REMINDER

Please bring in your January Book-It calendars for those of you who have completed it, to class on Wednesday. The new February calendar was sent home today. Also, Wednesday starts a new month, which means tuition is due. See you then, thanks!

Week 19 (Jan. 29, 30)

The snow globes, which we had talked about making for a loooong time, finally were made! Finding the tiny arctic animals was a lot harder than I thought it would be. I glued them into the lids before preschool, so when the kids came it would be ready for them. They added scoops of glitter and baby oil (it makes the snow flutter more slowly than water), then I glued the lids on, and they finished by painting the lids white.

One day later, they started to leak a bit, so I added more glue to seal the edges. It should be fine now. But they were all very worried that I wouldn't let them take their amazing creations home if they were still wet, so I set up a fan, and everyone was pleased. You can't come home from preschool empty handed. :)

Trying out this new game. I had one as a kid called "Perfection", but this double version is called "Scramble" and they loved racing the timer to see if they could make all the shapes fit before it popped up.  This is also a tricky way to work on their fine motor skills, shape recognition, and spatial awareness.

The block creations were amazing again this week. These preschoolers are so creative!

I found two great sight word games on Starfall.com that the kids learned to play this week. In the first game, they click a gear which says a word, then they search for the correct word from the list below.   Here is Jeff showing off his new found skills. He was very proud of himself. In the background, Logan and Ryan are working together on an alphabet magnet game. Teamwork is so good to see!

Logan tried out the other sight word game where a robot says a word, then he chooses from a field of three words to find the correct one.  Practice letter sounds at home with your preschoolers and make it a game. What does the word "ball" start with? Or end with?

We tried another fun new game, "Silly Sentences". They got to choose three cards; one subject card, one action and one adverbial phrase or location card. Ryan is a great reader and when the kids couldn't guess what their silly sentence said based on the picture, Ryan would read it for them. They covered the whole table in silly sentences.

I set up the arctic in the sensory table outside. It was such lovely weather this week, I felt okay letting them play with ice. :)  One side had warm water (just for fun), and the other had ice. They played and played and played with this. I had no idea this would grab their attention as much as it did.

Living in Houston makes it hard to do lots of the regular cold weather preschool activities, so we're moving on to some new found interests next week, no more arctic. But I have to say, I loved listening to them talk about all the fun facts we learned in their play. "Let's all warm up now, in a huddle. That's what it's called when we stand together like penguins do, right Ms. Jessie?" Yes it is.

Week 18 (Jan. 21, 22, 23)

Days when we have inside recess I usually put out some pop-up tents for the preschoolers. But I wanted to try something new, and luckily, they all loved it. I put pieces of tape on the floor with each letter of the alphabet on it. I did upper and lower case together, since that made it easier to figure out each letter (in case they were looking at the letter upside-down). We have been doing lots with letter sounds. Not just listening for the beginning letter sounds, but also the end. So I would call out a word and they would run to the beginning or ending letter sound that they heard. Sometimes it was very tricky and different kids went to different letters, which made for the perfect opportunity for peer teaching. The kids on the right letter would call out to the others, and repeat the letter and sound so they would come to the correct letter as well.

They liked it well enough that we kept the letters on the floor for two days. We played group games and individual games. After the two days though, I pulled them up. The floor needed to be mopped.

I try to mix up the groups when I call the preschoolers to the table or a certain area of the school room for "small groups". I want each pair or trio of kids to be a strong team. There are some obvious strong friendships, but I want them ALL to feel wanted and needed by each friend. Thankfully, they are all such sweet kids that they love each group I set up, and incidentally end up continuing to play with the groupings later on in the day.

The creativity in the group is pretty impressive. I love seeing them imagine and then bring to life what they are thinking about.

We played with "Flarp" and it was (not surprisingly) a fast favorite. It's gooey, but not sticky. It holds a shape, but then seems to melt in your hands. And, the BEST part, it makes silly noises when you push it back into the can that it came in. They were giggling and making quite the scene. It was SO funny.

When the preschoolers are finished with their lunches, they clean up their space and have "quiet reading time", which they have gotten better and better at. Quiet is a hard thing to come by, but at the end of the day, they slow waaaay down and really enjoy this time.

Dragons were a big part of play time this week, so I made a couple of dragon inspired worksheets. Math has been something that we talk about on a regular basis, and they are understanding concepts that are usually introduced in Kindergarten, like using numbers to represent quantities to solve quantitative problem sets, for example. That Kindergarten standard is called "Operations and Algebraic Thinking" and is something that most kindergarteners will be introduced to for the first time toward the end of their year… Like I've said before, these kids are SMART! Here, I gave them a cup of "dinosaur eggs" (bingo counters), and unfinished simple math equations. It was a beautiful thing.

A just-for-fun worksheet I made for them was this ABC dragon maze. The dragons are friends and want to be together, so the top dragon has to follow the ABC's to get to his friend. I love it when after a silly simple idea of mine comes to light, I get 4 happy little boys asking for more and telling me how fun it was. It turned out to be a LOT more challenging that I thought it would be, but perhaps that's because I wrote it myself, instead of typing it and printing it out. Easy or not, they loved it.

Snack and lunch are always a pleasure. The kids are such happy, fun little people. Their personalities are SO big and wonderful. We pretended to be camping and made s'mores. The s'mores were made with marshmallows and bananas, and the chocolate was only 2 chocolate chips, and they gobbled that up FAST!

Viewfinders work, even when it's cloudy outside.

Trying out a game that we LOVE. When you answer correctly, you earn play money for the amount on the back of the card. When you answer incorrectly, you lose that amount of money. They, of course, love getting a big pile of money at the end, so they work really hard to get each question right.

Some of the question cards are simple, but some take a lot of time and effort. Logan kept getting VERY involved cards, like this "count to 100 out loud" card, followed by a "write every letter in the alphabet on your own" card. Sheesh!  He did it though!

Also, let this be the reminder for next week, NO CLASS on Wednesday. It's an HISD 1/2 day, so I will see you all on Thursday the 29th (where has the month gone?!), can't wait! :)