January 9th-20th

Last week at Elm Park Preschool the children completed activities surrounding the letter N.  We wrote the letter n everyday (in snacks, in shaving cream, with crayons, etc) and talked about words that start with n.  We reviewed concepts that have rounded out our monthly themes by rolling dice and completing the task on the dice.  For example, one side said "jump to something orange", as orange was one of the colors of the month.  The children also wrote about the themes in their journals (that went home last week). 

The kids made a book called "I See Shapes" and we read it in class a few times.  The older children also made a book called "Big" that they will continue to read in class.  The kids take such pride in their books, please continue to read them at home if the children want to.

We made a lot of crafts last week.  The tree had summer leaves on the outside and fall leaves on the inside.  We sang this song to the tune of Twinkle Twinkle Little Star while showing both sides of the tree,  "It is summer you can see, by the green leaves on my tree, in the fall they will turn red, and drop down upon my head, it is summer you can see, by the green leaves on my tree".  The kids LOVED singing the song while showing their tree.  We made snowflakes to decorate the room (since we're sad that we don't get snow here) and made snowmen out of mixture of glue and shaving cream. 

We made a class book called "My Favorite Season", it will be by the check in sheet if you want to check it out.  We also made "cloud math" as we talked about number pairs (adding). 

We've been talking about migrating and hibernating and spend a lot of time pretending to do both!

Reading "Big"

Making letter N in shaving cream

Keitaro's Birthday

We were lucky enough to have Keitaro come to school in his birthday.  We enjoyed donuts and sang happy birthday to him.

January 2 - January 6

The first week of the new year was spent finishing up our unit on seasons and introducing the new concepts of hail, hibernation, and migration.

While discussing hail, we explored a large piece of hail (4 inches in diameter) and observed it as it melted.  We made "hail buckets" out of dough and played a weather game.  We talked about how destructive hail can be and imagined it falling and hitting different things (like a car, our heads, etc.)
The children learned about hibernation and made a bear after discussing the hibernation habits of bears.

The older children made a book called "BIG" and they will continue to read it over the next few weeks. 

We talked about instruments and took turns playing various instruments while attempting to keep the beat.  The kids loved the experience and were way more musical than I expected!

Our letter for the week was M.  We wrote the letter M in paint, on paper, with goldfish, and on white boards.  The kids found M words in the rice bucket and worked on finding the starting sounds of words.  We continued to reinforce the colors orange and yellow and counted every day of the week. 

We're looking forward to a great 2012!

December 5th - December 16th

These weeks in class the children discussed the letters k and l.  We wrote letters in journals, on paper with paint, in snack foods on paper, and more.  We've spent a lot of time discussing weather and seasons.  The children learned about thunder and lightening, tornadoes (we made a tornado in a cylindrical jar), wind, clouds, and snow.  We talked about the water cycle and practiced flying kites in the "wind" (blowing on them).  We talked about dressing for weather and We worked on the numbers 5 and 6, counting groups and writing the numbers.

Of course we've discussed the holidays of Hanukkah and Christmas the past few weeks.  We practiced our Christmas program and spent a lot of time discussing the birth of Jesus and learning the order of events.  We made Christmas trees, picture frames, Christmas cards, stockings, and more. 




Birthday celebration



Kids making letters at snack









Preparing for performance



The kids have all improved so much with their fine hand coordination.  Everyone is holding pencils better and hands are getting stronger!  They children have also formed some great friendships and they all get along so well in a group together.  During this holiday season, I'm reminded how lucky we are to have such wonderful families here at Elm Park Preschool.  I wish you all a wonderful holiday season and look forward to a great 2012.



Ryder's Birthday



Kids practicing letters on our new white boards







November 28- December 2

This week in class we discussed seasons, dry and rainy weather, and the shape of the rectangle and the color orange.  We also focused on the letter j and the number 5.  The kids stamped the letter j, created it in play-doh, and created lists of j words. 

