The students made 10 groups of 10 straws and cups to make 100. We have been working on counting to 100 by one’s and by 10’s. Through our exploration of our 100, the students decided today that counting a large number, like 100, is easier when they group the items they are counting, and skip count!
While studying our Antarctic habitat, we got to learn about the penguin, specifically the emperor penguin!
We watched a short video where we got to see the penguins in their natural habitat and read The Emperor’s Egg and learned all about the life cycle of the penguin. We learned that Emperor penguins are about 3-4 feet tall and are the biggest penguin in the world. So we decided to see how we measured up to the Emperor penguin! It turns out that most of us were taller than him but some of us were right about the same or a little shorter. We couldn’t believe how tall he really was!
Then each student drew themselves next to their penguin to show if they were taller or shorter!
We are excited to announce our Summer Playdate Series! Everyone loves a playdate, but the kids want to have them more than parents like to host them. Let us play host this summer . . . that means no mess, no noise, no cleanup and no negotiations about who gets to come over. We have decided that summertime at Creative Tots should be more about what the kids want. The kids want to play. The kids want to see their friends. The kids have spoken and we have listened. They think that anything to do with “camp” might just be a little too much like school. Let your kids explore they way they are built to explore . . . through playing in the summertime with their friends. So, grab a friend and join us!Throughout the early years of life, children notice and explore mathematical dimensions of their world. They compare quantities, find patterns, navigate in space, and grapple with real problems such as balancing a tall block building or sharing a bowl of crackers fairly with a playmate. Mathematics helps children make sense of their world outside of school and helps them construct a solid foundation for success in school. We used the fun of our season to explore how tall each character was, recorded the data we collected and compared our findings with each other! Learning through exploration allows for meaningful experiences to build future learning on. Learning together is fun!
Phonemic awareness is the ability to notice, think about, and work with the individual sounds in words. We know that a student’s skill in phonemic awareness is a good predictor of later reading success or difficulty. We have continued our study of phonemic awareness through the exploration of word families. Our first word family of focus was the -at family. After becoming familiar with our at family reader, the students enjoyed buddy reading throughout the classroom. Reading and rereading text allows students to become more proficient in fluency and and have more practice with the reading strategies they have learned so far!
Last week we learned all about the letter M. We practiced writing it, finding it, and sorting them by upper and lowercase. It was good practice for cutting, gluing, and sorting as well. They worked so hard on this activity and there were lots of proud moments!! Their little serious and proud faces say it all!
We enjoyed an art exploration activity last week where we got to sponge paint some snowmen with marshmallows! It was a very fun and messy activity!
The preschool class is in the middle of their Antarctic Habitat Study and we have learned a lot! The Antarctic is a very cold habitat and that has lots of water. We learned about various animals that live in this habitat and about whether they live on the land, in the water, or in the air, and some, a combination of them. We stuck our hands in freezing, icy, cold water and discovered it would be very hard to swim in water that cold.
So how do these animals do it? We learned that they have lots of blubber that keeps them warm! So we tried to stick our hands in the water again, this time with them “covered in blubber” and discovered that it was not cold at all this way!
We also learned about the icebergs that are found in the Antarctic. We added a little math study into our lesson and got to play a “Melt the Iceberg” game!
We got to have a little fun with some sensory play and made Antarctic animal tracks in some sparkly playdough snow!
Creative Tots has specialized in the private education of both toddlers and preschool age children for over 15 years. We began in the heart of Madeira and now also have a new Mason location. We are specifically designed to focus on early childhood development for children ages 18 months to 5 years.
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