FEELING that School Spirit!

This Homecoming week our Pirate Pete Preschoolers were really FEELING school spirit and dressed up starting Monday to participate in our blackout for the Out of this World Theme for homecoming at Palatine.  It was so awesome to see all the black at school Monday and really showed our unity in the program.

We had another terrific Star of the Week presentation where we learned more about another preschooler in our program.  Then after the Today Board we jumped into spelling with the focus being on our actual theme of feelings and emotions.

The Disney movie, "Inside Out", is always a favorite tool we use to support a lot of our initial discussion for this theme.  We took turns coming up to the magnetic whiteboard and matched up letters using the color clues and word on the image of the character to recreate the name of the emotion the character from the movie represented.  

Then, after talking about feelings we went to the tables and the children drew pictures of themselves doing things that mad them happy, sad, angry, etc.

Once we finished drawing actions and talking about them with our teachers we made paper plate faces with smiles, frowns and more to look like the now popular emoji's of today.

Once our emojis were finished we read a book about feeling sad and mad things that can make us feel angry and how to appropriately deal with these feelings.  

Books and stories that acknowledge ALL the feelings a person has are so important so children learn to talk about what they are feeling and not bottle it up inside.  Discussions had during class were about toys that break, siblings that hit, parents who don't buy the whole toy section of the store when we want them to and then how all these things make us feel and what we can do about those feelings.

Next it was time to practice taking deep breathes and stretches then having quiet counts to ten on yoga mats.  It might surprise you to know the children always love yoga time and they actually asked to have quiet counts to 20 TWICE to have time to relax.

We practiced learning to spell words like mad and sad by tracing the words on paper by following lines then doing the same thing with beads or cereal then.  For some kids this is a great activity to get them recognizing letters while others are learning to sound out words and some are learning to read them.

Before heading home on Monday our preschoolers worked on their cutting skills by cutting out parts of a happy looking rabbit and assembling them to create his body.  

Some of our younger children are still 'fringing' the edges of the paper while others can cut area around the images and others can stay on the line.  The more we cut anything the better we will get so please don't be afraid to use scissors with your child at home, supervised of course.

We played a lot of games and did a lot of activities that involved identifying features that make up a smile, frown, etc.  Children looked for these images on paper and colored specific emotions specific colors and they circled them other times throughout the week and even looked to identify them using a game online as well.  This all brought about words like disgust, disappointment, surprise, excitement, nervous, shy and more.

 

One of our other matching games this week worked on fine motor skills in a way that didn't involved a crayon.  Teachers and preschoolers worked together to seek and find images that showed various emotions and then the child would thread yarn through the hole to create a web of emotions on the plate.  Threading string works the same muscles in the hand that help with writing and therefore we will always try to change things up like this in order to get the children to use these tiny muscles in a new way. 

 On Wednesday we played an emotions matching game similar to Memory where the children had to take turns trying to find matching pictures of emotions on people's faces.

After a few other books throughout the day on Wednesday we took a trip outside to works on showing off emotions with our muscles.  The children used our giant parachute to demonstrate anger, fear, sadness, joy and excitement.  As the teacher would call out an emotion the children would shake the parachute fast, slow, etc.  We all agreed the fresh air made everyone happy!

 We worked on letter recognition and writing letters this week both by following on dotted lines and writing them without that assistance.  Soon it was time to get up and moving again though and we did that by singing and dancing!

We learned and sang the Feelings Hokey Pokey this week and sang it often in class.  It might have been something you heard at home this week as well as the children sang to, 'put your happy face in,' or 'put your angry face out,' and shake any of those feelings all about!  

Silliness is always a favored emotion for children ages 3-5 and this year was no exception.  When making mouth masks most of the children chose to create a silly face, complete with a tongue (or two) sticking out!  
Once we finished off Wednesday's college day we hoped to expect a good showing on Friday for Pirate Pride day where everyone wore the color red- boy did we ever have a turn out!  Pirate Pride was amazing to see in our classroom as nearly everyone wore red to show their school spirit!  


In fact, just to make sure you are aware, every Friday is 'wear red day' at Palatine so if you have any red clothes or something that says Pirate on it you are welcome to wear it every Friday.  We love showing off our school spirit and this year everyone really rocked it!

To sum up the week we made a few versions of volcanoes by demonstrating to the children what happens when we don't talk about how we are feeling.  We used blue coloring in volcanoes about sadness overflowing like a volcano of tears showing children sometimes we just need to have a good cry and let it out!

 Later we made more volcanoes and talked about things that make people angry and the appropriate way to handle anger verses hitting or breaking or throwing things.  We talked about how sometimes we just want to yell when we are angry and added red coloring to illustrate the importance of talking to someone about why we are mad when we get angry.

We didn't want to only focus on sadness and anger but also how much fun happiness is to spread and share and grow and as we discussed things that make us happy we built a yellow volcano to illustrate how fun it can be to share joy.

After all those volcanoes made by the teacher it would only make sense to let the kids try making some too.  So we headed to the tables to add the ingredients needed to make mini volcanoes with each child.

Before ending the week we did one final emoji emotion search and then circled up for a little beach ball catch that allowed the children to talk about things that make them feel whatever emotion they chose from the side of the beach ball.

After our ball toss game at the circle rug, we used our small muscles with our fingers to roll play doh into 'worms' to make smiles, frowns and zig zag nervous faces on paper circles.  The teachers passed around images for the children to try to recreate in the paper circles at the tables.

What's Coming Up?
We are officially into the fall season starting next week so we will be talking about fall and winter weather and those two seasons.  

Make sure you have your calendars set for our 'fall break' the week of October 8th.  We will not have preschool that whole week.