Our PreSchool Blog

Welcome back!!  It was great to see everyone’s smiling face back in action today!  To start the new year off, we introduce new center activities, along with a new January country: Greenland.  With a cold climate and lots of white to see,  the children have lots of opportunity to explore activities with letters, numbers and shapes that represent snow and ice.  In Ms. Leslie’s small group, we played “Flurries or Snowstorm?”  The children chose a number, then put the corresponding “snowflakes” onto our winter scene.  In Ms. Lori’s small group, she showed the children several ways to build a snowman: rolling balls using playdoh, stacking different sized circles, and tracing a snowman.  In Ms. Courtney’s small group, the children used “snow” to trace out the letters V, W and X.  We had a snowtastic day!

It’s hard to believe we are on holiday break!!  What better way to usher in the holidays than having a party?!  Thank you to all of you who were able to make it this morning.  The children always enjoy spending time with you while they are in action!  Thank you for sharing your children with us.  We truly enjoy spending our days teaching, learning and growing with them.  We wish you all a safe and very happy holiday.  We look forward to seeing everyone in 2011!

Flour is an important ingredient when it comes to baking cookies.  Today, we found a different use for it: practicing our letters!  As we focused on the letters K, L and U, the children got those fingertips moving to create the letters in the flour.  How many times can they write the letter?  Believe me, they would do this all day long if they could!  This multi-sensory activity definitely made for a memorable experience.

Today we read Dream Snow by Eric Carle again. The children were very excited that they remembered the name of the Author.

We discussed The Dream Snow Christmas Tree.

And then we made our own Christmas Tree.

The Farmers animals are named one, two, three, four, and five. We found our own animals and named them!

During the holidays, there is a big need for scissors….mostly wrapping all those presents!  Today the children practiced their scissor skills by cutting fringe for their place mats.  Starting with scissor safety, the boys and girls used their fine motor skills to make one cut snips create fringe to glue to the end of the place mat.  The children were so proud of how successful they were with all of their snips!

Because we cannot go outside, we worked on our gross motor skills inside!

Gross Motor skills are important for major body movement such as walking, maintaining balance, coordination, jumping and reaching and throwing.

Fingerplays help children to develop their cognitive small motor, memory, and language skills.

Fingerplays also offer a way to learn about poetry, which is an extremely valuable and delightful experience for children. The beauty of fingerplays is that they can either soothe and calm children or stimulate their intellect and imagination.

We used the environmental print around our classroom on Friday for writing practice.