A Little Goes a Long Way!

We had a one day week this week and due to that we did not have a Star of the Week presentation.  Instead, we had a good time continuing our talk about pets and non-pets as well as relationships with our pets and family and friends. As we talked about pets and non-pets we talked about dinosaurs and how impossible it is to have one of those as our pet.  

Then, we worked on putting the alphabet in order by starting at letter "a" and going all the way to "z" by connecting the dots in alphabetical order.  This was great practice for our preschoolers who tend to scribble and finish quickly since they enjoyed the challenge of singing the alphabet to get to the end.  These types of activities like connect the dots are great to help with letter recognition and putting things in alphabetical order. 

The children did a terrific job on this first task of the day and then went on to talk about things we like to do with family and how we enjoy being outside.  One of the teachers talked about how much she enjoys the warm spring weather and we looked at pictures of cherry blossom trees.  

The children then were shown how to make their own blossoms on trees as we all dreamed of warmer weather!  Some children placed lots of blossoms on their trees and others only placed a few.  The key purpose of this project was learning the word, 'blossom.'

We also talked about playing games with family and friends and then played file folder games that linked to animal families and matching mother animals to their babies as well as feeding baby birds certain amounts of worms based on numbers the children saw in the game.  These file folder games are easy to create and anyone can make them home.  (There is an actual file folder game website you can just print things out and glue into folders.)  

The purpose of these games are to allow children to self correct and play games inspired by math, science and pre-reading skills.  We bring these out from time to time and have some made for flower and garden units as well as shamrock pattern matching and even matching upper and lower case letters together.  Over the years the teachers make these for their units and we save them for game time like this. 

Speaking of games, we also had students talk about and recognize sports based on clues (like a soccer ball or tennis racket) to talk about the sport and discuss if anyone plays it with family or friends at home.  We then sent the children to trace the letters to practice writing these words at the tables.  We were excited to see some children chose to take it a step further by matching the word the the sporting image!

We talked about the reasons we like members in our families and compared that to other things we love.  One thing I am happy to report is that many of the preschoolers love their family members more than macaroni and cheese!

We then taught the children how to make flowers with their finger prints to decorate these words of love to bring home to their families.  These fingerprint projects are always good to save as a record of their prints in any 'worst case scenarios' in the future.  Finger prints can actually change in the first few years of life so it's nice to have access to any prints they may make in these early years to have on hand in case of emergency.  While no one likes to think about this, as a parent, it is something I have of my children tucked away to be prepared.

After writing about our families, we created a family member puppet with popsicle sticks.  These are a ton of fun to make and you can buy a bundle of these large sticks for a dollar or two and most general stores.  The children chose one family member to decorate this week due to time but this can be a fun winter project to do at home with many family members and to complete the entire family!  These can be used for role playing and can provide great insight as to how your child sees the people and dynamics of your family.

Moving into the afternoon,  these preschoolers made family trees by counting off one leaf for each member of their family and then glued the leaves on to a tree base.  Many of the children attempted to help their teachers write the names of the members of their families.  Then, we talked about our school family.  

We discussed how families can take care of each other and help one another then discussed what our school family looks like and who is a member of that tree.  The children were able to practice writing words on some butterflies and hearts for our school tree then were able to add those images to our tree.  We will be hanging that tree in our room as a reminder that we are here to help one another and work together as a team too.

We had a great time making picture frames of our families in the afternoon and are continuing to work on fine motor skills in this area.  Remember drawing works the same muscles in our hands that writing does and often is a great way for the children to improve these skills without even realizing it!

You may see pictures from time to time of our preschoolers playing at the various stations in our room over the course of the semester; this is done either during free play or structured play.  Free play is when the children elect the station on their own at the start or end of a period or time while structured play is when the teachers assign certain areas of our room to play to work on social skills.  

Any of these areas (kitchen, small motor, sensory table, blocks, puppet show, etc.) are great for vocabulary skills and work on various muscle skills as well.  We know some children have favorite areas of play and others would not gravitate towards certain areas until given the opportunity.  

