Our PreSchool Blog

little chef

When your child takes center stage for Show and Tell, he or she is learning by doing. The experience is designed to teach and reinforce skills your child will use throughout life, like talking, explaining, and logical and creative thinking. By guiding your child in choosing an item to talk about, you can be sure the experience stimulates the youngster’s imagination.

Show and Tell works better when kids take items that aren’t toys. After all, most toys aren’t news; children play with them at home and school every day. Your child’s presentation will be much more exciting – to him or her and to the audience – if it’s about a post card or letter received in the mail, for example, or something made at home with Mom or Dad.

Other cool items to send: a photograph of a favorite person or from a special trip, a non-toy gift from a relative or friend, a one-page story you and your child have made up together, a picture of Mom or Dad as a child, or a natural object from outdoors, like a piece of quartz or a big pine cone.

Also, consider helping your child prepare a short talk that doesn’t need a “prop.” Why not tell about last year’s vacation or a day of helping with yard work, or make an entirely imaginary tale? It doesn’t have to take a lot of time to get ready. A little creative thinking makes it fun for everyone.

Remember these ways to help: Start early to choose something to tell about. Think ahead about what to say about the item. Maybe even rehearse a bit with your child. You’ll be glad you got involved.

how many cookies in the cookie jar?

Today at our manipulative table, we set out cookie jars with the numbers 1-5 on them.  The kids had fun putting the corresponding number of cookies in each jar.  Here is Eve putting five cookies into her cookie jar and counting each one as she put them in!  The cookies also had a certain number of chocolate chips on them which was good practice for counting.

Today the kids have loved playing with the birthday cakes and candles!  Putting the candles into the cake is a wonderful way for the children to practice their fine motor skills.  Each cake has a different number on the front of it which is great for counting how many candles go on each cake.  We had a lot of birthday candles blown out today!

Today the children were introduced to the letter “B” on Dorthy’s fish bowl!  We then brought out the special letter “B” bag and sang a song about things that start with the letter “B”.  The children’s favorite part was watching Miss Sarah blow up a Balloon and then letting it go!

name recognition using our farm theme this week

This afternoon during group time we created a graph about farm animals.  After reading a story about the farm and talking about the different sounds farm animals make, it was time to talk about our favorite animals!  Each child had a turn to come up to the board and put their name under their favorite animal.  What a joy it was for them to put their special person up on the board!  After the graph was finished, we counted how many children liked each animal.  Using their name recognition people is a wonderful way for them to start recognizing their names as well!

sand painting the letter "Bb"

Today and the rest of this week we will continue to focus on the letter Bb. The preschoolers used small paint brushes to paint their upper and lower case Bb’s with sticky glue. We talked about the shape of the letter and of course the sound that the letter Bb says. Once the letters were completely painted with glue we sprinkled them with bright blue sand. Using several different approaches in our letter Bb practice allows us to have repeated exposure to the letter and therefore better recognition. Not to mention, we’re having fun doing so!

Thank you to everyone who came out on Friday for our first annual Harvest Festival!  We are so lucky to have such wonderful families here at Tots and we always look forward to the times we get to spend with everyone outside of the classroom.  There were some GREAT costumes!  Thanks everyone!

Feeding the Goats

AARG!

Apple Prints

Dinosaur Fun

Happy Halloween!

Feeding the Bunny

With a cherry on top....

Memories for a Lifetime!

As a farewell to Fall and the month of October, the PreK class explored the interesting parts of some of our classroom’s pumpkins. We opened up some of our Science Center’s ghords and pumpkins and learned about each one of their different parts. From the gooey pulp inside and the curving ribbed lines outside, we really enjoyed taking a closer look at the pumpkins. Once we  were finished exploring the kids were given lables and their own picture of a pumpkin. Together we takled about all of its parts and put each lable next to its corresponding part. We also have our pumpkins and ghords in the sensory table this week, the children can have one last chance to scoop out the seeds and gooey insides!

taking inventory

the anatomy of a pumpkin

Letter Bb is our letter of the week this week and we “wrote” it with our feet today!  We took turns walking our letter Bb while the other children came up with words that began with the /b/ sound.  We focused on the similarities and differences of the uppercase B and the lowercase b.  We also learned that whenever we write a letter we always start at the top of the letter and pull down.  The children began at the top of each letter and walk it the same way we would correctly write it on paper.

Children learn best in many different ways.  Some children are auditory learners, learning best while listening.  Some children are visual learners.  These  children learn best when there is something visual to go along with something new that is introduced.  Other children are kinesthetic learners.  These children typically learn best by moving, doing and touching.  They are naturally good at physical activities like sports and dance. They enjoy learning through hands-on methods.  Kinesthetic learners learn best through doing including manipulating items, simulations and role plays, and other methods that physically involve them in the learning process. They enjoy and learn well from experimenting and first hand experience.  Always keep this in mind when working with your child at home.  Incorporating an activity that best fits your child’s learning style will make the experience more fruitful and more fun for both of you!

Walking our Letter of the Week

This afternoon during small group time, the kids worked on patterning and letter matching.  In Miss Darcy’s patterning group, they used little pom poms to make the AB patterns on their cards.  In the letter matching group, the kids got to take turns picking a piece of clothing and matching it with the same letter clothes pin.  They loved hanging up the clothes on the clothes line!