Wild Side

After a one day week due to extreme cold and snow days we were excited to cram in some sports themed activities the one day we had together before we started up some discussions about animals this week.

We matched the starting sound of various sports with the letter on cards at our tables. 

We wrote words associated with sports like baseball and read books about good sportsmanship.

We sang songs about staying healthy and getting active by playing sports and then played a variety of sports like basketball, soccer and bowling.

We laced up some footballs to close out a very short week then returned with a fabulous Star of the Week presentation.

Once we got into animal week we started working our index fingers by stamping ink onto sheep's wool.  

 

We looked at animals from all the places in the world and learned about jellyfish and how they swim and move.  We made paper bag jellyfish puppets and worked on cutting the tentacles a jellyfish uses to swim.

After practicing our various animal movements like swimming, galloping, crawling, etc., we went on an animal hunt around the classroom collecting animals who live in the ocean, jungle, farm and more while using tongs and tweezers to pick them up.  If you have chip clips at home, they work well too so feel free to scatter small items around your living room and have your child collect them using their small motor skills opening and closing the chip clips.

After we found all the animals in the classroom we sat down for a story about a, Very Busy Spider, which was written by Eric Carle but performed and told my one of our teachers.

We made our own animals with a little process art by providing a variety of materials for the kids and asking them to create an animal of their choice using those materials.  You will see a lot of process art this semester as we try to foster more and more creativity.

 Our inner scientist came out this week when we took out our magnify glasses and looked for similarities and differences in various insects and small animals.  We worked on math by matching the amount of frogs to the lily pads that held the same numbers to learn the amount these numbers represent.

Later in the week we did the same type of activity with cages in a zoo that certain held amounts of animals.

We worked on learning about different types of graphs by counting images on a page and tallying those amounts as well as making bar graphs to show the most and least amounts of various images as well.

Right now in school we are learning what a tally means and what something is called when it looks like a bar graph.  At this age it is not necessarily about creating the tallies correctly or the bar graph correctly as it is exposing them to the vocabulary they will hear in grade school.

Besides working on graphs and other math skills we did some process art that ended up looking like product art by painting snowy owls with loofas!  The children were told to dip their loofa in white paint and stamp it all over black paper to create a feathering affect making the owl shape.

 On Friday we tested out our veterinarian skills by "listening" to animal hearts with stethoscopes and wrapping their 'injuries' with bandages.  The children all took very good care of the animal patients they were given! 

After story time on Friday we worked on patterns with beads and pipe cleaners to create snakes.  Some of the children have really mastered simple patterns that alternate and then have moved on to patterns that list three colors at one time.  Patterns are all around us so please encourage your child to look for the patterns, listen for them and create them on their own too.

 We learned habitats around the world can be hot as well as cold and used science and small motor skills to help animals escape from the iceberg that froze the animals.  If you are looking for things to keep your preschooler busy at home, freeze a bowl of water with small toys inside and have them work with warm water and forks to scratch and scrape the ice to break the animals out.

 To finish out the week we made animal tracks using a variety of animal toys in paint to see what types of marks animals would leave in the white paper (snow) and how moving those animals in different ways would create different images on the paper.

What's Coming Up?

This coming week we only have two days of preschool (Monday and Wednesday) due to the fact that Palatine High School is hosting the state gymnastics meet starting Friday and going all weekend.  If you are looking for a fun and exciting thing to do with your child this weekend you might want to bring them Friday and Saturday to check out the talent from around the state.  The whole thing starts at 2:00PM on Friday so come check it out.  

This week we will be talking about Valentine's Day which means you want to be sure to get your Valentine's for Wednesday's Valentine exchange.  Remember we need 20 Valentine's and will be focusing on the EXCHANGE, not the names.  Please do not feel names need to go on them.

One more great event this weekend is the dance show at PHS.  Even if your child only makes it to the first half of the show it is worth it every year!  Maybe I'll see you there!  The Dance Show starts at 7PM Thursday, Friday and Saturday.