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!