This is why we encourage children to play in various centers during specific times of day and then allow them to make the choice on their own when lessons are being either set up or cleaned up for the moment.  Either way it's important to remember a person's attention span is his age and therefore it is important to allow that child breaks in lessons to 'get the wiggles out' and have more choices made on his own.

We finished out this one day week with a matching game of baby animals and their mothers.  There are many animals who do not look the same when they are babies as they do as adults.  For example, a baby chick doesn't look like it's mother nor does a tadpole look like a frog or a lion cub like the king of the jungle.

This is a science lesson that will be repeated with various animals throughout the semester to build knowledge in this area and to promote descriptive vocabulary as discussions are held to compare and contrast adult verses baby animals.

What's Coming Up?

Turnabout is coming to Palatine High School and with that comes another Spirit Week!  While our preschoolers will not be attending the dance, we love dressing up to show our school spirit!  It is not required for anyone to dress up this week but the children and teachers often enjoy wearing things that are out of the ordinary.

• Monday is pajama day, come to school in your coziest (an warmest) p.j.'s!
  
• Since Tuesday is Tye-Dye Day and Wednesday is Wear your College Gear Day feel free to wear something to suit either day when you come to school on Wednesday.
  
• Thursday is Neon day and Friday is always Pirate Pride day so feel free to wear either something bright and neon or your best Pirate gear (either a pirate costume, Palatine gear or anything red) on Friday.  
• [Fun fact: EVERY Friday is Spirit day and you are always encouraged to wear red or something from Palatine.]

Loving another start to preschool!

The afternoon supported the first star of the week presentation for the semester. She did a great job explaining what items were on her poster. Each child will get to be star of the week once throughout the year. We send posters home once a week for the children to work on at home with their parents. Please always remember this is a project for them not just mom or dad. We encourage the children to help you and work on it with you.

We used candy hearts a lot this week as a way to create patterns with them by color.  The kids chose simple patterns like pink, purple, pink, purple and then moved to longer patterns like yellow, green, orange, pink, yellow, green, orange, pink.

We used the candy hearts again later this week to talk about density by dropping candy hearts into small jars filled with water, vinegar, honey and shaving cream.  The children had to guess which jar would all the candy to move the fasted and which would slow it down the most.  

If you have some glasses at home, you can do this experiment with your child and any small objects around the house.

In talking more about things we love this week, we mentioned pets and then talked about what animals we cannot have as pets and brought up fish verses jelly fish.  The children then were able to go to the tables and create their own jellyfish in a bottle!  

They used cut up plastic bags, a pop pom and a rubber band to create the jellyfish then placed it in a water bottle and filled it with water.  Once the bottle is sealed, the children could tip their jellyfish up and down and watch it move!

After that we went back to talking about pets, we showed the children a 'pet rock.'  The children were able to choose a color or colors to use with their rocks and then added eyes, sequins and pompoms.  These little pets were very unique to say the least!

During this math activity, the children were given small hearts with numbers written on them and then counted out straws in that amount to add to a pipe cleaner.  

This was therefore, also a fine motor skills activity and for the higher level students, we compared and contrasted the large straw pieces to the smaller ones to figure out if ten long straw pieces would fit on a pipe cleaner or if we needed to only use the smaller ones for that heart. This works on spacial relationships as they understand size comparisons.

One of our pre-reading activities in the morning this week was for the children to find the letters of their name on a table and organize them in order that they appear in their name The teachers then helps the children connect the letters. This was a great way for the children to recognize all the letters in their name and remember the order they go in when spelling it. 

In the morning we also talked about how we can use shapes to create new things and the teachers showed them some animals they created using different sized and colored hearts. The preschoolers then were able to choose an animal and tried to re-create it using the hearts the teacher set out on the tables. 

