa, etc.) A skeleton is another example that is a part of the human body which is nothing to be afraid of, but this time of year, a child might see one and be afraid if he/she hasn't been exposed to it before. Having discussions about the bones that make up our bodies and learning that the group of them together is called a skeleton is something to learn about, not fear. The more you talk about these things, the easier time your child will have handling fiction in the real world.
Here you see us preparing for a math activity. This time children counted pictures of pumpkins, witches, or bats. As we counted them the children had to circle the correct number representing the items that had just been counted. This activity is similar to what we did with our ghost manipulatives.
These types of activities are good for teaching children the representation of numbers. Again, as children do this activity they talk with their teachers about what is real and what is pretend as well as the amounts of the images they see. This helps to reiterate to the children the things in their environment as they go out and about the community and what they see on TV and helps them figure out what is pretend and what is real.
These repeated conversations with the children really help them understand differentiating between real and imaginary all while learning math skills too! 
We had time this week to work on one of our fun science experiments. The children love doing the 'moving colors' science activity. In this activity you take milk 'we use powdered at school but you can take any kind of milk and pour it into a bowl.) 
After you pour the milk into the bowl, place food coloring or watercolor paint droplets into the milk. Then take a Q-tip and dip it in a little bit of dish soap. All the child has to do is tap various areas on the milk's surface creating a tie-dye effect. This is an activity they like to do over and over again!
As stated above this week we have been talking about how to differentiate between what is real and what is pretend. 
So the children decided to draw some monsters and show us their creations. Some only want to use crayons, while others wanted to use pom-poms and some wanted to use googly eyes. The children had a great time describing their monsters to their teachers. 
This type of creative art project allows vocabulary building as well as creativity. These will be hanging around the room for our Halloween party on Friday as well.
Since this was our last week to talk about seasons for a while, we decided to bring in some fallen leaves from outside. The children were able to pick leaves and learn about how to create an imprint of a leaf on paper with crayons.
They had a blast trading leaves with each other and trying to color over them with crayons to make various imprints from the leaves they chose.
The next time you go to rake the leaves or you're just out for a walk in the autumn air, pick up a few and bring them home. It's an activity that does not take much time and almost no preparation is required. The children loved it and we know you will enjoy it too!
After everyone arrived we set up the treats and heard a fall story about an owl who counts. During the story the preschool teachers made sure all of the snacks were set up and ready to go and as soon as the tale was over everyone was able to eat something and get to know each other better.
The teachers always enjoy meeting the parents of the children they work with each day and this is such a nice event to allow families to get to know the high school teachers who are working with their children at Pirate Pete Preschool.
Once everyone was finished with their snacks, we went out trick-or-treating around the school. This is always a fun time and many of the high school teachers are excited to see if their room will be chosen to get some visitors.
Many members of the faculty and staff at Palatine High School have preschoolers in our program as well and after being in operation since 1977, we also have high school students at PHS who used to be a preschooler in this program. 
This year it was nice to visit some classrooms of some of the parents of our current preschoolers. After visiting the offices in our building, we looked around the school to see a few more classrooms then headed back with treat bags and buckets filled with small toys and games of tricks. 
One more fun Halloween story then it was time to go! Thanks to everyone who came to the party this year! We all had a terrific time and hope you did too! 
There is NO PRESCHOOL Monday, November 3rd due to teacher Institute Day. We will see you Wednesday, November 5th as we start our new month talking about activities and athletics and the arts!
Pirate Pete Preschool Spring Registration will begin in the next few weeks. All current preschoolers are scheduled to stay in the morning session which will gain classroom time running from 9:30 to 11:55. If you want to be moved to the afternoon session running from 1:00-2:30 please email me in order to be moved before new preschoolers are registered. If you know of anyone who is interested in joining our ship in the afternoon, please pass on our registration information or website.
No comments:
Post a Comment
Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.