Thanksgiving

We had a great Thanksgiving at preschool! We talked about the First Thanksgiving, and had our little Thanksgiving Feast! That was really fun--thanks for all the donations!

We also did a fun turkey craft. For math, we did a sorting paper--the students sorted people and food. (I also had a harder size sorting paper for a challenge for some students.)

We had a little "adventure" in the afternoon class--the table broke! Luckily my husband was just getting off work so he very kindly came in and fixed it! The students weren't quite sure what to think about the broken table, or the fact that a police officer fixes my tables! I hope you all had a wonderful Thanksgiving! I know we did!

One more reminder: The book orders are due next Thursday, Dec. 1. Please make checks out to Scholastic!

Letter N, Nutrition and Sorting

Here are a few pictures of the students making "Noodle Necklaces" for our craft for letter Nn. So fun!

As with all crafts like this, it is interesting to watch the students as they make things like this. Some students are very particular about how it looks and have a huge plan in their mind about how to make it look just right. Other students are just excited about getting it finished!

We also worked more on sorting. We sorted by shape and by size. The students did really well with this!

Here is a picture I took of our finished "Red, Green" stoplight. We talked about how some foods are really good for you and how they can be eaten a lot--like fruits and vegetables--and we called them green light foods. Then we talked about how other foods are yummy, but we need to just have a little bit and then stop.

J is for Jungle

Last week we learned about letter J and jungles. Did you know that a jungle is, by definition, a tropical rainforest? We learned about lots of the animals that live there. On Tuesday we talked about lots of the different plants and animals that live in jungles and all the rain that is there. We did a fun monkey craft. Thanks to Kiley's mom for coming in and helping the last few minutes of morning session--the craft took a little more time and help than I anticipated... so I scheduled a little more time for the afternoon session. Live and learn, right?

For math last week we introduced sorting. On Thursday we sorted by colors. I gave each student a cup full of cereal (Trix and Reese's PB cereal mixed) and had them sort it by color. Fun and yummy!

We learned about letter J. On Thursday we sorted the pictures by their beginning sound--J or P. Then we made jellyfish. Thanks to Finding Nemo for introducing all the kids to jellyfish! :)

 On Thursday we talked about poison dart frogs. I didn't realize how small they really are--they are only about the size of a nickel! We used crayons to color in the spots and then painted over it.

Here's to another great week! 

Pumpkins, Leaves and Letter L

Sorry about no posting last week! It was one of the busiest weeks I've had in a long time!

This week we learned about letter Ll. We did a sticky note search (I'm addicted to sticky notes) where I write different letters on sticky notes and then we identified the letter and did different things once they found them--for example, if you have a letter P put your sticky note on Ms. Jamie's face. Stuff like that.

We used PlaDough to make the letters L and l and also a few other letters. It was a fun, yet educational activity. It's also good for fine motor skills. On Thursday we made lion puppets.

Have I shared with you why we make an art project for the letter? My philosophy is that the more opportunities for students to make connections to everything we are learning the better the chances that what we are learning will stick. So if I show students what the letter looks like, who has it in their name, how to write it, words that begin with that letter, and then do the art project, all the while emphasizing the letter we are learning, that's just more opportunities to learn the letter.

*Remember you can click on the collages to see them bigger.*

We also did leaf rubbings (Tuesday) and a leaf collage on Thursday. I had made a PowerPoint presentation about leaves with different pictures of leaves that we saw on Tuesday.

And here is the bulletin board we made last week with the pumpkins. The students helped me to cut and tear the pieces of tissue paper and then we glued them on. Also, note that I try to help the students to be successful with the least amount of direct help possible. Meaning, if we are cutting out a pumpkin, and your child will do it himself/herself and can be successful, I don't physically touch the project. Sometimes students are insistent that I help cut, and I do, but I give the child every opportunity to do it first. Several of the students pumpkins were cut out completely on their own. So even though there's lots of white space and some jagged lines, I hope you parents are proud of your student for doing something that was probably a little hard for him/her.

Somehow I missed getting Lilli's name by her pumpkin! Sorry Lilli!

I think I have a few more pictures from last week--probably on my other camera--I will try to get on soon. Thanks for your patience!

Fall mini-unit

Here are a few pictures of the process of our print-making fall art activity.

Sorry--these are in the wrong order!

Michael is using the bunched up plastic bag dipped in paint to make his leaves.

Tyler and Kobyn using dried corn husks to make the trees.

Harold is making his leaves.

We had a fun day! We also learned a poem about fall and talked about the signs of fall--cooler weather, pumpkins and apples, leaves falling, etc...

Fun week!

Grandparent's Day!

Here are some of the darling pictures I took at our Grandparent's/ Special Person Day! It was a lot of fun! I love these pictures! I only heard from one parent that wanted me to email the picture as well as print it--anyone else? Email me.

Thanks to all our special people for coming. Several of the grandparents traveled several hours to come and spend the day with us, and lots of others took time off of work to come. Thank you for spending the day with us and for sharing your wonderful children/grandchildren with me!

Apples!