We used "money" (orange rectangles) to buy snack and discussed the concept of trading or  buying items.  The kids practiced counting out groups of 5 and the older children practiced writing the number 5.  They wrote 5s and colored orange in their journals too.

The children experimented by mixing yellow and red paint to create an orange leaf.  They also created flowers, a Christmas tree, rain art, and more.

We read books on weather and colored and practiced reading the book "He Has".  We read "A Perfectly Interesting Day" and used cue cards to follow along with the story.  The children created patterns with weather cards, and traced their shadows outside, coming back later to see the change in shadow shape.

Sorry, I didn't take pictures this week, I promise to post some next time!!

November 7- 10



Adam with the children

The kids "check" his helmet

This week in class we wrapped up the ocean unit by reviewing the themes and  concepts that have been our focus for the past several weeks.  We covered underwater life, the ocean, and boats/submarines/etc.  We also worked on the colors blue and purple, the numbers 3 & 4, many letters, and the shape of the triangle.  This week the letter i was the super star.  We will focus on i again next week as vowels get two weeks to shine!  The older children learned about -ip words (lip, hip, dip, sip, rip, tip, & zip).  They know the letter sounds and are learning to blend the sounds to sound out words (phonics).  Feel free to reinforce at home, they are quite impressive with their reading!

We talked a lot this week about Veteran's Day and Thanksgiving.  They learned about why we celebrate both holidays and we had an extra special treat on Thursday as Rowan's dad Adam paid Elm Park a visit in his uniform.  Adam is a marine and he come in a showed the children his gear and explained what everything does.  The children really loved seeing him and his stuff!  We taught the children to salute, and they saluted Adam and gave him a hand made flower.  It was about the cutest thing I've ever seen, I was too wrapped in the moment to take a picture, but you can just imagine!

October 31- November 4



Abby

Grady

Last week in class we continued to talk about the ocean.  In language arts the children continued to learn about the letter h.  The older children worked on sounding out -ad words.  In science the kids talked about floating and sinking.  We did an experiment testing which boats would float.  The kids added marbles until the boats sank and we guessed how many it would take.  The biggest boats carried almost 100 marbles!!  We also discussed the topography of the ocean floor and the kids made an ocean ridge out of blocks and took turns following the ridge with their eyes closed.  On a rainy day we guessed how much rain would fall then put out a rain gauge.  Over the course of the day we collected almost 1 cm of rain.  In math the children worked on sequencing patterns and counted during a fish game.  The children made a diving mask and fins and pretended to be looking for fish while diving.

Rowan, Sydney & Grady

Ryder in his mask & fins



Keitaro & Lia

October 24-28

Kids trick-or-treat at Father Gary's

Elm Park kids in their costumes

Halloween party

Last week we continued our exploration of sea life in class.  The students' studies revolved around the following sea creatures- sea sponge, seahorse, sea star, plankton, jellyfish, and sea turtles.  We read books about the creatures, created them out of art materials, and played with little models of the sea creatures.  The letter for the week was the letter g.  We practiced making the letter g and came up with a list of g words.  The kids found the letter g in a sentence.  We also worked on the number 4.  The kids groups items by 4s and practiced writing the number in their journals.  We discussed the concept of loving and gave examples.  Students then put a "loving feather" on the caring tree.

We studied the food chain in the ocean and made a book about it.  We put cards showing the food chain in the proper sequence.  The children finished making their shark and octopus crafts.  The students water colored a seahorse and played a math game where they counted the number of seahorse babies and then put them in the daddy seahorse's pouch.  The children played with dozens of sea creatures in water and rice sensory tables and created sea creatures from play doh.  We completed a reading comprehension activity around the story "Turtle Looks for Stars", the kids did a great job!

Of course we made Halloween crafts and talked about trick-or-treating and safety.  The students had a great time trick-or-treating on Friday on the school grounds.  They looked awesome in their costumes and enjoyed the party that followed.  Thanks to all that helped make our celebration a success!!