Safe and Healthy Pirates

This week we matched up safety with more health units as a way to combat the colds chasing us at school while we also talked about being safe in our homes as well as the preschool.  We started out the week identifying images associated with safety like the police as well as the fire department.  

We looked for badges, handcuffs and hoses and what sounds are associated with those words.  We start focusing on the phonics for the first letter in the word and then move from there when appropriate for the individual child. Differentiation at it's best, the children work one on one with teachers on letter identification and phonics based on interest and need. 

After having some time with words we worked on some science by mixing colors (red and yellow) to create orange and then adding blue water spray to the 'fire' to make it disappear.  First the teachers modeled what to do then let the children loose to do it themselves at our tables. 

We read a story about a fire fighter and then made our own fire fighters on paper with a head, helmet and handprints with paint.  The children drew their own faces and a letter for their first name on the helmet.

After making fire fighter heads, we looked at his entire uniform and worked together to label parts of it.  As we did so we discussed what the purpose of each part of the uniform was used for in an emergency situation. 

Later we worked on making our own fire truck puzzles by coloring the truck and adding designs and then cutting on lines 1-10 to separate the image into strips.  This turned our fire engine into a puzzle with number clues to help us put it back together again.  By putting the numbers in sequential order we would be able to complete the puzzle correctly.

We worked on building stop lights and matching colored tissue paper with colored circles on a page.  We also worked on our fine motor skills by ripping up that tissue paper before gluing it down to the page.

After lots of stories this week, we were able to move around and get some of our muscles going by playing red light, green light across the room. 

By Friday this week we decided to also talk again about hygiene and keeping our bodies safe from germs.  Cold season has really been rough this year so the more we talk about staying healthy the better.  We started out the day talking about oral hygiene and brushing our teeth.  The children and teachers alike laughed as our horse helper opened up his mouth and spit!

We used a giant book to review body parts and how to keep them clean and then worked out some of our favorite yoga moves to keep our bodies strong too.

After getting our work outs finished, we went back to the topic of fire fighters and their exercises they might do to keep them strong enough to climb ladders to save the day.  We then painted fire coming out of a burning building then built ladders and added a fire fighter to climb the ladder and safe the people inside.

After art, we lined up to do a little stop, drop and roll to learn the correct way to do this and get the paper fire off our bodies.

What's Coming Up?

This coming week we will be spending time with Dr. Seuss and can't wait to read, read, read!Friday, March 2nd will be Fiesta del Sol at Palatine High School.  Feel free to check out the Palatine High School website for more details.