Welcome Pirates!

Welcome to another fantastic year at Pirate Pete Preschool!  We are so excited to be under way with more fun activities this year in our TWO preschool programs.  We are thrilled to offer two preschool sessions again at PHS, one in the morning and one in the afternoon and welcome Ms. Pilguy as the afternoon preschool director.

With all the fun and photos we plan to have this year we are going to be working the preschool blog a bit differently than in the past few years.  This year we will be sharing photos of our amazing times at school however we will limit the amount for you to read to one focused message each week.  This way we can include lots of pictures as always but will be limiting how much detail we go into as you look through them.  That being said, be sure to follow the preschool on Instagram for photos throughout the week and sync your phone to our google calendar to stay up to date on themes and events.

Todays' blog post is going to focus on the overall schedule for Pirate Pete Preschool and how we run a typical day.  While our morning session is a bit longer and therefore offers snack, that is the main difference between morning and afternoon preschool.  Mrs. Stary is still the morning preschool director and the person in charge of registration details and paperwork for both programs while Ms. Pilguy is directing the afternoon session this year.  Both teachers pop in and out of both programs to ensure a continuity between both sessions.

Once the high school teachers bring in all of our little pirates each day we immediately get into our daily routine.  The preschoolers take attendance by finding their first and last names on stars for AM and owls for PM and mark themselves here for the day.  Then the children find their name yet again in their cubbie and hang up their backpack and jacket before finding their name one more time at the tables where the teachers have set out all the name tags for the session.

Then it's time to play until we hear the lead teacher for the day sing the clean up song.  At this time everyone cleans up the toys they are playing with and heads over to the rug to look at pictures the teachers put together that will clue the children in to the topic of the week (or theme) and the specific activities we will be doing that day.

Within this circle time at the start of the day we also review the day, month and year along with the season, weather and date.  We sing the Welcome Song, Days of the Week Song and mark which date is today, yesterday and tomorrow on our classroom calendar.  Then, we make sure Pirate Pete knows what he should wear to school that day per the weather discussion and we make sure he will be all set in his attire for the day.  Then, it's off to do the first of many activities for the day. 

Each day at Pirate Pete Preschool we cover the following curricular areas: math, pre-reading, pre-writing, story time, large motor games, small motor activities, music time, STEM (science, technology, engineering and math), art, science, dramatic play as well as hosting structured free play activities.  We are very busy!

Even with all of this curriculum we still make time each day to squeeze in a letter of the day.  We look at picture clues and listen to the phonics of the words in the photos to guess the letter of the day then practice writing that letter in upper and lower case.  The children who have the letter of the day as the first letter in their first or last name get to come up to the board and write it for everyone to see, then everyone in the class heads to the tables to draw these letters to bring home.  

Don't be alarmed if your preschooler comes home with circles or 'scribbles' on their page instead of recognizable letters; we are in preschool which means we are learning how school works and the mechanics of writing are new to many of the children in our program.  Just as we learn to roll over before we can crawl and crawl before we walk, we learn how to make 'scribbles' before we ever were able to write a letter of the alphabet.  Know that by the end of the year we will see growth and that's what makes these first steps of writing so exciting and a good thing!  

When it's time to go home we sing the Goodbye Song and give our name tags to our teachers to hold on to until the next preschool day, we head to our cubbies and grab our backpacks then line up at the door with our teachers to escort us to our loved ones to head home.  We look forward to another fantastic year! 

Go Pirates!  

What's Coming Up?

• This first full week of preschool aims to be an exciting one as we talk about our Family and Friends. 
• Don't forget that while we originally had to cancel preschool on Friday, Sept. 27th due to a change in the high school schedule for Royal Rally and homecoming week, we will now be using that date to meet our preschoolers and families out at Arlington Crest Farms.  Details we will sent home this coming week.
• The week of September 23rd will be Homecoming week at PHS so we will be notifying you of any spirit week dress up days we can do to show our school spirit.  This is always a fun week for the children and we will keep you up to date on spirit days as soon as we are given them!