We had a fun week talking about the letter Aa and apples. I'm not sure why, but calling something a "party" instantly makes it more fun. Today we talked about the sound for a and painted apples. I can't remember where I saw this idea, but I liked it. The students enjoyed painting their apples and thought it was hilarious when I pretended to take a bite out of the plate.

We talked about the life cycle of an apple (seed, seedling, tree, bud, flower, fruit, seed) and sang a song about a little apple seed. We cut open apples and saw the seeds. We did a taste test with a red apple and a green apple. We made a chart, and red apples were preferred in both classes. Then we each took our apples and we compared the sizes of our apples using our vocabulary words: bigger and smaller.

I cut up each person's apple and put it on a plate along with a spoonful of peanut butter and a spoonful of caramel dip. They seemed to really like this snack. We made a chart after we ate and the caramel dip was a little more popular, but not by much! Thanks for all the donations of apples. It was a fun day!

A few pictures:
(Sorry these first ones are only of morning class. I forgot to take pictures of this in the afternoon!)

Our bulletin board this week:

Chicka, Chicka, Boom, Boom!

Here is a picture of the bulletin board of Chicka, Chicka, Boom, Boom! It is a fantastic book and the students seemed to really enjoy it. We painted the trees on Tuesday, then on Thursday the students cut out the letters and glued them on their coconut tree.

First Letter, Afternoon Session

For whatever reason, it's easier to upload one at a time. Scoll down to the next post for pictures of the morning class and the explanation of what we did. Cute, creative kiddos!

First Letter of Name Activity

This is a fun, creative thing I did with the students today. We talk about our names, and the letters, and I give each child a piece of paper with the first letter of their name traced big enough to fill up the paper. Then we get out our box of "beautiful junk" and they decorate away! It's so fun to see it!

(Morning class.)

Colors Week

We had a great second week of school! I feel like the students are really starting to get the hang of the "school" routines and our schedule--fantastic!

We enjoyed painting this week as part of our Colors theme. The students really seem to enjoy painting. We will definitely be doing it again! It was interesting to see the students' reactions to all the different paint colors. Some students would only use one color, or maybe two. Other students wouldn't stop painting until they had used nearly every color we had--more than 10!

 With the colors theme, we also talked about our favorite colors, and also how the different colors can make us think of different things and feel different emotions--like yellow, for example, makes most people think of the sun, and we feel happy, where black reminds us of night or darkness.


Today we talked about color mixing, and we did an experiment to show how different colors mixed together make other colors. Then the students used sponges to paint with the colors red, yellow and green.

Two samples of the painting by afternoon class.

We also talked about our names and how they are shaped. Each student was given a paper with their name written on it, a Q-tip and a small cup of paint (their choice of color). Then they painted over their names with the paint. Again, a great fine motor skills activity and also helping with name recognition.

Thanks for sharing your wonderful children with me!

One more... and today's activities

No, I generally won't post every preschool day... but these were cute!

Today we read the book It Looked Like Spilt Milk by Charles G. Shaw. It's a fun book with predictable language, but it doesn't tell what "it" actually is until the end. Cute. Anyway. After we read the story, we made our own pictures by squishing white paint between a folded piece of blue paper. Then the students told me what their pictures looked like and I wrote it on the paper.

Parker: It looked like a butterfly, but it wasn't a butterfly.

 Another activity we did today was shaving cream. No matter the age, most students love this. A few students didn't like the messiness of this, which is just fine. We practiced using our pointer fingers to make shapes and different lines (zigzag, straight, squiggly). Things like this are good for fine motor development.

And I found another paper plate face lurking in with the puzzles! It's Vivian's on the top right!

Looking forward to next week! And just fyi, I am planning to paint both days next week, so dress your child appropriately! :)

First Day

We had a fantastic first day of preschool! I hope your children were as excited as I was! I enjoyed spending more time with the students and getting to know them more. I think we are in for a great year! I guess I was nervous, because I forgot to do Happy Grams with the classes on Tuesday--sorry! I will for sure get to them Thursday.

One of the projects we did on Tuesday was to create our faces using paper plates, googly eyes, glue, yarn and glitter glue. It was fun to see what the students came up with. Children are so creative! (P.S. Sorry to the parents/students whose faces aren't here--I tried to convince all the students to leave their projects, but a few of them "escaped!" Sorry!)

*Click on each of the collages to see the pictures a little bigger!*

Something else that I love about children is that they are instantly friends. Adults can sit in a room for hours together and then leave without "making" friends. To children, they are automatically friends! I love it!

Open House

Just a reminder that the preschool open house will be Wednesday, Aug. 31 from 10:00 - 11:30 AM, and from 6:00-7:30 PM. You can come at whichever time is more convenient for you. You should be getting an invitation in the mail in the next day or two.

I am so excited for our year of preschool! It is going to be fantastic!

Welcome!

Welcome to my preschool blog! I am so excited to be staring this journey into preschool. On this page you will find information about our preschool policies, schedule, and current information. You can leave me a comment or email me at jamie_h_owen (at) yahoo (dot) com if you want more information. Thanks!