Springing into Action!

The last week of winter in preschool was a good one.  We took a break from careers on Monday for a little while and had some St. Patrick's Day fun with shamrock necklaces and leprechaun hunts!

During the St. Patrick's Day discussion, we covered a little bit of the history behind St. Patrick's day and noticed the connection people make with the color green and shamrocks.  After that, the children found various green items in the classroom then moved on to find only the items with green in them to sort out onto green paper in the afternoon while the morning preschoolers made their shamrock necklaces out of shamrocks that spelled their names.  

As mentioned earlier, we did have some fun with a crafty little 'leprechaun' on Monday.  We heard rumor that leprechauns carry gold with them and had the children help up look for Irish clues from the leprechaun around the hallways of the school to lead us to a pot of gold.  As we were out and about we never came up on a leprechaun but our classroom was turned upside down by something or someone. 

The children helped the teachers put the classroom back together again and found gold around the room as they picked up the mess someone left behind.  

It's always such fun to hear imaginations at work and the children had a great time with finding gold and making rainbows out of volcanoes, combining blue and yellow foam to make green and hearing stories of the history of St. Patrick's Day.

Once we finished up some good green fun, we got back to our discussions and reviews of various jobs in our community and abroad.  The children always love talking about fire fighters and police officers so had our share of that this week again with some 'secret messages' from a fire fighter for pre-reading this week.  

The children were asked to cut out words given to them and put them in the correct order to make a sentence about fire safety.  We solved the puzzle together at the circle then the children were asked to work on it one on one with teachers to remember it at the tables.

We read stories about fire fighters, police stations and had a visit from a fire fighter who stopped in to say hello to the afternoon preschoolers after working at the Palatine High School Health and Safety Fair earlier in the day.  We talked a lot of about number 911 this week and what to do in case of an emergency as well as the definition of an emergency.

It is always so important to teach children how to identify safety personnel and to ensure they are familiar with what a fire fighter would look like should he/she arrive to save the day in a smoke filled room.

We wanted to make sure both groups of preschoolers worked on identifying items that are hot and those that are not hot.  This is important when looking at fire inside the house and understanding that while fire is very helpful to us, it is still hot and we need to stay away from it when we see it and instead tell an adult if we come across things like lit candles, lighters, hot items on the stove, etc.

The children played a math game on our iPads that involved counting fire fighters and then matching the number they counted to the actual numeral shown on the screen.  This is the type of game we play with concrete materials in class as well but some children tend to 'buy in' more when the iPads come out for math.

To get some energy out this week the preschoolers built up structures and used blue bean bags to knock them down while pretending to 'wipe out the fire' with the 'water' bean bags.  This became a game they played on their own during free play as the week went on.

The afternoon preschoolers talked about the vehicles safety officers use by creating police cars and fire engines during art over the course of the week while the morning preschoolers looked at home made puzzles. 

These puzzles are easy to do and can actually be made in a variety of ways at home by finding pictures of things and cutting them into strips (the more strips you cut, the harder the puzzle will be for the children).  

Our talk about careers did move from safety to other careers this week, we covered chefs and bakers this week as we made chef hats in the morning and then baked cookies to hang in our play kitchen.  

A few weeks ago we read the book Pete's a Pizza and acted out the story as a class and since then the children ask us on a regular basis to 'make some pizza.'

The children act out the parts of the dough and we 'kneed them', add toppings then have them jump up and down to cook them then 'cut the pizza' and we all enjoy it!  We have had a terrific time 'cooking' and given the enthusiasm the children have had with all this we keep bringing more chef materials into the mix.

Besides little chefs, we have our roles of student, gardener, actor, author, and scientist to name a few this week.  The children had to complete puzzles and catch butterflies then put on plays and listened to stories written by famous authors like Dr. Seuss and completed math activities by sorting colored fish after hearing the story One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish.  

We became scientists by hypothesizing what color water would 'win' the absorption race as we moved liquid from jars containing various colored water into smaller jars by using paper towels as the path.  We used the parachute and golf balls to paint in containers by shaking the metal tins around causing the foam golf balls to make designs on paper.

This was a terrific week and we look forward to a week off of school to recharge and hopefully see some sunshine.  When we return on March 30th we will be in a new season of spring and start talking about the wonderful world of imagination more.  Look for fun Disney characters to appear as well as lots of silly activities and games.

Who will we be today?

As we talked about careers this week we had a visit from our very own nurse!  She came and played a few games with the preschoolers as she checked their vision and hearing.  This is standard school procedure and she will be sending each preschooler's results home soon.  The children did a great job listening for the "beeps" in her headphones and matching the letters on the screen she brought with the letters she let them hold during the 'letter matching' game as she checked their vision.

We enjoyed learning more about our Stars of the Week and then got right down to business playing and learning through shape recognition, science experiments and making own own little books.  Most of these activities are 'old hat' to the children and provide the a sense of confidence when they are asked to label shapes, predict what will dissolve into the water, and assemble the book pages given them.

Athletes were a big focus this week as well when we talked about the various types of sports out there people play as a career.  

Many terrific soccer moves were made by both morning and afternoon preschoolers and they also played on our homemade soccer field using pompons and straws to move the ball around and score!

We were able to go bowling as well and the children blew our minds during our introductory guessing game when they were given a small zoomed in photo of a bowling alley and guessed the image correctly without hesitation!  Wow! 

Another impressive moment this week was seen day after day as the preschoolers not only enjoyed stories read by teachers in large or small groups but they sought out books each day and not only found teachers to read to them one on one or in groups of three but they took out books to 'read' with one another!  

This is the kind of thing that makes all teachers proud, when children choose to use their free choice time to learn from books and build vocabulary and predictive skills as they turn each page! 

