Our PreSchool Blog

We continued our math study in small groups through the creation of a Gingerbread Graph.  We took one big bite of a delicious gingergread cookie and recorded where we took our first bite on a class graph.  We then compared each column by identifying which location had the most names and the least names.  Looks like the leg was the winner!

Sparkles anyone?!  Activities with sequins, or anything sparkly for that matter, are always exciting.  Digging through to find the exact color and shape that you want is excellent fine motor practice.  Using the tips of their fingers, each child grasped and place sequins to trace his/her name.  As we outlined the names in glue, the children were also able to practice tracing their names. Each child was very focused as they paid close attention to their sequin details!

The fun part about gingerbreads are decorating them!  Today, we traveled to our favorite nation, the imagination, and had a fun time pretending to decorate our gingerbreads.  Using number recognition, the children pulled a number, then put their one-to-one correspondence skills to work by putting the corresponding number of buttons on the gingerbread.  Working with the numbers four through nine really helped the children focus on their counting skills.

‘Tis the season for gingerbread!  Ms. Courtney spiced up our fine motor skills by having the children cut out their own gingerbread houses.  The children worked on following lines while holding the paper with the other hand.  There was more fine motor practice when the children were eager to color their very own houses!

The winter weather is here!  With that comes heavy winter clothing.  With heavy winter clothing comes misplaced mittens, hats and coats.  Today we practiced how to keep track of our things.  We began with learning the “preschool flip.”  This helps the children put their coats on correctly themselves.  Ask your preschooler to show you how to do this new fancy trick!

Once we come in the classroom, the children build their responsibility and independence by hanging their coats on their hooks.  Showing the children that they can hang their coat using a “magic hook” inside their coat, the hood, or the top of their coat helps the children realize that there is a specific spot to help aid with hanging.  Putting their backpacks over their coats helps to keep the coat where it belongs.  Hats and mittens can be safely stowed in each child’s cubby.

With the month of December comes a new destination to learn and explore! We have traveled to the land of gingerbread, Germany! Today in small groups Ms. Lori and the students created the flag of Germany while strengthening their fine motor skills. By ripping bits of paper and gluing them in the right spot we worked together as a class to create the flag of red, black, and yellow. Along with a new destination comes all new activities at our centers. Some of the activities were introduced and practiced during small groups to ensure that everyone understands how to play and will benefit as much as possible during free choice time.

Our weather was the topic of our discussion during group time on Tuesday afternoon.  It was a rainy, rainy, rain day.  It seemed to last forever.  We read the book The Rainy Day by Anna Milbourne which told us about how clouds are formed and what happens inside the clouds to make the rain fall.

The children shared their favorite things to do on a rainy day…playing games was the top on the list!  We played all sorts of Rainy Day learning games in small groups including Dominos, Colorama, and Seasonal Science Sorting Game.  Sometimes rainy days can be the best days.

As we round out our farm month, Ms. Lori took the opportunity to have the children create the letter H using pieces of corn.  With Ms. Lori’s help the children dotted glue along the letter, and used their fine motor skills to place the corn on the dot of glue.  Starting from top to bottom and working from left to right, the children created their own H masterpieces!

As a preschooler, numbers and matching are two skills they will become very familiar with.  Today, we merged the two by having the children use number puzzles.  Each child had puzzle pieces with numbers and had to match the number to corresponding pieces with pictures on it.  The children enjoyed the challenge of the hunt and practiced those number recognition and counting skills.

As we usher our way back from a restful holiday break, we got back into the swing of things by practicing our rhyming skills and matching upper and lowercase letters.  When rhyming, the children discovered that it does not matter what the first letter is, as long as the ending of the words sound the same.  When we found words that matched, the puzzle pieces fit together.  As the children matched the capital and lowercase letters, they had to find the picture that began with that particular letter.  If the letters match, the puzzle pieces fit!  The children did an excellent job exploring the letters.