Our PreSchool Blog

Leading up to our class Thanksgiving feast, we talked all about how the first Thanksgiving came about!

We discussed that the Pilgrims came to America on the Mayflower and met the Indians who taught them how to hunt and farm in the Spring time. At the end of their harvest they had a feast to celebrate their hard work and new found friendship. We brought this all back to the student’s own lives and how it connected to their Thanksgiving today. As a class, we decided that the holiday was based around appreciation and being thankful for what we have 🙂 We made a list of what we were most thankful for on the board following this exercise.

To help us better understand the  story of Thanksgiving, we retold it together as we created a symbolic necklace.  Each colored bead on the string symbolized a part of the story. The kids had fun making the necklaces and it helped them to remember the story in a unique way! We sent a key home to parents so they could talk about the Thanksgiving necklaces outside of the classroom.

Just like the Pilgrims and Indians, we prepped our food for our feast!

And then we got to enjoy it together!!

We had such a great time learning about polar bears in the toddler classroom! We talked about the habitat that they live in, what kind of food they like to eat, and what a polar bear does in the arctic!

In one of our small groups, we had an obstacle course, where our friends pretended to be polar bears, living in the arctic! It’s always great when we can incorporate some indoor gross motor skills–especially since it has been too cold to go outside!

In another small group, we built snowflakes using pipe cleaners and beads. This is excellent fine motor practice, putting the bead onto the pipe cleaner. Open-ended art projects are always a fun way to see each child create their own unique pieces, too!

In our third small group, we made a rectangle polar bear! This is one of our guided art projects, in which they follow directions on where to put each separate piece.