What can I be next?

We had another great start to the week with Star of the Week poster presentations and changing up the theme for the month. This month we will be talking about various careers in both the morning and afternoon preschool sessions. 

Some of the careers we are learning about this this week include the doctor dentist, veterinarians and zookeepers as well and firefighters and police officers.

The morning session talked about firefighters when we looked at the various parts of the firefighter's uniform. The children practiced sounding different like a firefighter would if he or she came into a burning building looking for people who needed help by putting their hands over their mouths to distort how they sounded just like a firefighter's air tank distorts his/her voice. 

After that, we practiced saying, "over here, over here!" as we took on the role of someone who needed help. The children then took on roles of firefighters and people who needed saving.  The children used our blocks to build a structure and then the firefighters called out, "is anybody in here?" allowing the other preschoolers to say, "we're over here!" After that the firefighters would knock down the blocks and 'rescue' the people inside. 

The preschoolers later used their handprints to create a troop of firefighters coming to the rescue by using a hose made of string to 'spray water' on the fire and save the day. The purpose in all of this is to make sure children understand they do not need to be afraid of firefighters and instead be encouraged to let firefighters know where they are in a fire as opposed to hiding from them in case of an emergency. 

Because firefighters drive fire trucks we also talked about different forms of transportation. We read a book all about wheels and all the different kinds of vehicles that use them. In this discussion we then needed to talk about what a driver is supposed to do when the light turns from green to yellow to red.  The children then were given bean bags and asked to match the color of the bag to the color of the stop light on the floor. 

Next we had the preschoolers look at cut outs of cars, trucks, motorcycles, and buses. They had to think of the sound that started with that vehicle name and then find the capital and lowercase letters written on various wheels to match it with the correct vehicle.  This is a terrific pre-reading activity to practice sounds as well as letter recognition.

We worked on patterns during math with various vehicles who use wheels as well.  The children had to cut out the images given to them and glue them on the sheet to complete the pattern of car-motorcycle-car-??

In keeping with letter sounds, one of our letters this week was L. We did our usual letter of the day activities but talked then looked again at careers and the job of a candy store owner.  What can you buy in a candy store? Lollipops!  So we pretended to be candy store owners and made letter L lollipops out of circles, sticks, L's and sparkles. 

Another career mentioned this week was dancers and soon after that came the ever popular game of freeze dance to get some of our wiggles out. The preschoolers had a great time (along with their teachers) dancing to the different styles of music in different ways. Whenever the music would change, the moves would have to change and whenever the music would stop, everyone would have to freeze!

In the afternoon preschool we talked a lot about dentists and doctors specifically this week. Dentists encourage us to keep our teeth clean so the preschoolers were given a yellow tooth and then were asked to brush it with white paint.  Of course adding white paint over the yellow tooth with toothbrushes gave them the visual of brushing our teeth to get them white. The kids had a terrific time making the teeth as white as possible with the paint and who doesn't like to paint using a toothbrush!

We later gave each child a pink mouth and asked them to glue 'teeth' around the mouth so they could have their very own smile to take home and show people how to brush their teeth using their finger. The children had a great time using the stale marshmallows to glue the little white teeth inside the pink mouth. 

This week both groups also read about going to the dentist and talked more about what happens when a child goes to the dentist. Please remember that if your child has not been to the dentist yet, it is a requirement to enter kindergarten.  Talking about the visit and doing these types of activities only makes this setting more familiar and less scary when the time comes for a check up.

A fine motor activity this week with teeth involved Play-doh and rolling it into a smile shape. The children were given little beans that looked white on one side and like they had a black cavity in the other.  The children were then given the freedom to fill the mouth with teeth using the pincher grasp which helps build fine motor skills and helps writing actually become easier.  Once they placed the small beans in the Play-doh, we asked them to count the healthy teeth and then count the cavities just like a dentist will do.  After that, they had to 'pull' the teeth and learned about the gums we have in our mouths as well as the teeth we need to take care of twice a day.

On Friday we played another mouth game but with dice. You will find dice used a lot in kindergarten classrooms to show visual concepts of numbers. So we have the preschoolers roll dice, count the dots to practice understanding what a group of three looks like as opposed to a group of five, etc.  Next, the children were instructed to only place that many teeth in the mouth.  Some would place teeth far apart in the mouth, while others placed them next to each other. They then would compare who had more teeth at their tables, then remove all the teeth and do it again.

The morning classes did something similar when they were talking about gardeners.  We learned about ladybugs and how many gardeners find them in their gardens.  Then, instead of teeth in a mouth, they counted spots and placed them on their ladybugs.

When talking about pet store owners this week our morning preschoolers created their own fish bowls to be set up in our classroom like our very own aquarium you might see at the local pet store.  The children were able to glue sparkling 'pebbles' in their tanks along with attaching eyes to their fish made from hand prints.

We talked about all kinds of careers to introduce this week and played a matching game where the children needed to find the correct equipment someone would use with certain careers.  

We talked about meteorologists and learned they help us understand the weather and played with weather bottles showing us, rain, snow, sunny days, tornadoes, cloudy days and partly cloudy days!  These are awesome and will be left out to enjoy throughout the month of March.

Later this week we asked the children to draw a picture of themselves in the career of their choosing, some are still wanting to be princesses and ninja turtles but others are starting to understand the concept of a career and have chosen things like baker and artist.  

The children had their pictures taken with the career of their choice on a piece of paper in front of them, these photos will be mounted to the picture from they designed this coming week and sent home at the end of our career unit.  No matter what the children say at this point, we love to hear from them and get a glimpse into their fantasies of the future.

This month we always have fun learning about scientists and all the cool things they study.  This week we learned what makes glue not sticky anymore and how to turn it into goo!  The children loved getting slimed up and our ghostbuster guy was excited to see 'slime' in action!

The afternoon closed out our week writing about brushing our teeth twice a day and practicing getting the germs out of a 'patient's' mouth as well as fixing his broken bones in an app called Toca Dr. HD Lite.  The children were able to see a patient and worked to fix the problems he was facing.  

While we do not sit around and play on iPads during preschool, we do look for games that support our themes and activities as a way to hopefully bridge learning from school to home.  If you have a tablet and can get these games, they will bring a connection between school and home and hopefully also encourage discussion about what we are doing in school too.

We created a Doctor's Bag in the afternoon complete with band aids, tongue depressors and gauze.  As the children assembled what they thought should go in a Dr. Bag of their own, it supported what they used in the app to help their virtual patients.

We ended with bone investigation using magnifying glasses to decide which bones could be arms or legs as well as hands and feet.  We also put on a human puzzle and helped each other assemble some organs to learn about our heart and lungs, etc.

What's Coming Up?

• We will continue to talk about careers this month and are looking forward to another full week of school.
  
• Fall preschool registration paperwork will be coming home soon with details on what to include.  Current preschoolers and people on the fall waiting list will be emailed with details this week.
  
• Palatine High School's spring break will be the week of March 22nd which will cancel preschool that week as well.