January 23rd-27th



The children dancing at chapel




Another chapel pic











Last week at Elm Park we continued discussing the letter o.  The children wrote the letter o and the number 2 many times.  We also wrote in our journals.  We continued to discuss life in the Artic and began learning about bears.  We learned the number 2 and reinforced the colors red and white.

The children experimented making the color brown while creating bear masks.  The also experimented with ice cubes by adding them to both cold and hot water.  The experiments in class are a great way to get children thinking about and curious about their world.  We follow the scientific method (roughly) by making a guess about what may happen (hypothesis), then we discuss materials and the procedure.  I let them do and handle as much as possible.  Then we form conclusions based on what we observed. 

We began to talk about the concept of being responsible and the children have been thinking of ways they can be responsible.  The older children have a few books that they've created and we read them together everyday in class.  All the children colored their books "Can She Go" (they also colored the letter o on every page). 

The kids made bear masks, created a tree line snow scene, cut out and matched colors, played an Artic lotto game, and some of them made a mountain with a sled scene (the others made it this week).

I'll be putting out summer school information in the next few weeks.

Jan 16-20

Oops, I forgot to include last week's information on that last blog!

January 16th we started learning about the letter o.  We had fun making the letter and talking about it all week.  We discuss vowels for two weeks so we will continue with o this week.

Last week we discussed the Artic tundra.  This included plants, animals, and people of the Artic tundra.  We read a book about the tundra and made igloos.  We also made winter puzzles. 

Later in the week, we completed an experiment on melting ice.  We left 3 ice cubes in different containers, one with salt, one with sugar, and one with just ice.  The children guessed what would happen to the ice then got to watch as the ice with salt quickly melted.  This led to discussions about how people use salt to melt ice in colder parts of the USA for safer driving.  The kids also made "ice" bracelets.

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!