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!