This week was all about snow, creativitiy, and adventures!

The Past Two Weeks of Preschool

 January 5th-8th & 12th-15th

• At Large Group:
• We started our first day of school back from break by reviewing our classroom rules together. 
• We read many stories about winter weather, staying warm, snow, and snowmen.

This is a very repetitive book, so the kiddos were able to "read" along with us. They really enjoyed making the "ACHOO!" noises.

This story has a great message of working together as a team to achieve a goal.

Anything Frozen related is golden with our kiddos.

This is a picture book. The kiddos made up their own story based on the pictures.

This book had a lot of easy to finish rhyming words.

I saw many kiddos reading this book to peers throughout the two weeks. They were encouraging their friends to count the snowflakes with them.

The kiddos predicted what would happen next all the way through the story. When we finished reading they went back through and named the animals they remembered reading about.

• We made a graph of who wore mittens and who wore gloves. We talked about which side had more and which side had less. Some of the kiddos pointed out that they wore both, so they created a middle column. 
• We fed "Granny" the pieces from the story "There Was a Cold Lady Who Swallowed Some Snow".

• For music and movement time we danced to "Frosty the Snowman", "Lettercise", and "Listen and Move", had a "snowball fight" with out paper letter snowballs, twirled like falling snowflakes, and sang along with the book "If It's Snowy and You Know It, Clap Your Paws". 

• We read a few rhyming poems about snowmen and answered our question of the day.
• This was their favorite rhyme:

• They put a variation on this poem and made it about Olaf and Sven from Frozen.
  
• We explored snow using our five senses. We encouraged the kiddos to use their words to describe what they were feeling. 
• Our letters of the day were: A, B, C, D, E, F, G, H. We identified the letters, the sounds they make, brainstormed words that start with the letter, and practiced writing the letters at recall. We started a new element to letter of the day this time around. We created a book called "I Have That Letter In My Name" in which each day we put the kiddos' (who have the letter of the day in their name) pictured in the book. By the end of the alphabet this time around we will have a completed alphabet book for our library.
• At Small Group:
• We practiced writing our names one letter at a time then we arranged the letters into the right order. Once they were arranged the kiddos glued the letters down on paper and created "name snowmen". They began trying to see how many letters their friends had in their names. So we put all the snowmen up on the bulletin board and the kiddos counted to see who had the most/least letters in their name.

We added numbers to the graph afterward.

• We read books about weather and then talked about and drew our favorite type of weather. 

• We used patterning bears to create and extend various patterns. 

• We worked on syllables and identifying different sounds by clapping out the sounds of various objects, our names, and more. 
• The kiddos asked if we could teach them how to make paper snowflakes, so we practiced our scissor skills by creating many unique snowflakes to hang from the ceiling. 

• We used pattern blocks to create snowflakes and many other objects.

 

• We used snowman mats and pom poms to identify numbers and practice our counting. 

• We sorted animals into groups. Our first groups were likes cold weather vs. doesn't like cold weather. From there the kiddos sorted them by size, color, and where the live. 
• We worked on our estimation and counting skills by guessing how many objects would fit inside a hat and then counting to see how many could really fit. This turned into a sorting activity and then a patterning activity. 

• At Choice Time:
• As it was too cold to go outside and play, we brought snow into our water table to play with. The kiddos put on their gloves and mittens and dove right in. They created snow castles ("just like Elsa"), snow balls, and snow people ("just like Olaf"). 

• We placed our dinosaurs in a big container, filled it with water, and stuck it outside overnight. When we brought it in the next morning it was frozen. We placed it in the water table and the kiddos experimented with how to "free the dinosaurs" because "if we don't get them out, they'll be stuck in there FOREVER!" We used droppers, hot water, salt, and a hammer (courtesy of Miss Kendra) to free the dinosaurs. 

They're free!

• The kiddos created some very interesting, unique, and beautiful artwork this week. We can't seem to keep enough supplies in the art area. 

They made cupcakes, put them in "the oven", and then fed them to everyone at carpet.

 

Bracelets were very popular this week. Many kiddos chose to make name bracelets with the letter beads.

Working very hard on her pet kitty.

This was a "magic carpet" which she took to the gym and we rode to all kinds of places.

Checklists were a huge deal this week. This spawned an entire choice time of going on a "Letter Hunt" where we found letters, wrote them down, and checked them off. This is a great idea for a home activity, too!

• Many of our kiddos were talking about camping before break, so we switched out the house in the dramatic play area for a tent and "fire pit". 

They have been clipping links to their shirts and taking their "kitties" for a walk.

• The kiddos have also been going to the block and woodworking area a lot over the past two weeks to build towers, habitats for animals, and to look at maps.

• A Few Reminders:
• Please make sure you are sending shoes in for your child to change into when they arrive at school. Snowy boots make our floors very slippery and we want to keep our kiddos safe. