Let the show begin!

It's been a short but productive week in preschool as we talked about going to the circus! The children were excellent at opening circle as they told us about the animals and acts they see in a circus. 

Of course the lion often takes center stage so we used forks instead of paint brushes to make a mane effect to start the week off on a different note. The children thought is was funny to be painting with an eating utensil. 

We enjoyed our first star of the week presentation of the year as well and learned about one of our preschoolers and her family. Each preschooler will be star of the week at some point this year; look for a poster and instructional letter to come home the week before it is due back. 

We mixed colors in a new way this week; we used candy in honor of the treats we get at the circus! The children took M&Ms and Skittles and arranged them on paper plates; then they helped the teachers pour water over the candy and watched the colors bleed out into the water forming color circles. After that, they mixed the color circles together to make new colors in the water. This is a fun and easy activity you can do at home as well. 

We also enjoyed a sweet but sugar free birthday treat this week of sugar free Jello. The children ate it with a smile after seeing the candy during science and before we moved on to our next part of the day. 

Math this week was combined with large motor skills as we threw "popcorn" (aka cotton balls) into buckets with various numbers in them. The teachers would use their fingers to ask the children different math equations like, "if I have 4 pieces of popcorn and take two away, how many do I have left?" Then they showed the children with their fingers the answer. We also had the answer on the bin for them to use for this activity to provide another clue that the answer would always be that number. 

Here you see a teacher showing one of our preschoolers some math problems with her hands and the group figured out the answer was always 2. This type of activity builds confidence in the area of math as well as providing the language structure they will see in grade school. 

Both days this week we played on the same two apps on the iPads. One worked with hand eye coordination and timing to have the circus lion jump over the flaming rings and the other worked math skills to follow step by step directions to create circus foods.  

Any time we use technology as a large or small group it will be linked to the theme for the week and help them develop other curricular areas like math, science or reading and writing skills.

Our children worked on their fine motor skills by placing their fingers in ink and pressing their fingerprints into paper to create clown hair, cotton candy and balloons.  Teaching them to use just one finger at a time works the same small muscles that promote better writing ability so doing activities like this not only are fun and cute, but they actually have a purpose the children don't even realize!

We read a story about circus ladybugs who reformed tricks on bicycles and counted up to 13 of them in the story.  This week we not only read books the old fashioned way but teachers made the book bigger for everyone to see by taking pictures of the book and sharing this lady bug book in the big screen. 

After watching and helping lions jump over and through rings of fire our children did the same. They came up with a variety of ways the go through or under the hoop of fire and practiced leaping and crawling. 

All that moving around didn't stop us from working on our letters of the day. Whether the children can make only upper case letters or if they can do both upper and lower case or they only scribble, by the end of the school year there will be improvement. Work with them at home on other fine motor skills; don't force the name writing. Without a purpose it is hard for them to see why they need to do it and can struggle and loose confidence. Other fine motor activities still work the muscles they will use to write so keep an eye out as you read blog posts when we say fine motor activities; these strengthen their writing skills without them knowing it and without things being a battle to get improvement. 

Also for math this week we practiced number recognition and understanding the value of numbers. Children were given sheets with numbers on them based on the counting ability we have seen at school. They then had to read us the number then show us what that number meant by placing the amount of animal crackers on the sheet next to that number. 

More fine motor skill fun happened with tinged and mini chip clips we got from the dollar store. The children were given buckets of unzipped popcorn with cotton balls mixed into the buckets to represent popped popcorn. They had to use the tools of the tongues and chip clips to pick up only the cotton balls. This pinch r grasp helps strengthen the small muscles in their fingers. 

Of course we had to star in our own circus so some children were tight rope walkers on our balance beam, others were clowns bowling with cups and balls while others walked like the elephants with buckets for feet to mimic the slow and strong and large movements of the famous circus elephants. 

We end every day with our goodbye song and all of the children are catching on and learning the words. Music is such an important part of learning and we are using it each day as well to build vocabulary and rhythm and beat. 

What's Coming Up?

This coming week we will be talking about health and hygiene.

If you are a current preschool parent, be sure to have signed up for our texting service to get reminders of when we have a day off of preschool or to communicate with us when you won't be in attendance.