We brought home some goo this week so we hope you found it in their backpacks. This simple experiment is a preschool favorite and just come by Elmer's glue with liquid starch in a little bit of watercolor paint. We have the children mix it all into a baggie and the more it is mixed together it's turned into a silly putty consistency. Enjoy!

Many of our preschoolers enjoyed sorting some sweet treats this time of year. The preschoolers numbers on them and asked to sort the amount of candy hearts and place them on the correct number heart. For example if a heart had a number four on it for preschoolers would find for candy hearts and place them on the paper one. 

The morning children were given a questionnaire by their teachers and asked to choose someone they care about and list three reasons why they care about them. One of my favorites was when some of the preschoolers told us their favorite thing about their dad was that he had no hair.

In keeping with discussing shapes, the preschoolers were shown a turtle made out of ovals, rectangles and hearts. The children were asked to re-create the turtle with their teachers. The different shapes down to learn the parts of the turtle as well. 

We created puzzles using numbers of hearts. The children were given a puzzle that had nine pieces or seven pieces in the preschoolers had to put a broken heart back together. 

We learned the word mosaic and the children enjoyed getting to cover heart backgrounds with various colored paper. The best part is always getting to rip up the paper but understanding the word Mosaic is made up of small pieces was a great lesson for the children as well. 

Picture frames were also don as the children decorated them with hearts. Feel free to insert a picture of your choice for a lovely gift for someone or just hang it on your refrigerator and enjoy. 

We played a pin the lips on the person game to try and land the mouth in the correct spot on a person's face.  The children had a great time playing with the mouth cut outs and showing them off on their own faces as they waited their turn. 

We matched the numbers of hearts correctly with the numeral at the tables this time. The preschoolers are getting really good at recognizing amounts to coordinate with given numerals. Repeating this activity throughout the semester will help continue to improve the skills for our kids.

We melted some hearts for science this week by making heart shaped forms out of baking soda and then giving the children bottles of vinegar to squirt over the hearts. The children had a blast looking for the treasures that were inside the hearts. Of course we had lots of pink red and purple sequins and sparkles!

The children in the afternoon practiced spelling their names with hearts written on paper each holding a letter of their name, then they were given more hearts with the letters of their name on them and they matched the letters together in order to practice spelling their names.  For our young preschoolers still learning to spell this was perfect!

We heard a few terrific stories this week in preschool and did various activities learning about friendship and how to work with others. While reading stories to children is always a part of our program, sometimes we are able to also have special stories without using the book. That was the case this week in particular to go with a fun theme!

We talked about sink and float with the afternoon preschoolers. The kids really enjoyed being able to go grab an item they wanted to test out. They took their items and told us if they thought the item would sink to the bottom of the bucket or float on the top of the water. Then we tested each thing out to see who was correct. 

We also played with Ooblick this week and the children enjoyed the texture of the cornstarch and water mixture. We talked about how it looks like melting snow. It's an easy thing to make it home, all you need is a box of cornstarch in a bowl of water and mix them until you can't see the corn starch.  The best part is cleanup. All it takes is a little rinse in the water and your hands are all clean!

We are still trying to get the afternoon preschoolers to know each other so some of the teachers played the name game with preschoolers. They have the children call off different names, then they would throw the ball to someone in the group. This was a gross motor skill activity and at the same time helps the children start to learn some of the names of the other people in our classroom. 

There are many great apps out there for spelling and word recognition. We used one of them this week (First Words Valentine) to sound out words related to Valentine's Day in the afternoon. Children practiced spelling words like, 'valentine', 'Cupid,' 'friends' and 'love.' This was great for letter recognition and understanding when you put letters in certain orders they make words. 

In the afternoon we decorated Valentine's Day bags and were able to add hearts to them to bring home. We also had boxes for the preschoolers to be able to store their Valentine's Day projects, Valentines, and other treats.

Our preschoolers had a great time on Friday passing out Valentines to each other. We hope they enjoyed looking at the Valentines once they got home. Thanks again to everyone who brought Valentines to share with their friends!