Spring is coming!!!!

Spring sure feels like it's on it's way sooner than the groundhog may think this year and as the seasons and weather change we thought it appropriate to have the seasons and weather be our focus this week in preschool.  

We made it rain in the classroom in many ways this week and the student favorite was the rain in a jar experiment we performed on more than one occasion this week in both the morning and afternoon.  If you have an empty vase or jar at home and some shaving cream and food coloring or water color paint, you have all the ingredients for this experiment. 

Fill the jar or vase 3/4 of the way with water then squirt shaving cream on top followed by some drops of water colored paint or food coloring and wait for the rain to begin!  After teachers demonstrated this throughout the week for the kids, they were able to take turns performing this as well and it is always a hit.  We hope you try it at home.

Besides making storms in jars, we painted storms on paper and spelled out names in the clouds.  We used little marshmallows to help the children learn the order of the letters in their name and how to recognize them.  

Then after making our names in the clouds we jumped on come clouds, flew like birds in the sky on a sunny summer day and leapt through a flower garden!  We even caught butterflies and then played in a 'pile' of leaves!  

As the week went on we tried to do a lot of moving our bodies in order to get some exercise and enjoy the seasons of the year at the same time.

We looked for rain drop patterns under umbrellas and threw snowballs at snowmen to knock them down and then even threw snowballs at letters and numbers in the sky too.

We worked on small motor skills this week too; we thread beads on pipe cleaners to make snowflakes one day and string for paper kites the next.  We also made paper umbrellas with small stickers and decorations as well as pipe cleaner handles.  Many ways to work on using those tiny fingers to improve cutting and writing skills.

Speaking of cutting, please note that sometimes your child's work might come home looking like all that was done was adding some fringe to the edges of the paper without actually cutting any objects out. Remember some preschoolers have progressed to cutting a piece of paper in half or in large pieces but cannot yet stay on the line while other children can cut an object out while staying on the lines and some make fringe. 

We are working on differentiating with each preschooler allowing them to progress their skills at their own pace.  This is the benefit to our program, many hands make differentiating easy so the children who need help with one skill can have it while others are there to supervise and be there just to help when needed.

In addition to working on writing and cutting we work each week on pre reading skills which means we practice recognizing letters and listening to the sounds these letters make in order to catch the phonics in words.  

However understanding the difference between letters and numbers is a challenge in itself too.  We work on this skill by showing the children mittens and sometimes having them match the capital letter mitten to the lower case mitten or realizing which mittens have numbers on them and placing the right number of snow balls (cotton) on the mitten as they 'read' the number.  

This week we also did this with rain drops and clouds and in some cases we attached raindrops to the clouds with glue or string depending on the class.  

As we worked on letter recognition this week we made letter W's out of strips of paper we decorated with suns, raindrops, clouds and snowflakes.  The teachers gave each child a sheet of paper with a letter W on it and then asked them to decorate the strips of paper and glue them on the lines to create a W for Weather.

We played a few apps on iPads this week as our preschoolers dressed cartoon people according to the weather on the screen.  We worked to adjust settings on some apps to change the seasons and make it hot, cold, windy, rainy and snowy and more.  

Then we headed to the tables to decorate umbrellas like it was raining.  To do this we practiced blowing through straws and then blew water colored paint over paper umbrellas to give it a look of rain falling down the umbrella.

We also worked on fine motor skills by drawing in 'snow' and 'sand' when we used pointer fingers on our trays filled with flour or colored sugar to build muscles in our fingers in order to help improve writing and cutting.  We made some snow by mixing shaving cream and baking soda together.  It can actually help you build a snowman or anything else as they worked to create things in our giant science tubs.

 

Remember that there are more ways to build writing and cutting skills than just to have children write with crayons all day.  Allowing them to write and draw with their fingers still builds a lot of those same muscles which helps them with skills later used to write and cut.  Sometimes we add letter and number recognition by asking children to take off their name tags and placing them on the tables to copy the letters and other times we give them cards with letters, numbers or shapes to copy. 

To work on some math this week we also had the children 'plant flowers' based on finding the number of flowers on a 'pot' to the numbers on the flowers on the tables.  If you have some cups and cupcake papers at home, all you need it to tape the cupcake paper to a pencil, popsicle stick or something like that to 'plant' in the cups.

Other fun things we did this week were making rain with the rhythm sticks and learned how to make a butterfly out of paper and paint after squishing paper down on one side for blot painting.

The children heard a story about fun things you can do in the spring and summer and then went to the tables to fill in the letter B with paint and fold the paper in half so they could open it to see a butterfly.

We did a lot of writing and drawing this week about the seasons as well as making patterns with weather symbols and drew pictures of what we liked doing in whatever season was the favorite. 

We read a lot of stories this week all about various seasons and the great things you can do in winter, spring, summer and fall.  Some books were big books and other small, some were longer stories and some were shorter.  We had a few storytellers in our midst who told a tale they made up about a girl played outside at the start of summer.  The children pretended to climb rocks and pick flowers and swim in the pond.  

This blog started with science so I will end with it too.  We made 'clouds' out of cornstarch and then opened our hands to watch it "rain" down through our fingers.  If you want to enjoy this at home just buy some cornstarch and slowly add water to it until you can pick it up and bundle it in your hands in a ball.  The second you open your hands it should drizzle through your fingers and this can be done over and over again.  The teacher demonstrated this for our students then they were able to come and try it themselves, some people refer to this as 'Ooblick' too.

So we did raining clouds in the morning and then learned about why we put salt on the icy roads by pouring a little water over some ice and then adding salt, counting to 10 then saying, 'abracadabra' while  trying to lift the ice with a piece of yarn.  The children did a great job practicing picking up ice with string over and over again.  This one is so easy, all you need is yarn and salt and ice.  Try it out with your preschooler and remember practice makes progress and to not give up!

What's Coming Up!

We will be exchanging Valentine's on Monday, February 13th during preschool and please remember NOT to address them.  Your child's name can go on them but remember the lesson we are teaching is that people exchange valentines on Valentine's Day, not who gave or received what.

This coming week we will talk about Valentine's Day on Monday and then Disney Characters on Wednesday and NO PRESCHOOL on Friday, February 17th.  

WE HAVE A LONG WEEKEND coming up, not only is there no preschool on Friday there is no school on Monday due to President's Day.  If you are not on the preschool texting alerts, please email Kris Stary in order to get up to the minute messaging about changes in the preschool schedule.