Flying into Preschool!

What a fabulous start to the year we have had.  The children entered week two of school eager, excited and ready to learn.  We continue getting to know each child and are truly so lucky to spend the day with them.  Busy kids loving school...

 

 

 

The classroom environment has been arranged to inspire curiosity.  Each day, the children are engaged in a variety of experiences that encourage creativity, discovery, social and emotional development and academic growth.  We strive to develop the whole child!  The activities and investigations among the classroom will change frequently throughout the year as we follow the students interests and developing social/emotional and academic needs.  The children are learning how to be independent during our explore time and are realizing there is a lot to discover!  They are slowly learning to guide their own learning and allowing time for "choice" is a very empowering thing for a child.

We are also starting to notice a lot of collaboration and teamwork happening between the children during play.  They are learning how to ask each other to play, join in play and problem solve.  This week there was a lot of collaboration with blocks, playground games, art table creations and dramatic play!

Highlights from our week...

We continue to learn new routines and practice others.  Every morning we gather together as a class in our morning meeting.  We always greet each other, sing a welcome song, talk about our day, look at the calendar, count our number of the day and analyze our daily question to see if we have our magic number...15!  That means all our friends are at school!  The children have learned quite a few new songs and rhymes that keep our morning meeting extra engaging.

 

Answering the question of the day is a favorite routine.  Each day, there is a brand new question waiting to be answered!  We incorporate many early literacy skills in our question throughout year such as letter sounds, symbols and concepts of print.  We begin by looking at the letter sounds and symbols in our friends names!

The children continue to LOVE our classroom sand table and measuring tools.  They especially enjoy the different sized funnels and practice seeing which one the sand goes through the fastest.

The paint easel center opened this week and it was another immediate favorite.  The paint easel is wonderful for creative self-expression.  The children tell stories through their paintings.  We often ask them to tell us their picture story and there is always a lot of meaning behind their work!  The paint easel has the children working on a vertical surface which is strengthening shoulder/elbow stability, bilateral coordination, pencil grip, visual and eye-hand coordination, to name a few!

We got busy creating the lowercase letters for our classroom letter wall.  Last week, the children explored with paint to create our uppercase letters.  This week, they used random materials to create the lowercase!  We talked about the traits of each letter such as straight lines and curves as they outlined the different letters.

  

We will soon begin adding familiar words to our letter wall.  These will include our friends and teachers names.  Environmental print and other meaningful and familiar words will be added throughout the year.  Check out the final product!

Another beginning of the year focus is "all about me".  We read books that generate conversation about our similarities, differences, what we like about ourselves, our interests and more.  We celebrate all that makes each of us unique!  This week we read the book I Like Me by Nancy Carlson.  Afterward, we drew our first self portraits by looking in a mirror and highlighting our features that make us unique and special.  We matched crayons to our skin color, looked at our eye color, hair color and more.  Self portraits are a wonderful exercise that help children develop their ability to talk about themselves and learn about others.  They also help make connections to feelings and emotions.  Our "all about me" focus will continue next week.

  

We had fun sorting through letters and finding the ones in our own names.  We also counted how many letters are in our own name!  Our name pages will go in our first class book.

What do you notice?  The children were asked this simple question when exploring the knobbed cylinders.  As they worked they began to notice the many different characteristics of each set such as size, shape, height, width and dimension. They practiced explaining their thoughts and discoveries with teachers and friends.  This material encourages children to visually establish ideas of putting something in order from tall to short, thick to thin, and large to small.  These are all parts of mathematical thinking and development.

 

The next few weeks will bring more fun and learning as we begin our investigations of APPLES!  Apple poems, songs, books, counting, graphing and tasting, are just a few of the ways apples are a common theme.  A favorite field trip is to Minnetonka Apple Orchard is on Thursday, September 20th.  Throughout the month of September, inquiries of fall in Minnesota fill the classroom as we spend lots of time outdoors and make observations of the changing world around us.  It is a great time of year to use the children's natural curiosities and questions in order to create meaningful and authentic learning experiences for them.

Specialists Next Week

9/10- Day 4- Morning Music
9/11- Day 5- Morning P.E.
9/12- Day 6- Morning Art
9/13- Day 1- Morning P.E. and Afternoon Library
9/14- Day 2- Morning Music

Dates to Remember:

Thursday, September 13th- Back To School Night 5:45

Tuesday, September 18th- Picture Day

Thursday, September 20th- Field Trip to Minnetonka Apple Orchard

Friday, September 21st- Wear BLUE and GOLD Day

Saturday, September 22nd- Blessing of the Animals and Breck Homecoming

Have a wonderful weekend!