Week 6 (Oct. 7, 8, 9)

We had a busy week! And, as usual, I took too many pictures… Dress-up is always a favorite, and I switched out some of the old stuff with a few new masks, accessories and outfits.

The weather is still a bit warm, but SO nice. The preschoolers always enjoy it out there.

We spent lots of time with Play-Doh just for fun. It's a very calming activity and seems to be one of their favorite things to do.

I got each preschooler a spider web lacing board to work on those ever-so-important fine motor skills. They each got to take one home with them.

We've been talking lots about the Book-It program at school and the kids often choose to look at books during free choice time, and then run to tell me that when they get home they will color their owl on the calendar!  Let me know if you have any questions about the program.

Here are some more pictures of their play this week. They have such fun personalities, it's fun to see who is excited about what each day.

We talked a bit about Halloween and some of the creatures and characters that we will see during this month. After get excited about spiders and bats, I made that the theme for the week. We read Stellaluna, The Very Busy Spider, and several others. During table time, they did a spider match activity. This encourages number recognition, one-to-one correspondence, counting, visual discrimination, motor planning and coordination… When you're at home and there is an opportunity to count the number of objects, encourage your preschooler to do it. Make sure that they are counting as slowly as they are pointing, instead of rattling off 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10 when there are only 5 objects.

We also made WEBS to catch a pesky fly, like in the book we had read.

During small groups I worked individually with the preschoolers on various skills using these sorting charts. They worked on color grouping, letter recognition and phonemic awareness (for charts that they had to try out the beginning sound of the word to figure out where it went). And of course as we picked up each chart, we did a little counting, patterning, etc. Just for fun. They are so smart!

Our Friday table time activity was to make BATS! They were beyond excited about this. We talked in circle time about what we would do, and that since this was ART, there was no wrong way to do it. I like the open creativity allowed in art, and for preschoolers who are learning so much about the right and wrong way of everything else right now, it's nice to have a freeing activity like this. Each bat turned out different, and each one was adorable. First, cutting out the wings and ears.

Then, getting lots of glue on the popsicle stick.

Putting on the goggly eyes.

Voila! Masterpiece finished!

We did a bit more with the fire safety activities too, since they had an interest in that from the previous week. We tried this visual discrimination and memory activity. The preschoolers look at the first picture for a few seconds, and talk about what they see. Then, I hide that picture and show one of the other 9 pictures (like the second drawing in the picture below) that is the same, but missing something.  Can you spot it? They squeal with excitement when I say we are doing this game during circle time. Ha ha. They sure make my day fun!

REMINDER

It's October! Please bring your October tuition to school on Wednesday the 7th, if you haven't already brought it in. Thanks for being prompt, see you on Wednesday!

Week 5 (Sept. 30, Oct. 1, 2)

We covered LOTS of topics this week, and also started on some new ones! We talked about manners, and "good preschool behavior". Each preschooler got to take home this cute book about manners, mostly saying please and thank you. We do a lot of turn taking and waiting in preschool, it's the perfect place to learn!

Since October is fire safety month, we started playing with a few new toys. The preschoolers are always happy when I take out a new box of toys for them to play with. It's a good thing I have a problem with buying too many toys...

Our morning circle time continues to lengthen as the kids get familiar with the routine. They're able to sit and attend better to stories and activities and participate more in the songs since they know them now. Our days of the week song (although very repetitive and not very exciting) is a favorite song, especially for the helper of the day, because they get to use the pointer!

During free choice time, the kids get to choose the activity they want to do. This week, they were very interested in artwork and coloring, although there were plenty of dolls, transformers, and other things too.

One of the table time activities was exploring with letter stamps. The preschoolers named the letters as they used them. This was a creative activity that they could do and still have some time to practice their letter recognition.

Another table time activity was sorting shapes. They did pretty well with this activity even with all the work they had to do. First they sorted the pieces of paper in the sorting trays, then drew lines on their papers to make sections, then glued each shapes in each section. Good job!

Our last table time activity was making owls! The kids got pieces of construction paper and ripped them into little pieces, glued them onto their paper, and added eyes and beaks. They all turned out very different, and very adorable. We've been reading some books about fall and nocturnal animals, so this was right up their alley!

The preschoolers are getting excited about Halloween and we decorated the windows in one of the preschool rooms. So fun!

We grew some water beads in the sensory table outside. They start out SO tiny and hard.

We put them in the water and watched them begin to grow!

By today, they got HUGE! The kids were so excited to play with them. They are pretty bouncy and squishy too, so it made for an extra fun outside time!

Sofia, Jackson, and Jared made a restaurant for Abby using the water beads as food. Then Abby and Jackson sat down for pretend food. They played for a long time, it was very sweet.

The trampoline is a favorite activity and the weather has been SO nice. Not too hot and not too cold. Trampoline pictures are always fun!

Christian and Lullaby were quite the pair today and loving their trampoline time together today. The would hold hands and then fall down and howl with laughter and start over again.

And…. drumroll please… We're starting Book-It! Each month, October through March, I will send home a new calendar. Each day that your preschooler reads (alone or with someone else), they can color that day on the calendar. At the end of the month, I'll send a reminder to bring it back to school. The preschoolers can turn in their calendars for a ticket to get a free personal pan pizza from Pizza Hut! Hooray! They are very excited about this, and it's a fun way to encourage a love of reading.