Winter Wonders

Winter is quickly approaching and our current weather is evidence that December 21st is right around the corner.  So, winter was our main topic of conversation this past week filled with snowflakes, ice, snowmen and mittens!  

We opened up with snowman math bingo.  Students would roll dice and read the amount of dots on it and find the correlating number to eventually get BINGO!  This game can be done at home too with letters or numbers over winter break to keep up on their letter and number recognition.

 Our snowball writing activity this week started with children pulling out a snowball with a letter written on it and then tried to draw that letter in the snow.

 To work on the spelling of our names and putting the letters in the correct order we glued a snack favorite to the pre-written words to spell their names.  This also worked fine motor muscles in their fingers as Cheerios promotes the pincher grasp which in turn helps working on writing.

We made rain storms turn into snow storms in jars this week too with water, baby oil, seltzer tabs and  added some sparkle and 'snow' to watch it whirl around.  The kids were fantastic helpers and had a blast being our little scientists.

 Later in the week we used candy canes as our drawing utensils to draw letters and numbers and shapes in the baking soda snow the teachers poured out onto trays.  Sometimes, for children who say they don't want to write, this simple trick gets them to work on their writing skills without them realizing they are 'working'.

 We made some snowball piles and snowmen with numbers written on paper asking the kids to glue down the amount of cotton snow balls to the page.  Later we built cups of hot coco with paper mugs an hot chocolate then placed cotton marshmallows into the mug based on the number.  

All of these activities support making the connection between a written number and the amount of something it represents.

We worked on patterns with red and white beads making an ornament to hang at home made out of beads and pipe cleaners to create candy canes.  

A few preschoolers asked us to hold on to their candy cane so we can put it on our tree at the holiday party next week.  So we have 4 saved for them to find at the party on Friday.

We learned that in the arctic some people live in igloos and how to build our own igloos when we get our next big snow storm.  Then, our little architects got to work constructing igloos out of small sticks and marshmallows of various sizes.  

We ended the week scrubbing our tables with shaving cream 'snow' and listened for phonics within words like Marshmallow and then drew an M, then Gingerbread Man and drew a G, etc.  If you swing by the Dollar Store this winter break and grab a few cans of shaving cream, then you just squirt a thin layer on your table, let your child draw and watch the cleanliness begin!  The soap in the shaving cream gets them squeaky clean.

What's Coming Up?

This is going to be our last week of preschool for the semester.  Our Holiday party with the big guy will be on Friday during our normal preschool times.  Please bring your snacks for the party Wednesday if possible, otherwise feel free to drop them off with us when you come into the building.

If you need another parking pass please let us know ASAP and remember to let us know the name of any additional children you are bringing so they are not forgotten!

Spring orientation is Friday, January 18, 2019 with preschool starting back up Wednesday, January 23rd after MLK Day.