Happy Day!

This week we talked about all the people in our lives we are grateful for and in honor of Mother's Day coming up this weekend moms were at the top of the list. Don't worry Dads and Grandparents, we talked about you too and make little items for each of you!

We started off our week making necklaces and bracelets for our dear mothers followed by taking care of the babies we have in the preschool the way people at home take care of us.  We learned how important it is for all people to care for the baby, not just mom and that it should be a team effort then we discussed ways we can help at home if there is a baby or younger sibling in the house.  

 We did some Mother's Day math this week as we made paper flowers by reading numbers on them to match up the appropriate amount of petals. We hope these lovely bouquets bring some joy to our preschooler moms not only this weekend but in coming months!  Our preschoolers were very proud of their work to bring home and show mom what they have learned here this week.

 We hope you enjoyed the picture frames we sent home this week as well.  The children made them with love and were very excited to give them to someone at home to show how much they care about them.

We know Father's Day seems to get forgotten at school each year so we didn't want our dads to feel left out.  Not only did we make presents to give mom, we worked on things about our dads as well.  The children answered questions written on paper ties about their fathers and/or grandfathers and then the teachers wrote whatever the child said.  We hope you enjoy these glimpses into your child's world as they are always interesting to do!

 The fun with ties didn't stop there as we headed back to the tables later in the day to sort and count and create patterns with pictures of a variety of ties.  The children enjoyed sorting and manipulating these pictures so much that some of them asked if they could take the 'game' home.

We have spent so much time this week talking about people who take care of us we wanted to talk about parents in general and did so with some animal science.  The children were each given a picture of a baby animal and then sent to go around the room and find the parent version of that same animal.  This is science by learning some baby animals look different than the adult version but it also counted as a reading activity since each picture of the baby animal had a lower case letter written on it and the parent animal photo had the upper case version of that letter on the page.  What an adventure!

We learned that dad is spelled DAD so we made  a mystery painting that will go home next week all about those three letters.  

 

 Then, to finish off the lesson we used our stickers to place them on the word DAD to practice this spelling activity one more time.

By Friday we had been talking about moms, dads and grandparents and asked the children to come to school dressed as a grandparent.  Many children took part in this activity and we loved seeing what they came up with!  Thanks to all who participated!

Also on Friday the school nurse stopped in to perform the vision and hearing screenings for all of our little ones.  We were happy to report this year everyone passed!  We are so grateful for this opportunity for our little ones to be screened as we have been able to catch children with vision and hearing issues sooner than kindergarten! 

The nurse comes and shows the children all how to use the equipment and the teachers help her demonstrate what to do then throughout the day the children are taken with the nurse into our preschool kitchen two at a time to 'play these games' with the nurse.  Everyone was amazing!

Gardening is something some of the adults in our lives might like to do so we did some dramatic play on Friday all about planting gardens with flowers and vegetables in them.  Then, while we were at the circle rug some garbage and little critters wound up in our gardens and we had to work together to clean them up.

Now that the weather is nice we also might like to play outside or do activities like bubbles with our little ones so bubbles were blown and popped and blown again in the preschool room!

Before heading home we took the song, Over the River and Through the Woods, to heart and went through tunnels, hoops, 'puddles' and under webs all to get to Grandmother's House for some 'cookies'.  The children crawled and climbed and jumped and ran to get to 'Grandmother's House' and back again with their paper cookies in their hands! It was a lot of fun to end the fun filled week!

What's Coming Up?

• Can you believe next week is the last week of preschool!  Crazy how time flies but our graduation is next THURSDAY!  Please be sure to practice those graduation songs and encourage your child to sing them with you in preparation.  We go over each song every day in preschool but a little more practice never hurt!
  
• Next week the theme for Monday and Wednesday will be Space as will the graduation party.  We can't wait to see you there!

Where in the world is Pirate Pete?

We spent our time learning all about the world in which Pirate Pete and our preschoolers live.  We learned words like town, state, country, continent and planet and are working on learning specific names of places in relation to ourselves.  The children have been learning about the various other ways people learn and live around the world too.  

We learned that people in other parts of the world eat different foods, wear different clothes and get water from different places; however they also can do these things just like we do.  The beauty of this week was to learn about and appreciate all of these differences.  What a boring world we would live in if we were all the same!

When we learned about China and the beautiful Chinese Dragons and other lovely symbols common in relation to China we made fish wind socks to hang in our room.  While we have been enjoying them, don't worry, they will head home soon!

We visited Mexico this week and learned about the traditions associated with pinatas!  The children all took turns hitting the pinata and then enjoyed collecting the prizes that burst from the fun! 

 We worked on pizza math with toppings and slices while learning pizza is more an American food than Italian.  The children had to read numbers and place corresponding pepperonis onto their pizzas.

 We learned that there are places in this world that we cannot get by car or foot alone and built airplanes to take us to a variety of places around the world.  

After building our planes we flew to the circle time rug to learn about various places around the world then would fly our planes around the room (world) and land back at the circle rug to learn about a new destination.  This imaginative play really sparked some great conversations and helped us learn more about some of the majestical sites in the world.

Speaking of the world, we looked at a variety of globes and maps and discussed what the green and blue represented.  Then, the children made globes at the tables as a team spreading around blue and green paint to represent our Earth and the water and land all around it.

 We played a flag matching game using images of flags around the world and asked the children to not only match them but to create patterns and sort them by which colors they had in common, etc.

We did more letter recognition this week by using our fingers to place dots of paint on the names of countries for a combo of art, small motor and reading.  The countries we spelled out and hung around the room represented all the various countries our families are from.

Since we had been talking a lot about flags and places around the world this week we also made our own flags to see the creativity our students could put into recreating a flag for the United States.  Some children still included stripes or stars while others kept up with red, white and/or blue and some made a totally new creation all for themselves.  We also were able to hang these around the classroom this week too.

What's Coming Up?

• This coming week we will be talking about Moms, Dads and Grandparents and how important they are to us.  We will be making a variety of things to share with these family members this week so we hope you enjoy them! 
  
• Don't forget our last week of preschool is the week of May 13th and graduation is in fact on THURSDAY, May 16th.  Please don't hesitate to email or text us with any questions.