Learning from the Season

The preschoolers have been learning and playing with lots of autumn-inspired activities. Come take a look!

Literacy

Have you seen the star hidden inside every apple? We have! The children have been learning Ellis Paul’s poem “The Star Inside the Apple”, and they’re getting very good at it! Written on large easel paper in the classroom with pictures representing some of the words as reminders, this poem has quickly become memorable to our class. As teachers point to the words, children say the poem. While they’re not quite reading in the way that adults define it, they are using their pre-reading skills to recognize that print carries meaning, that each group of letters surrounded by a space on either side is a word, and some are even starting to notice beginning letter sounds. Very impressive stuff, preschoolers! Meanwhile, the kids have been exploring this star on their own with apples in our classroom, dipping them in paint to make apple prints, sketching our bowl of apples and painting the sketches at the easel. Our Preschool Art Gallery is really filling up! 

Beginning Number Concepts

Measuring spoons and cups have played a big role in our new fall sensory table! Preschoolers enjoy scooping and pouring the contents of one container into another to see if they’ll hold the same amount; at the same time, they’re  exploring the different feelings of smooth corn kernels, rough hay, soft and velvety leaves, and squishy foam pumpkins. What’s coming next? We’ll start counting the seeds inside each apple’s star. Does every apple have the same amount of seeds? Ask the preschoolers next week, and they’ll be able to tell you!

Science and Nature

The children have been keeping a close eye on our class tree, ready to document any changes that may occur with their next tree art. They have sketched the tree with pencil, traced it with marker and painted it at the easel. Spending so much time with their art has gotten us really thinking about the different part of the tree and how they will change before our eyes over the course of the year. We can’t wait to see  these changes really start to show!

Fun and Confidence through Music

We started a preschool percussion ensemble! Students took turns to be the conductor and use hand signals to instruct their friends when to play loudly, moderately, and softly as well as when to begin and stop playing. It was fun to use new instruments and great for everyone to practice being the leader and the listeners.

Learning Together

The children are forming some wonderful bonds with one another that make learning together and learning from one another come naturally! 

As the children become more comfortable with their surroundings, teachers, and classmates, they are clearly becoming more confident, speaking their minds, asking their questions, and helping one another. We’ve been talking a lot about Carol McCloud’s “filling buckets” --that is, doing kind things to help make others feel good--and the children are really taking it to heart! This week, they each picked a name from our classroom bucket and helped me write something good about each person. Take a look at some of their comments!

• Chaendra is good at playing in the sand! (Eliah)

• Evan is good at puzzles! (Maeve)

• Sean is a good friend, because he helps clean up sand and Lincoln Logs. (Elsie)

• I like Silas, because he caught the puzzle fish with me! (Kyle)

• Ololara is a good artist! (Lorelai)

• Hudson is fun to play with outside. He is always nice to me, and I like to see him! (Ololara)

Come visit the classroom or our blog for a complete list of the children’s compliments to one another!

A First Dive Into Literacy

We have become very active in our play with words and sounds in the last couple of weeks. That’s because before we put a significant focus on written letters, it is essential to develop children’s phonemic awareness: the understanding that language is made of individual sounds and the ability to manipulate them. To focus on this, we’ve been reading a lot of rhyming stories where the children can fill in the rhymes, such as in Dr. Seuss’s Green Eggs and Ham and McClintock’s A Fly Went By. We solve rhyming riddles that lead children to contribute to a class drawing.We’ve also been singing songs in which we say each individual sound in the children’s names to see if we can blend them together to guess who’s turn is next. It is tremendously helpful to your child if you continue this play at home. Some great ways to do this at home is with nursery rhymes and sound manipulation games where certain sounds in a word are changed (such as in “I Like To Eat, Eat, Eat Apples and Bananas” or “Hudson, Hudson, Bo Budson, Banana Fanna Fo Fudson...”). Not only do these help children to hear and isolate the sounds in words, but it also teaches them how fun playing with language can be--an important part to a great literacy beginning!

Beginning Number Concepts

Counting and graphing have been key components to every morning in preschool! One way that we exercise this is with our question of the day. It’s asked in a survey format, and each child answers by writing their name or their first letter in the column that represents their answer. As a group, we tally up all the answers, put them in a graph, and then the children use that visual representation to discuss which answer was chosen the most often and the least often. 

