Race Cars and the Zoo

What a great time in school this morning.  Even with all the snow everyone was able to make it safely and we learned a ton!  I'm so glad we didn't have to cancel school but I was nervous for those of you on the roads.  This morning we were talking about letter R and race cars all day. Everyone LOVED the Usborne Race Cars book.  It has tracks for wind up race cars to go on.  It was a hit!  We also made a couple of cardboard cars and ran around saying /r/!  Each child got an eraser (cars, airplanes, boats or trains) and we raced them them in the air saying /r/!

 We had great reading lessons today.  I'm so proud of this class!  They are doing fantastic!  The letter R book introduced the sight word "to".  We practiced reading "to" with the sight word watch from the Moffatt Girls.  I was super proud of my second reading group who made great leaps in blending sounds together, they're getting it!

 For art today we played with a sensory bin of water beads.  It was used last week for our homeschool Bloodmobile lesson and since water beads tend to hang around forever we decided to play with them in preschool as well. After the sensory bin we had a fun math lesson about shapes.  We talked about all the shapes around us: the white board is a rectangle, the clock is an oval, there are triangles on the borders, etc.  Then each child got their writing notebook and went on a treasure shape hunt throughout the room.  They found lots of different shapes and drew what they found.  It was the cutest thing ever!  They were so busy with their "work".  Walking around and finding comfortable places like the stairs to sit and draw.  It was so cute and so fun!

 This afternoon we continued our Ready2Read lessons.  We started the Level 2 word wall with a few of the kids and began introducing consonant blends and digraphs.  We also got to read a new book "I Love You, Zooborns!"

 We also got to play with the water bead sensory bin after snack and I was quite impressed with the kids that were a part of the homeschool blood lesson.  They were telling everyone else about what the parts of the sensory bin represented.  I was happy to see that lesson stuck!

 After art we headed downstairs for math.  We're making our own books for math right now.  Each page has a number and a decimal street drawing to match.  We're working on labeling the houses ("tens" and "units") and drawing them appropriately.  We're working on making sure that 6 is represented with 6 units instead of 6 sticks of ten.  We'll work more on this the next couple of days before moving on to counting to 100.  Please continue to play the matching card game at home!

Safety, Salt, Smoke Detectors and Lots of Reading!

What a fantastic day of learning!  We had so much fun this morning with "Fireman Sam" (the hand puppet) as the teacher of the class.  He helped us review our letters, read us stories about firemen, helped us read and even showed us the smoke detector.  It was loud when it beeped, but now we know what it is for and what it sounds like!  We had tons of fun playing in trays of salt during art time.  We discussed "tall" and "short" during math and drew in our journals about what we learned today.  It was so much fun!

 Preschool B took reading to heart today as we practiced our new game "Making Words" as a class.  It's a great activity in the Bubbles extension pack if you need a printable.  We are practicing blending from one sound to the next in our reading.  We also found an interesting page in our encyclopedia and pointed out the names and sounds of the letters to our sock monkeys.  We read one-on-one with Miss Amanda today and each child is doing fantastic.  Not to be outdone by the morning class, we also played with salt today and it always amazes me how much they LOVE this activity and how long they are fully engaged in it.

Happy learning!  We'll see you all on Monday!

Tot School Thursday - Pets (and bugs!)

We had such a lovely last day of Tot School Thursday today.  We got to talk all about pets.  First thing this morning we started coloring and putting together our TP roll pets.  Everyone made a dog today.  Some of them ended up as striped dogs and some were left more white because other fun things were happening :)

 We practiced sitting on our green mats and listening to stories.  We read all about pets and practiced petting and gently scratching our stuffed animal pets.

 Then we headed outside for snack time of pretzels and applesauce.

 We learned how to sit on the bug bouncers even though we have little bodies.  It was so fun to watch them play with these!

 Still working on snack...

 We also played with the play-dough and scissors.  Keep practicing those scissor skills at home!

 We learned how to play the bug spray game for the bug party tonight.  We needed to fill up the bugs with water and spray off the bugs on the chalkboard.

 We also got out our sensory activity.  Today we played with water beads.  They are really fun to explore.  They're all squishy and wet yet feel a little like marbles.  I think everyone liked them.

 Ye-ha!

 I tried to get a class picture toward the end of the day but it didn't go so well.  I should have done this first thing before we were tired from the day.  They still are so super cute!  "Cute as a bug" you might say.  I'm so glad I get to have so many of them join me again in the fall.  Have a great summer little ones!

Tuesday Preschool - Pets (and Bugs!)

It was such a delightful last day of Tot School Tuesday. We learned all about pets (and then threw in some bug activities at the end of the day to be ready for our bug party). 

 We started the day inside making TP roll pets.  They are so cute!  We made dogs and bunnies.

 Everyone colored their own parts and then I assembled them.

 We read a few books about pets, pet needs, and how to show a pet you love them.  We did the ASL for all the pets as we came across them in our books.

 We headed outside for snack time.  Today we had g/f pretzels (circle shapes), apples and cucumbers.  Yum!

Next I got out the "Bug Spray" game to teach them how to play before the bug party.

 There are little bug sprayers and we had to fill them up in the bucket of water and then spray off the pictures of bugs on the chalk board.  They had so much fun and played this game for quite a long time. At this point all the stuffed animal pets had been forgotten :)

 Our sensory activity for Pets was a bowl of water beads.  They're basically the same type of little beads that absorb moisture in a diaper, but are sold as decorative vase fillers.  They absorb water and have a very squishy feel to them.  The kids LOVED sticking their hands in this bowl.  In fact, I thought it was cool and interesting feeling enough to stick my hands in a few times :)

 Trying on our antenna headbands for our bug party :)  I was going to get a class picture but VB was out sick today :(.  Hopefully we'll get one at the bug party!

 Back inside playing with the pets tot pack while I gathered all of their artwork and items from the school year to send home.  It was such a delightful year.  I'm so happy to have so many of these kids coming back next year!