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.