Our PreSchool Blog

In the Toddler room, the children have been going over the shape of the month… a Circle! During group time, the boys and girls have been looking around the room for circles. Today, Ms. Bree-Anna read the book “What is Round?”. It highlights objects in everyday life that are the shape of a circle. For example a nickel or a balloon! The children also used their fine motor skills to paint a circle yellow. Go on a scavenger hunt around your house and look for all of the round objects!

This week the Toddlers have been talking about Fire Safety! We read a story called Fire Drill by Paul DuBois Jacobs and Jennifer Swender. We listened for the fire alarm and praticed walking calmly with our shape rope. The children did a great job walking in pairs and using their listening ears!

We had a great first week of school in the Toddler Room! We were so excited to explore all of the fun new toys and centers throughout the room. The boys and girls spent part of  their day practicing sitting for group time and listening to a story! They loved the book 10 Little Rubber Ducks by Eric Carle. The children enjoyed pushing the “quack” button at the end of the story! The Toddlers had a great start to the week and are already transitioning smoothly into their new environment!

To kick off our cooking week, we read If you give a Mouse a Cookie by Laura Numeroff and made chocolate chip cookies! The children told us all about how they help make cookies at home and were very excited to make some at school! The boys and girls helped pour in the ingredients and stir it all together. The cookies turned out great!

With spring in full swing, we took time today to talk about rainbows! During group time we  read Planting a Rainbow  by Lois Ehlert and reviewed all the colors in the rainbow. Then the children went on a scavenger hunt looking for different objects that were red, orange, yellow, green, blue and purple! After recognizing all the colors in the rainbow, we fired up our fine motor skills and used Q-Tips to dot paint all the colors. The boys and girls did a great job painting a rainbow!

Another cooking day is here! Today we read If you give a Moose a Muffin by Laura Numeroff and talked about cooking at home. The boys and girls did a great job adding the ingredients and helping to mix it all together. The children really enjoyed making these yummy Carrot Muffins!

Today we read Jump Frog Jump by Robert Kalan.  As a group we worked on patterning with lily pads and leap frogs. We strenghtened our math skills during small groups and made our own frog patterns. Be sure to check backpacks for our fun frog craft!

How do we solve word problems in math?  Pictures of course…the children were introduced to word problems during our group time Math Minutes.  These will be introduced in Kindergarten as well and are one of the most challenging tasks for young mathematicians.  The key to solving math problems is to teach children strategies to solve them.  The first strategy will be drawing pictures, which we began today.  The second will be a math “sentence,” but I’ll leave that up to the Kindergarten and First grade teachers 🙂

Throughout the year, we have been learning about different country’s habitats.  Everything from the tundra of Greenland to the Great Barrier Reef of Australia taught us how different animals thrive in different living conditions.  This month, we had the zoo come in for a special visit.  This time, we got to pet a baby alligator and a hedgehog!  We learned that alligators like to live in dirty water (yuck!), and hedgehogs live in sand.