Big big place

Our world is a big, big place and this week we made it a little smaller by learning about some of the places and people in it.  We learned the word for 'hat' in Spanish is 'sombrero' and practiced saying hello and goodbye in Spanish before we headed to the tables to do math to start the week.  

The children were given a picture of a sombrero and were asked to cut out the numbers on the bottom and glue them down in sequential order onto the base of the hat.  This is great practice for all of our future kindergarteners and allows our younger preschoolers to work on cutting skills and number recognition.

After traveling to Mexico, we flew to Hawaii to check out the volcanos and see if we can remember how to make them.  The key ingredients are baking soda and vinegar and the children worked well adding in the soap for extra bubbles and color to them.

We were lucky enough to get some visits from the Palatine Fire Department as they stopped by on Monday to see both the morning and afternoon preschoolers and show off their uniform.  This is always an important safety day for the children to see what a fire fighter looks like in person and then in full gear.  As they put on the various parts of the uniform we keep talking about how they are still the same friendly officer they were before wearing the gear.   

Many children hide from a fire fighter in fires and are not able to be rescued in these emergency situations out of that fear.  The more children see fire fighters in full gear with the mask and tank going the more comfortable they become and are less likely to hide in an emergency situation.  Fire safety month is every October and the Palatine Fire Department host an open house every October.  Please feel free to check out the many resources their website had available for more details.

We lucked out this year too, the weather was nice enough to head outside and see the fire engine as well and the children were able to take a photo in front of it if they so wished.

On Monday after the fire fighters left we created passports and learned about the information that typically might be in one.  Then, we decorated them with "stamps" in order to learn how passports work to practice for when we would use them later in the week.

After creating our passports we looked at pictures of famous towers around the world then went on to creating our own towers using toothpicks on our paper.  We have some very creative future engineers in our midst to say the least as they designed future buildings.

We traveled to Korea this week and learned about the names of some of the clothes worn for special occasions and then practiced writing our names in Korean using symbols that are similar and different to American letters.

Each child was given a sheet with their name written in Korean and English and were able to trace the letters in both languages to see the similarities and differences.  We then made colorful skirts to build one large Korean gown on a bulletin board this week.

Later we read one of the great books about Skippy John Jones and practiced other words in Spanish before head to the tables and playing some games on the iPads that allowed us to travel all around the world learning new words in a variety of languages.

The morning preschoolers traveled to Africa this week and made special necklaces with lots of color and detail.  Some decided to change the necklace into a crown and acted like African princes and princesses too!

We traveled to Mexico to celebrate Dia de los Muertos this week and walked across a bridge to see the giant sugar skulls where we attached flowers to honor those who have passed as is done in Mexico each November.

Then it was off to Egypt to learn how people preserve mummies and took turns wrapped each other in toilet paper to create mummies in our classroom!  Lots of giggles were had all around the room!

The children created the earth by mixing water colored paint and shaving cream on paper plates.  They laughed at the squish of the shaving cream as they mixed the colors to create our planet.  Then, they made the flag of the USA by practicing adding the stripes and stars to paper.  Learning the parts of our nations flag and the colors on our flag helps them identify America.  Many children know they live in Palatine, but not everyone understands the concept of town verses state verses country.  These are all vocabulary words we take for granted and the children are just learning these basic concepts now.

After making flags for our country, we headed to Germany in the afternoon session as we learned about holiday celebrations around the world and went on a quest to 'find the pickle' as children in Germany do around Christmas time.  We learned some of our preschoolers celebrate this tradition in their own homes here in the U.S. and were excited to hear about other holiday traditions around the world. 

The children melted snowmen like in the movie Frozen as we talked about the parts of the world that see more snow than heat during the year.  We learned there are many places were it is always hot or always cold and not everyone in the world has a change of seasons they way we do here in America.

The afternoon preschoolers went to Mexico later in the week when they counted beans and placed them into sombreros to match the number they were given.  

Then we learned the word 'fiesta' and talked about pinatas and made our own to take home filled with special 'prizes' the children chose to place inside their home-made pinatas.

We painted the colors of the Earth (green and blue) onto Styrofoam balls this week then counted how many drops of water it would take to fill various sized circles on wax paper to represent the various sizes of countries in the world too and reinforce the concept of a circle.

On Friday the morning preschoolers broke open a pinata to fid all kinds of pirate treasures like feathers, stickers and sparkles!  Some of the preschoolers talked about using a pinata at home for parties and learned about the rules of the pinata game.

We made Chinese dragons when we learned about Chinese New Year this week as the children assembled paper rings to create a dragon.  We also made dragon heads this week with toilet paper rolls and streamers.  The children have been learning about the traditions behind these dragons and how they work during parades and festivals.

We built our own bridges and towers this week out of snack cups and highly recommend this activity to everyone at home as it is a wonderful way to keep the children creative and busy for a long time.  This is all STEM work which supports creative problem solving and they have a blast!

We worked on cutting shapes this week as we cut out and mounted the earth in heart form after we talked about how important it is to take care of the Earth we have and where we all live.

Then the children worked with teachers on pre-reading activities that involved identifying pictures from around the world then asking teachers to help them find the word that matched the photo and attach it to the page.  These activities promote phonics and identifying sounds to match letters.

When we headed to China in the afternoon this week we made Chinese fans by working out fingers and folding paper back and forth, back and forth.  Working on this at home will not only work these muscles but it will keep everyone cool too!

Our Chinese drums were next as the children not only colored and decorated the sides of their drums, but thread yard through holes made in the sides and attached some beads to make noise.  Once the children were finished we sat in the circle and played 'music' with our drums.  Many of the children said they were really 'getting the hang of it' by the time music was finished for the day.

After making panda bears in China we did some airplane math by 'reading maps' and placing the correct number of planes on the map according to the numeral written on the 'map'.  Activities like this help make math concrete instead of abstract and allow the children to really see how much 7 is worth and so forth.  Using manipulative is a huge part of early childhood math and understand basic mathematical concepts.

What's Coming Up?

Pirate Pete Preschool Fall registration is in full swing and we only have 5 spots left before we start the waiting list for our year long preschool next year.  

Please remember that there will only be a morning session of preschool next year due to the change in high school requirements and therefore once we fill our spots we will only have a waiting list, not an overflow to the afternoon session.

We expect this situation will only be in affect for a year and then we should be back to morning and afternoon preschool sessions.  So, the compromise we have is that the year long preschool session we will offer next year will be for about 2 1/2 hours ALL YEAR LONG which means it will cost a fee of $200 each semester.    So if you are planning on enrolling your child for next year, drop off all items sent out in the main office of Palatine High School ASAP.