Winter and Snow!

We had a great week learning all about winter and snow!

We practiced one-to-one correspondence and letter recognition as we played this fun game!  The kids took turns rolling a numbered die and putting that number of "snowballs" on the snowmen!

Preschoolers love singing and acting out songs!  We sang "Once There Was a Snowman" this week!  Not only is it good for children to learn music, but it is a wonderful way for them to express themselves and memorize lyrics!

 

For one of our projects this week the children made individual snowmen with the letters of their name on the snowballs.  This was a great activity for both 3-year-old and the Pre-K classes because it helped them recognize their names, put their letters in the correct order and if able, write their own names!

It was fun to see the kids practice their art skills and working together as a class as they took turns and drew a colorful, classroom snowman!

Since we were learning about winter, it was a perfect opportunity to take a few minutes to lay down and listen to Vivaldi's classical piece entitled "Winter" and imagine some fun winter activities they like to do during the winter.  Classical music is so good for children to listen to as it helps their brain develop as well as giving them more exposure to various styles of music.

 

We also learned the letter "W" this week! 

It was fun to find lots of different ways to make the letter of the week!

 

The children were enthralled with stories about winter and snow this week!

 They really enjoyed music and movement time with Ms. Ann this week!

 I love seeing their joyful, happy faces as they sing together!

Next week we will be learning about other winter holidays celebrated around the world.  Then, the following week we will be focusing just on Christmas!  We are so excited for this magical time of year!

Thanksgiving Time!

We had a great week getting ready for Thanksgiving!  The kids were SO excited to finally get to paint their little sculptures they made when Cathy Erdmann came to visit last week!  It was so fun to see how they all turned out!  

What cute little turkeys!

 

The 3-year-olds carefully painting their pumpkin sculptures.

We learned that Thanksgiving is about giving thanks and being thankful!  We realized we have a lot to be thankful for!  Each class worked together to make a "Thankful Turkey"!

 

Each child drew a picture of what they were thankful for on turkey feathers!  We had everything from being thankful for family to being thankful there were no aliens in their house! ; )

 

Learning our Thanksgiving song!  

We have so many things to be grateful for including our "mother's kiss".

We learned the letter "T" this week!  

The Pre-K students did a color-by-letter turkey to practice letter recognition and following a color key.  This was our first project like this this year and these kids did a great job!

We had a couple of neat visitors this week!  First, one student's mom brought one of their chickens for us to learn about!  

It was so neat to have a real, live chicken in class for the kids to see and touch!  We learned what the chicken eats, what it's eggs look like, and saw some fun pictures of other kinds of chickens!  

Thank you for sharing with us Jenny!

Mother Goose also came this week to our Pre-K class!  We LOVE how expressive and enthusiastic Mother Goose is!  We all look forward to her visits along with her songs, stories, and rhymes!

 

  These boys did a great job putting these opposites puzzles together!

  Exploring the sounds of a xylophone!

 Word and letter puzzles were taken to a new level this week as the kids spelled out their names!

We had a truly splendid time this week and are looking forward to our very short week before Thanksgiving break!  In the spirit of Thanksgiving, thank you for sharing your precious children!  I am so grateful to get to teach preschool each day!

Guest Artist and Turkey Time!

The highlight of our week was having a guest artist come to our preschool! 

We were privileged to have Cathy Erdmann, an amazingly talented local artist, visit and teach us!  The children loved the hands-on experience of learning about sculpture. 

Cathy showed us the many steps that go into making a bronze sculpture!  It's quite the process!

It was amazing to have such a talented artist teach us right in our preschool!

Feeling the clay Cathy uses to make her sculptures.  The kids noted that they could break it apart and squeeze it, but that it was not as easy to squish as Play-doh.

Touching and squishing the rubber mold from one of Cathy's sculptures.

Learning about the wire frames she uses to support her clay sculptures.

Feeling how heavy a real bronze sculpture is!

What a neat experience!

Trying our hand at making our own little sculptures!  

The Pre-K classes made little turkeys and the 3-year-olds made pumpkins!  Next week, after the sculptures dry, we will paint them and bring them home! 

We learned a fun turkey song this week!

Wobble, wobble, wobble goes the turkey.

Gobble, gobble, gobble's what he says.

Turkeys spread their feathers on Thanksgiving day,

and then they run away! : )

After learning all about real turkeys, we made the ever classic hand print turkeys!

"K" was our letter of the week!

This class had a great time putting on a little performance for their classmates!

We are excited to learn more about Thanksgiving next week! 

We'll focus on being thankful as well as the letter "T". 

Indian week!

This month we are learning about Thanksgiving with each week having a related theme.  This week we learned about Indians.

The kids really enjoyed making Indian necklaces.  Stringing beads is a fun way for them to strengthen their fine motor skills.  

 After learning about how the Indians used animal skins for clothing and learning about the way they drew pictures to tell stories and communicate things, we incorporated those things and made our own Indian vests!

 
 The kids were free to decorate their vest however they wanted.  We had little symbols for the kids to glue on their vests.  Some of our students are really great artists and enjoyed drawing their own Indian symbols.


  It was really fun for them to dance and sing in their new Indian vests!  We learned the song "10 Little Indians" this week too.

 Since the Indians taught the Pilgrims how to grow different crops including corn, we learned a little bit about corn too!  The kids got to touch and compare 3 different kinds of corn: feed corn, sweet corn, and popcorn.

 Learning about corn was a great opportunity to have popcorn for snack!

 We always begin our preschool classes with centers.  This is a great way for the children to be able to socialize with their friends, explore patterns and new ways of doing things, and to have fun together!

 It was review week for our Pre-K classes!  All week we reviewed the letters we've learned so far and played memory match to reinforce the capital and lowercase letters!

What smart little children!  I love teaching these darling kids and seeing them learn and grow!