The morning preschoolers had a visit from the Palatine Police department and he even read them a story about safety as well.  We talked about stranger danger and calling 911 and how to identify a police officer.  We practiced our lock down drill with him and had told us he was very impressed with how quiet the children were able to stay during the drill.  The afternoon preschoolers will get to do all of these things later in the semester as well.

The afternoon preschoolers have been super excited about the play food we have in our kitchen during free play so we made some chef hats this week and worked on a few more culinary inspired projects.  The hats were made out of extra large coffee filters and were 'tie dyed' using markers and water.  :)

We took pizza orders and used file folders as the pizza boxes then had the children fill the orders and assemble the pizzas by working with the teachers.  This was such a cute project and a great hit not only with the kids, but many of the teachers had a blast reading off the orders to the children too.

Pizza shop wasn't the only culinary inspired work we did this week in the food crazy afternoon; we held a bakery as well!  The children were given cupcake outlines and decided what color icing to add to the cupcake followed by what 'sparkly sprinkles' they would top off the cupcake with to make it look extra yummy!

We enjoyed playing in beans and rice this week as we changed out the sand box to allow for a different type of small motor skill play.  This sensory bin drew much attention in the morning and afternoon as the kids looked for small pompons hidden in the sensory bins.   If you have an old plastic bin with a lid, just buy a bag of rice and a few bags of beans.  Throw in a few small items to hunt down and a couple of measuring cups and you have hours of fun for your children!  Then, just throw the lid on it and store it away for next time!

A great little menu was put together for a pre-reading activity as the children were given pictures of food items and the names of those food items then asked to listen to the first sound of each word to guess where it might match.  Remember this is not a reading activity, it is pre-reading.  This means listening to the start of the word, not actually reading the entire word.  It builds confidence for future reading endeavors.

We made cereal bracelets for another great fine motor activity using a variety of Cheerios.  These are great for hand-eye coordination and fine motor skills but only when the string is the right type.  Thin string or even plastic based string work best for little hands.  They do not fray and by holding their shape, allow the child to focus on the task, not troubleshooting crazy string.  

The end result is a terrific necklace or bracelet to be proud of and one box of cereal can make all sorts of 'jewelry' for the whole family!

We can't just talk about food without the sanitation piece so we addressed germs this week as well.  We learned about proper hand washing and talked about when to wash our hands then used GlowGerm (a glow in the dark oil placed on the children's hands) to see when it is rubbed into our skin it looks like it goes away.  

We turned out the lights and brought out some black lights next to show the kids the germs didn't disappear just because we couldn't see the oil anymore.  They all then took turns washing their hands and went back to the black lights to see how the 'germs' disappear!

After we learned the power of hand washing, the children put on their smocks and used little droppers to add watercolor paint to paper and used straws to blow the paint around the paper, then added eyes to look like their own version of 'germs.'

These germs weren't the only ones we played with this week, we used felt hands for math and were given numbers and little google eyed 'germs' to add to the felt hands.  Then, the preschoolers would 'wash' some germs away a little at a time to practice basic addition and subtraction principles with their teachers.

Since soap makes some terrific bubbles the teachers blew bubbles with paint and dish soap then the preschoolers scooped the bubbles using forks and painted with them!  It was a new twist on bubble painting the children just had a blast trying out!

We sang a song about brushing our teeth and pretended to do so with actual tooth brushes as we talked about proper tooth brushing procedures.  Then, the children started an impromptu musical endeavor that had our whole room rocking!

At the start of free play, the children asked to take out our instruments and upon doing so they started to play their own music until one of our teachers offered up the idea of a marching band!  What a career jump that was- from dentist to marching band instructor and yet, it was great!  The children all lined up and were each given and instrument then proceeded to march around the room playing their own tunes.  It was a loud activity but very worth it!

We jumped back into the medical area as we talked about equipment a dentist might use verses a doctor then offered up some creative art by giving the kids various medical supplies like tongue depressors, gauze, syringes (no needles of course) and cotton balls to paint with and find out the textures each item creates.

The afternoon got a jump start on St. Patrick's day on Friday as we started getting our little ones interested in the magic and fun by making a Leprechaun volcano out of gold glitter, green liquid and lots of foam!  The phrase of the day was, "do it again!" as we made many volcanoes that afternoon.

Volcanoes are always a classroom favorite by not only the children but the teachers too and are so quick and easy to make you can try them out at home.  All you need is dish soap (to make it really bubbly), water, baking soda and vinegar.  It doesn't need to be a specific amount of any of these ingredients, that's what makes it fun; testing things out to get the perfect volcano going.

As we talked about leprechauns we heard some of the children mention rainbows and asked them to use our dot markers to follow the lines on paper with matching colors to create rainbows and added in pots of gold for good measure.  

This reminded our children about matching their colors and labeling them correctly as well as their use of fine motor skills with handling the small paint bottles to get just the right amount of paint to come out of the dotter at a time.  We then finished out the week but preparing a snack even a leprechaun would love, which is watermelon!  The children were given a piece of watermelon with a number written on the back and were asked to draw only that number of seeds on the front of their watermelon slice.  

If your student came home with more or less, this would be your clue to keep working on activities like this with them at home by counting items at the dinner table, snacks or lunch time.  Any place you can count items and see the number brought to life works wonders for your child in the mathematics department.

What's Coming Up?

This is our last week before Spring Break.  We will be off the following week to enjoy a few days of sunshine (we hope.)  

The Fall 2015 preschool session is officially full with a waiting list of four so far.  Please let Kris Stary know if you do not want to be signed up for the afternoon session starting in February of 2016 and she will return your check and just hold you on the waiting list instead.  Paperwork and details will be emailed home this week for those in the fall session as well as those on the waiting list.