Our PreSchool Blog

We thank everyone for helping out with the Whiz Kids Service Project!  We will continue collecting supplies through the end of next week.  We are excited to pass all of these supplies onto the wonderful tutors who volunteer their time to help children become successful in school to help make their future a brighter one.  Our hats off to each of them.  Thank you for your support!  Modeling a giving attitude will make an impression on your child that will impact them forever.  Click on the photo below to learn more about the Whiz Kids Program.

To continue with our theme of farm this month, we talked about sheep at group time today. We read the story,”Sam Sheep Can’t Sleep” and practiced singing “Baa Baa Black Sheep”. Then, during art time we painted our hands black to make the sheep body. Once the paint dried, the boys and girls used their fine motor skills to pull apart and place cotton balls on the body.They turned out great, see the final product below!

Today the Toddlers experimented with puzzles. The boys and girls did a great job matching the farm animals on the board. When working on puzzles, children use small motor skills to manipulate the pieces. Puzzles encourage concentration as well as improve hand-eye coordination. This activity also helps with cognitive development such as problem solving and logical reasoning.

Fine motor skills are an important part of development and school readiness. Today the Toddlers practiced tuning these skills by coloring with crayons. Scribbling is one of our fine motor objectives for this month. Children learn that they can express themselves through lines, shape, and squiggles. Allow time for coloring at home and see what your child can create!

We are working on vertical and horizontal lines in the early 3’s room so we raced our cars down horizontal and vertical racetracks! The children loved going forward and backward on the tracks with their cars. This pre-writing activity is a fun way to help your child learn to control their fine motor muscles since they have to keep the car on the narrow track.

The Early 3’s wrapped up the month of October’s color orange by exploring the fruit named after the color! We discussed how an orange smells, used our fine motor muscles to squeeze the juice out, and then used our taste buds to taste the juice. Nothing like fresh squeezed orange juice!

During group time today, the Toddlers enjoyed the poem, “5 Little Pumpkins Sitting on a Gate”. They are doing a great job sitting down and turning on their listening ears! While listening to the poem, the children used their fine motor skills to move the magnetic pumpkins on our big board. The boys and girls are doing a wonderful job identifying the color orange around the room!

Many families have asked me over the years how they can help their child build strong social skills to help form friendships with their peers.  There are many ways that parents can help children learn the skills they need to initiate and build friendships with children during the early childhood years.  Research has shown that preschool-aged children who have positive peer relationships are likely to maintain positive peer interactions in elementary school.  This is an amazing article that outlines how parents can directly impact their child’s peer interactions and why it is so important to do so at such a young age.  Young children’s early experiences build their foundation for everything that will follow in their lives.  Click on the picture below to read a fantastic article about encouraging social skills in young children.

Old McDonald has a farm e-i-e-i-o.. and on this farm he has a cow! During group time we  talked about cows having spots, making milk, and eating grass. During our art center, the boys and girls used their fine motor skills to grip circle stampers. The children placed spots all over the cows body!