Hut, hut, Thanks!

This week we got ready for a Thankful break to gather with friends and family and maybe enjoy some sports too.  We talked about where we would be going over Thanksgiving break and what foods we like to eat and who we might be able to see and play with over the next week we will be off of school.  We hope everyone enjoys some time together this coming week and look forward to seeing you and hearing all about it when we come back November 26th.

In the Pirate Pete Preschool Program we pride ourselves on the relationships we establish with the children in our school.  We love the conversations about likes and dislikes, interests and not and to see their talents!  We have amazing children and teachers in our program and we are the most thankful for these amazing experiences throughout the school year.

We are thankful for the amazing games we were able to play together this week as we worked on basketball number math reading numbers and adding the correct amount of basketballs to the page.  Some students worked on this assignment with soccer goals too.

We did some working out this week to gain progress as athletics by practicing our balance and agility by crawling over and under things and through hoops and jumping all to improve our athleticism.  

 To work on our spelling we gave each child a gym shoe puzzle made up of their first name cut into strips.  The children had to learn to put the letters of their name in sequential order thus assembling the gym shoe puzzle.  Many of our kiddos are getting better at writing the letters of their name but it is developmentally appropriate for them to write the letters all over the page and not understand the pre-reading skills of sequential order yet.  This type of fun activity helps them organize and understand the ordering process that is created by pre-reading skills.

The teachers brought out our stethoscopes this week to learn about how activity changes our heart beat.  We first found our heart beats and practiced finding the pace of our heartbeats all at once by patting the beat on our chests.  

Once we listened to our heartbeats we started doing various activities from yoga to obstacle courses and then listened to our hearts.  As we had listened to them before we asked the children if our heart beats were faster or slower than when we were at the circle time rug.  We learned our hearts beat faster.  

Then, we took a rest and everyone lay down on the floor and counted to 20 then looked for our hearts again to see how fast or slow they had gotten and learned that when we slowed down and took a rest our heartbeats slowed too.

Later in the week we learned more about the Olympics and sports within them.  We did a baking soda science experiment with the rings and used colored vinegar to spray them and make the white circles bubble and fizz as they changed color.  Baking soda is always a great investment for your home over breaks as is vinegar.  They are both inexpensive items that can bring hours of fun!

After writing some words related to sports and matching the words to objects that are used in those sports we moved on to other science experiments about sinking vs. floating.  

Using a ping pong ball and a small basketball toy we formed hypotheses about which ball would sink and which would float by decided what we thought would happen to a heavy ball and what would happen to the lighter ball.  Then we tested out the experiments.

Later we sorted and searched through lots of balls with everyones names on them to find balls specific to sports the teachers called out.  It was a lot of fun to watch them dig through the tiny ball pit and then come across the ball with their name and shout out they found their ball.

We used golf tees and marbles to try to balance the tiny marbles on the golf tees for fine motor skill development.  If you have a golfer in your house and your child is getting antsy this break, see if you can ask them to balance things in the house on the golf tee and show you what they find.

We enjoyed a classroom art project on Friday during the Palatine High School Artsapalooza using a variety of balls as we rolled them back and forth to one another.  Our artwork is awesome and will hang up in our room for the next few weeks!

What's Coming Up?

• Now that we have spring semester tuition we are getting ready for the holidays!  The room will be slowly transforming for the winter holidays.
  
• We will stomp back in to preschool on November 26th with a Back in time/Dinosaur theme.  Then to finish out the semester the last two weeks of school will have to do with winter and winter holidays.
  
• The Preschool Holiday party will be on Friday, December 14th.

Preschoolers gone wild!

After a fabulous Star of the Week presentation we began our animal themed week complete with word puzzles using animal names and bear paws to put on our hands and take home!

 We read lots of stories this week about animals from all around the world and learned about their habitats and the ways their bodies help keep them safe where they live.  After we read the first of many books we helped our fine motor skills by using chip clips and tongs to go on an animal hunt and pick up, carry and place animals into their appropriate habitats instead of letting them run wild around the room.

Then we made ourselves ROAR as we became lions and learned about making a mane.  We also learned that boy lions have a mane while girl lions do not and that is how we can tel the different of them in the zoo.  Then our students decided if they wanted to make a boy lion or girl lion and added either a few or a lot of strips of paper to the paper plate masks the teachers prepared for them.

 We worked on writing letters and making shapes of letters in tiny books we can take home to read our families about various types of animals. Remember that activities like this stimulate reading in children by giving them the confidence to read the pictures and later end up reading the words!

 After some singing and dancing we worked on some math graphs with goldfish crackers to show our teachers we know the meaning behind the number.  Though we threw out the goldfish we ended up sending the graphs home so the children can practice this math skill with small items at home.    

The Cat in the Hat is a terrific book about a crazy cat and pet fish and as we talked about some of the cats and fish we have as pets at home we then made some tall and silly hats out of red notecards and red solo cups to see how high we could make our hats climb.

Once we were done making a mess in the room like Thing One and Thing Two we got ready to mix some colors in a science experiment turned art project.  We were learning that mixing red and yellow together makes orange and so we did this while creating lion heads!

 Later in the week we mixed more colors to create silly colorful animals by pinching and squeezing ziplock bags filled with two different colored paints to make one color or a tye-dyed looking animal.

We learned this week again about the tools animals have in their favor to keep them safe in their habitats and revisited the polar bear experiment with blubber and icy water.  The children did a great job remembering what we talked about and the importance of the blubber to keep polar bears warm in the cold.  As we checked for understanding with questions and hypothesis the kids proved they remembered what would happen and told us the blubber (Crisco) would keep their hands warm in the ice water.

 Also in the arctic we learned that an igloo is a shelter that can keep people warm so we made our own igloos and upon doing so we figured out these tiny igloos made excellent hats!

There are other habitats too and in the zoo some animals have habitats that are made inside the cage the animal lives in so we used Popsicle sticks and clay to make cages and shelters for zoo animals and then dog houses for pets too!

 We heard a fantastic story about a Very Busy Spider and helper her build her web inside the fence and then headed over to the tables to place pictures of farm animals in and around the parts of a barn on the farm.  It was a lot of fun asking the children why they placed animals where they did on their barn picture.

 Later at the circle rug the teachers demonstrated how to help snakes grow.  These paper snakes were really straw wrappers that had been slid down their straws and were all scrunched up.  As the teachers modeled how to use pipets the children watched in amazement as the 'snake' grew!  Then, we turned the kids loose to the tables to try this out on their own! 

What's Coming Up?

• This coming week before Thanksgiving we will be talking about Sports and learned all about various types of balls and ways to play games.  We also will learn about healthy living and movement to allow us to be the best athletes we can be and hear about Olympians too!
  
• Don't forget there is NO PRESCHOOL the week of Thanksgiving, enjoy this time with family and friends and each other!
  
• Please remember that tuition for next semester is due by THIS FRIDAY, November 16th so be sending your $200 payments with your preschooler (checks made out to PHS) to ensure your spring semester spot in our program.  If you need more time please let me know so I can work out a plan with you asap.