Our PreSchool Blog

Rainbow rice is the new sensory material for our sensory bins.  Fun exploration for our toddlers (and siblings too)!

Our Shape Review included lacing button shapes, shape match- up mat, shape collage, shape cards complete with an interactive zoom to give live feedback, shape stories, and more!

Our live zoom also included some gross motor bean bag fun!

Eric Carle’s The Very Hungry Caterpillar is a classic favorite for all.  I read the story via video and retold the story using magnets.  The toddlers were provided with materials to craft their own caterpillar and fun temporary tattoos too!

Distance Learning Creative Tots Toddler Style:

The geese are wondering where the tots are!  We miss you!

The afternoon Preschool class read the story Corduroy and completed  activities that revolved around the “button” theme in the story! We love to use literature to help create thematic lesson plans!

The month of September has been a study in the shape CIRCLE!  We have colored circles, matched circles, glued circles, played with circle toys, discussed our favorite circle shaped food, sang circle songs, read circle stories, eaten circle crackers and cookies…basically immersed ourselves in circles!

We read the story “Perfect Square” and used this as the inspiration for our art project this week.  In the story, the squares get ripped and torn, but are created into something new and beautiful. We challenged our preschoolers to think outside of the box! They tore apart their squares and put the pieces together to recreate their square into something new as well!

This week our activities revolved around the zoo…From letters and numbers to crafts and science lessons!

To help us with correct scissor grip, we put smiley face stickers on our thumbs. The goal is to keep our thumbs to the sky, always looking to see that smiley face!

A review of the colors we have learned about this year led to a chart of our favorite colors.  We then had a yummy review of colors and sorting using Fruit Loops.  After sorting the cereal by color – the reward was a colorful snack!

A review of shapes led to a shape collage.  We will laminate these for the toddlers to take home over the summer.  Keep in the car or take to restaurants to review shapes while waiting for a table.

During small groups, we matched up foam numbers to the outline.  Physically holding the shape of the number sometimes helps with recognition in the future.  We also practiced counting every time we placed a number on the line.

We have stayed busy in the PM Preschool room this winter! From acting out winter literature, to learning about arctic animals… the kids are having a blast and of course, learning a lot!

Arctic animal bingo!

We focused in on the penguin for our science day! The kids learned that penguins have a layer of blubber to keep them warm. To help them understand this concept, we did an experiment to show the kids what blubber feels like for the penguins! We had two ice cold bowls of water. One bowl had a bag of coconut oil in it, to act as the blubber. They put one hand in each bowl and decided that the bowl with pretend blubber kept them warmer!

We then put a block between our legs so we could waddle like penguins!

We counted goldfish into the penguins belly’s!

5 Little Snowmen Readers Theatre!

Building shapes and open ended creations with toothpicks and marshmallows.

Letter building with “O” shaped cereal

Getting ready to count and build our towers

Getting our bodies involved on a cold winter day, with a gross motor shape hunt!

Melted snowman art!

Counting out “snowballs” with tongs for a fine motor addition!

Hand Strength and cutting practice

Now that Thanksgiving has come and gone, we are getting into the holiday spirit!

We started by making open ended creations using red and green gum drops and tooth picks!

We went on a letter hunt in pretend snow! (Even though it happened to be 60 degrees outside at the end of November!)

We painted with star shaped cookie cutters! Our December shape is the star, and color is red.

The students were able to make homemade red, peppermint play-doh! We will use this in class activities throughout December.   

The Preschool Prep class is working hard and having fun learning about letters, shapes, colors, numbers and more!