Friends!

Last week we learned all about friends and the letter I!

 The kids each got to dress themselves and a friend on their page for our project!  It was really sweet to hear who each of their friends were.  Many chose Mom or Dad or a sibling!  Good friends are very important!

 

This class has a little bee puppet friend that comes to visit sometimes!  The kids love when he comes to class!

At the end of centers, all the friends in our class clean up together.  We try to beat the "Clean-up Rabbit" that sings while we clean up!

For our snack one day, we made a "Friendship Salad"!  Each piece of fruit represented something that would help us be good friends like sharing, saying nice things, being kind, etc.

The kids really caught on to the spirit of our lesson and snack!  One little girl said, "Eating this makes me want to be nice to my friend ______."  Your children are so sweet and are learning so much!

 The children loved getting their hand painted as part of making our Friendship Quilt!

 After the hand prints were dry, they children each got to decorate their piece of the quilt with different shapes and colors to make a collage.

 

 When we put them all together, it made quite a masterpiece!  Each of these children are so different, just like their quilt piece depicts!  I love each one of them!

  Whether playing inside or outside, it's always fun to be with friends!

 

 "I scream, you scream, we all scream for Ice Cream!"  

This was our project for our Pre-K students.  They thought this math game was a real treat to play!  : )

It reinforced one-to-one correspondence, number recognition, patterns, and comparisons. 

I Belong in My Family!

To continue our theme of "I Belong," we spent a week talking about families!  We learned that families differ in so many ways from how many children are in the family to where we live with our family, just to name a couple.  Even though families are different, we feel love for our own family and feel the love they have for us!

The kids really enjoyed making their own family out of craft sticks!  I loved hearing what the children said their families were doing in their pictures!  Family time is so important for these sweet little ones!

We also sang a song about happily helping our family.  These kids loved acting out various ways they can help members of their family.

We played family in groups and acted out being different people in the family.  Role playing and pretend play are important for children's development.

As a class, we matched family words with pictures of people in a family.  Exposure to literacy and written words is helpful for children learning to read.  Activities like this one aid in building children's confidence as they "read" the words together.

For our project, we also played matching games with our family words and picture cards!

Once a month, our preschool gets a special visit from Mother Goose and Goosey!  This visit, she shared many nursery rhymes with the children!  We all love when Mother Goose comes our way!

We also started our Lending Library!  These kids have been so excited to check out books!  I love seeing which books they choose and having them practice writing their name as they check out the book.

Preschool has begun!

We are so happy to be back in the swing of things!  What a wonderful first week and a half we've had!

To help us introduce our theme of "School", we had a special little visitor from "The Kissing Hand" (by Audrey Penn) come to our class!  The children absolutely loved having Chester in our classroom!  He will be visiting throughout the year to see how much the kids are learning and how they enjoy preschool!

Then we got to draw our own "kissing hand" and talk about how we felt on our first day of preschool! The kids all did amazing well on the first day!  We were all so proud of them as they happily came to school and said good-bye to their parents. 

 We do a project each day.  This is our small group time where we focus on math, art, science, and reading readiness.  One of our projects was playing a letter memory match game.  This was a fun way to learn some letters and practice taking turns.

We've had some wonderful little music classes already this year!  Music is a wonderful way to encourage children to express emotion, memorize lyrics, and enjoy learning together!

After snack, we spend a few minutes either looking at books independently or working on puzzles.

This week we worked on some school skills including painting with water colors.  Painting helps strengthen eye-hand coordination, color recognition, and gives voice to expression and creativity.

Another school skill we worked on was cutting!  Using scissors can be a tricky skill to develop.  Each child was given a piece of paper to snip and cut however they wanted and then many chose to glue their pieces on another paper or together to form a creative masterpiece!  Later in the year we will work on cutting on lines, but it's important to let them get comfortable with scissors first.

This week we also explored some math skills with number recognition and writing for the older kids and one-to-one correspondence as we counted bears and put the correct number of bears by each number.

 

Some first week pics of little friendships forming as the children play together at centers and outside at recess!

 

  

We want to welcome Ms. Catherine to our team at Treasure Tree Academy!  She is our Assistant Teacher for one of the Pre-K classes and is a delight to have working with us! 

We are so excited to teach your beautiful children this year!  It is amazing how bright they are and just how sweet they are! See you next week!