A pirate's life for us!

Our first day of the 2017-2018 Pirate Pete Preschool school year was an amazing success!  We started out learning about the Today Board routines and Opening Circle Time.  The children looked at pictures about pirates and images associated with them as we began another terrific year at PHS.

We heard a story using the puppet show stand about Pirate Pete and the Viking who stole his treasure and his quest to find it again.  Afterwards during free play time the children were able to make up their own stories using the props the teacher had made for her tale.  You might be able to find a clip of this story if you are following Pirate Pete Preschool on Instagram.

After talking so much about pirates we learned about bandanas and eye patches and beards and then worked on our fine motor skills with Q-Tips to paint dots and lines and work on the pincher grasp.  We also used sponges to practice making a bushy beard for our Pirate Pete heads.

Once we set our Pirate Pete heads up to dry we moved on to large motor activities and practiced walking the plank and throwing 'cannon ball' balloons into targets.  

Balance and throwing will be skills we will continue to work on each day in our program this year and it also helps get the kids up and moving and burning off some energy.

For a variety of math activities related to pirates on Friday we passed around various treasure chests with numbers written inside.  The children had to count out the amount of coins that related to the number in the treasure chest and place the correct amount in the chest.  

Some children were given larger numbers and others smaller ones in order to differentiate for our children who can read numbers and those who cannot.  Tasks like this will continue to help children learn to recognize numbers and understand the concept of that number and it's amount.

We also reinforced this lesson with pirate ship math to take home.  Each child was given a pirate ship with a number written in the sail.  The children had to place the amount of pirate stickers that correlated to that number onto the ship.

We had our first snack time of the year and the children learned the snack song and procedures well.  We will continue to work on helping them remember to throw their garbage away when they are finished eating but they have been taking to the routines pretty quickly so far!  Snack time is a great time for the children to get to know their teachers more and vice versa and it is always a nice time to relax and enjoy one another's company.

We worked on our cutting skills making parrots for our pirates by cutting small paper plates in half for this project.  Small paper plates are thicker than a sheet of paper and make it easier for the children to hold and manipulate scissors especially if they are not used to practicing their cutting at home.  During this project we worked on using those same finger muscles by ripping tissue paper up to glue onto the parts of the plate we cut.  Please remember that much of what we do is process based, which means your child's parrot might not look much like a parrot when they bring it home.  This is because we are focusing on improving the skills we use to make these projects,  not the finished product; hence the concept of process verses product.

After working on some science experiments where we made gold slime to bring home (there are baggies of slime in everyone's backpack) we learned about combining soap and water to glue to remove the stickiness of the glue and turn it into something slimey and gooey.  We started our letter of the day process where we looked at pictures of things that start with the letter A and then asked the children to guess which letter we would begin the year with for Letter of the Day time.  

Next we demonstrated how to make A and a and then anyone who's name started with that letter was able to come up to the white board with the teacher and practice making those letters for the class.  Then the entire class heads over to the tables to make that letter on their Letter of the Day worksheets.  We will do this process every day focusing on a new letter so keep an eye out at home for these and please remember that some children are ready to really start writing these letters while others are still working on holding a writing utensil properly and recognized the shape of an Aa.

We got word this week from Pirate Pete that he needed our help to find his treasure that had been stolen by the Viking.  Each child was given a bag that held a treasure map and pirate eye patch and a thank you chocolate gold coin from Pirate Pete for going on his quest.  

We followed the arrows and clues around the school using our maps to help us along the way and found his treasure hidden in some rainbow filled bins and were able to find a few pieces of treasure to bring home! 

After finding the treasure and brining it back to our room we tried our hand at Pirate Pete puzzles that reinforced the parts of a pirate we spoke of earlier in the day.  Using glue sticks the children were able to add eye stickers and patches and hats to plates then drew mouths and beards on their pirate heads.  We hung these up in the classroom to enjoy our work and will send them home at a later date.

What's Coming Up?

This coming first week of preschool will be a fun one as we learn more about each other while we talk about family, our bodies and emotions.  The best part is we also get to be a little silly because we will have the chance to participate in homecoming spirit week at PHS.

On Monday, Pajama Day will be the best day of the year!  Wear your favorite PJ's to school!  

Wednesday will be wear Yellow Day and Friday is Pirate Spirit Day where you can dress like a pirate, wear any pirate themed clothes or anything red.  (FYI: EVERY Friday is Pirate day and we always wear something red or with pirates!).  Feel free to reference our google calendar for reminders.