Our Class Tree

As part of our science studies, we have adopted a class tree! The children are learning all about and identifying the parts of a tree. On Friday, the children all went outside with some paper, pencils, and clipboards to sketch the tree just outside our classroom window. This week, we’ll be tracing and painting the sketches. Throughout the year, we’ll continue making observations and drawing our findings to see how our tree will change in different seasons.

We're having a great start to the school year!

The children are already busy learning their new classroom routines and getting to know their new friends.  Come and take a look!

Classroom Routines

I'd like to send a big thank you to the preschool families for helping to teach their children the morning routine; they are already getting so independent and comfortable with it! Things are running amazingly  smoothly for such an early point in the year, and that leaves more time for fun and meaningful play! 

Maeve washes her hands as she enters the classroom.

Sean adds his name to the number line.

Hudson collects his lunch and folder from his cubby.

The children are also becoming experts at using our Choice Board--a great learning tool that helps the students to make purposeful choices, negotiate sharing and turn-taking, and immerse themselves in a variety of activities and groups of friends throughout the day.

J.R. and Silas decide which activity to choose next. Dress up looks like a promising option!

Building A Community

This week, we introduced the word "community" as a group of people in which everyone feels special, important, respected, and everyone helps each other out. We read Leo Lionni's Swimmy and talked about how each fish worked together to solve their problem. We read Shane DeRolf's The Crayon Box That Talked and discussed how each different color helped to make a beautiful picture when they all cooperated with one another. Then we asked the students how they could be good members of their community. Here are some of their ideas: 

• We could play with our friends. (J.R.)
• We could help people. (Sami)
• We could hug our friends if they're sad. (Ololara)
• We could have a play date. (Maeve)

All this talk of being a good community-member has had a great effect on the children's interactions with one another. Toward the end of the week, the teachers observed Chaendra helping Silas button up his costume in the dress-up area, Eliah holding Harper and Ozzy's choice cards for them while they went to the bathrooms, Ozzy helping to bury Eliah's hand in the sand table, Lorelai helping Kyle at the shapes table, and Maeve sharing her chalk with Harper. We heard Chaendra congratulating Elsie on finishing a puzzle. All the children cheer each other on when they are running during "Duck, Duck, Goose". Oh, and then there was this conversation:

Sami: Eliah, are you my friend?

Eliah: Well, yeah! Everyone in this class is friends!

Sami:Yeah! Everyone in the whole world is my friend!

These children are on track to building a strong and caring community: the kind of place where learning happens best! This week, we'll be reading Karen Katz's The Colors of Us as we celebrate the beauty and wisdom our diversity brings; we'll also introduce Carol McCloud's Have You Filled A Bucket Today?, a brilliant book that puts empathy development right into children's terms. "Filling buckets" is a theme that we will carry throughout the year, so feel free to find the book at a local library and familiarize yourself with it--or even better, come into the classroom and read our copy with your preschooler! When the children hear their families and teachers talking about "filling buckets", they're bound to get excited about it!

Preschool Daily Schedule

9:00 Welcome Play Time: puzzles, drawing, table activities, journals

9:30 Morning Meeting

Greetings, music and movement, group story telling, social stories, yoga, etc.

10:00 Snack Time

10:30 Choice Time

Sensory Table: sand, rice, corn, flax seeds, dinosaur bones with letters/numbers

Math Games: number sort, roll the dice stamps, shape sorts, number matching,  number

                                rhymes and finger paints/shaving cream, etc.

Library

Art: easel painting, finger painting, drawing, watercolors, clay, bookmaking, 

Small group table: on-going project work

Finger play

      Play dough, clay, bead work, marble chute, scissors practice, drawing, mortar and 

                pestles, sorting games, sticks and yarn, puzzles, etc.

Building Blocks

Pretend Play

      dress up, house, tent, dolls, box play

11:30 Outdoor Play

12:15 Lunch

12:45 Storytime

Story, fingerplays, songs

1:15 Rest Time

1:45 Daily Five Reader’s Workshop/Group Project Work

DF: Read to self, read to someone, listen to reading, Letter/Word Play, Writing  

                     (message center, bookmaking, songwriting, thank you notes, journal entries)

2:45 Farewell Play Time: outdoor play, puzzles, drawing, table activities, journals

3:15 Community Check-in: What is something you did today? What can you share with

        your families? What did we do well? What can we work on tomorrow?

3:30 Dismissal 

*The Preschool Schedule is subject to day to day change in order to meet the immediate needs of students and utilize the "teachable moments" that any given day can present.