REMINDER

We have a short week coming up! There will be no school on Wednesday January 27th because it's an HISD early release day. Regular preschool will start on Thursday the 28th. See you then!

Week 15 (Jan. 20, 21, 22)

A skill that kindergartens use a lot is cutting. Using scissors can be challenging, so I made it part of each of our table time projects this week. The preschoolers cut out and sorted these 20 squares of letters and numbers, and then glued them to their papers. They really did a nice job with this activity and it reinforced letter and number recognition as well.

We have been talking about shapes, and although simple shapes like square and circle are easy for this group, they don't know complex shapes like hexagons. We talked about what that was and then read about how snowflakes are 6-sided, just like hexagons. So the preschoolers cut out their own snowflakes. With that many folds in the paper, it was hard to cut. I helped them a bit with this activity, but they decided where each cut should be.

Another table time activity was putting together a mixed up picture, sort of like a puzzle. First they had to cut out the pieces, line then up the right way, and then glue them down onto their papers.  We did Paw Patrol pictures, because everyone loves playing with the Paw Patrol toys during free choice time.

I brought out some new toys this week, and left some of the old favorites out too. It was fun to see which preschooler gravitated toward which toy or activity.

The tiny pattern bears were fun to use and revisit when we were talking about patterns the week before.  Plus dressing up the tiny bears and bunnies is fun!

Most of the preschoolers' time outside was spent on the slides. They tried going down all at the same time… They tried having races… They tried going down on their tummies… It was a slide filled day!

We have continued signing in at the beginning of each day and it's really helping with their handwriting, letter knowledge, letter spacing and fine motor skills.  Not to mention knowing how to spell their name!

The letters and letter sounds we talked about this week were 'G', 'H', and 'I'. The preschoolers sing along to this phonics letter song each day too. It doesn't cover long sounds (like the 'I' in ice-cream), but it does all the short sounds (like 'I' in inchworm) which are more common.  In circle time though, we do cover all the sounds that a letter makes and I give them examples.

We talked LOTS about opposites and even did a picture hunt for opposites in their Richard Scary book about opposites. They each got to take home a copy of the book.

On Friday, we skipped our regular outside time and bummed the day ahead by 30 minutes. We finished our closing circle at 12:00 and lined up to walk to the park. The preschoolers were SO excited to go, even though it must have been our coldest and windiest day this winter! They walked REALLY nicely together and followed directions. I was very happy with them!

They loved exploring the playground and trying out all that new equipment!  They were very busy!

I also brought bubbles (which the wind blew all by itself), sidewalk chalk, and a soccer ball. They had a great time playing while we waited for the parents to pick them up.  We will definitely be doing this again when it warms up a bit!