Healthy and Safe Pirates

Week two was great this week starting off with our first Star of the Week presentation.  Each child will have a turn over the course of the school year to have some very special weekend homework to complete a poster all about themselves and share it with the class then have it hung up in the classroom for people to view throughout the week.  When the child's turn is over, it will be sent home to be hung up wherever they choose.

This week we talked about safety, sanitation and hygiene and even a bit about healthy and unhealthy foods that can cause tooth decay.  We learned about fire safety first with a discussion about candles and other items in a home that use fire like lighters and stovetops, etc.  

We learned that fire loves air by watching the teachers light small candles and place different sized vases and jars over them that held large or small amounts of air.  The children watched as the candles with the smaller jars went out before the candles under the larger vases.  This concept was later linked to stop, drop and roll to help the children understand why it's better to stop then run if fire gets on their clothes.

After a little play time we got back together to practice our hand washing skills.  We learned you are supposed to sing the alphabet song while you wash your hands with soap and water and then used special glow in the dark 'germs' to look under a blacklight to see if we got all of the sneaky germs off.  We actually did this activity twice this week because we wanted to really check on the improvement of hand washing to keep us healthy as the weather changes. 

 We worked on creating lots of hand washing and germ activities to help the children understand the concepts of germs being everywhere and the power we have with the use of soap to get rid of them before we eat, after we go to the bathroom.

Once we finished working on adding and taking away germs then we put our fire safety hats on and created ladders and houses out of toothpicks and marshmallows to work on a  little engineering STEM time.

 After working on our fire ladders and houses we reviewed traffic lights and what each color means then we took out rhythm sticks and played them to the beat of a song about going fast with green, slow with yellow and stopping with red.  Then we played the game Red Light, Green Light outside to enjoy the wide open spaces and warm weather.

 Later in the week we learned the power of toothbrushes and toothpaste to keep our mouths clean and we filled in teeth with white paint to keep them shining and clean!  We read a lot of books this week about hygiene and cleanliness to carry things over throughout the week. 

 We spent time this week working on a science experiment with eggs and toothpaste as well.  A teacher brought in a few hard boiled eggs and various kinds of pop and we talked about all the sugar and colors in the soda what those things can do to our teeth then placed the hard boiled eggs the cups with the pop and we left them there from Wednesday to Friday then looked at them on Friday to find they had turned brown, orange, etc.  

The teacher then took out her toothbrush and toothpaste and brushed the eggs taking off the color.  This is always a mind-blowing experiment for the teachers and preschoolers alike.

We worked on a paper with images of healthy (always foods) and unhealthy (sometimes foods).  The children had to circle the healthy foods and cross out unhealthy foods while talking with the teachers about their choices.  Some of the children are learning the differences between fruits and veggies and were able to identify them for us as well.

 For a math game about our teeth we used what we learned from our books about teeth that we had 20 teeth in our mouths and filled them in by playing a dice game.  The children would roll the die and count the dots on the die to learn what that amount represents.  Then they looked for the image of the numeral that goes with the amount of dots they counted and colored in that tooth.   

 Speaking of teeth, we then did some letter recognition in laminated toothy smiles and the children used real tooth brushes to 'brush' out the letter the teacher called out.  If a teacher said clean the tooth with the F on it the child would find the F and then scrub to get that letter off the tooth.

We checked to see if the children still remembered how many teeth they have in their mouths at this age on Friday and were pleased to learn they knew there are 20.  They impressed us further when they counted out 20 marshmallows to add them onto the dots marked for them in paper mouths.  We currently have these drying in our cubbies and will be sending home the mouths on Monday.

After taking a break from making mouths, we worked on making two hands dirty by coloring all over them and then making them clean by taking two more and added blue soapy dots using our stamp pads and dot markers to make soapy circles then add a bar of soap onto the 'clean hands' once more.  The descriptive language used as the children worked is what made this activity all the more meaningful.

 We learned how to spell clean words like bath, bathtub, soap, etc.  The children had words written down on notecards in Ziploc baggies the teachers took turns holding up and helping the children recreate the word in the baggie.  Some children focused on making one letter while others worked on the entire word.

 The fire safety crew set forth to escape a pretend paper fire in the room created by red and yellow streamers as they walked across balance boards and crawled through fire tunnels around the room to work on balance and coordination.

 We learned phone our phone numbers and practiced finding the numbers in them on a phone keypad.  If you look at the bottom of this document you will see a song you can use at home to help teach your child the phone number you want them to use.  Feel free to use this number keypad paper at home when practicing making calls to help them learn the order of the digits needed.

When we finished our phone numbers we finished out the week with one final activity, a picture quiz to remind them of the order of steps we take in either washing our hands or brushing our teeth.  The children were given paper with 4 pictures on it and the number line of 1-4.  They then had to cut out the pictures that were attached and then glue those steps in order of what goes first, second, third and last in.  

 We enjoyed listening to the children as they 'read' us the pictures to explain to us why the images went in the orders they chose to walk us through the process of brushing our teeth and washing our hands.

What's Coming Up?
This coming week is HOMECOMING and we are going to show our school spirit by participating in Spirit Week.  On Monday, please dress your child in all BLACK (the theme of homecoming is 'Out of this World') then on Wednesday please show off some College gear if you have any at home to share.  By Friday we hope to see you in your Pirate RED or showing off Pirate Pride in some way (as we always wear red or Pirate gear on Fridays.) . Text reminders will be coming.

We will be talking about feelings and emotions this coming week as our theme so expect to hear about all kinds of emotions over the next five days. 

The Palatine Homecoming football game is Friday, September 21st at 7:30PM out at the stadium.  Anyone in the community is always welcome to attend these games!  Go Pirates!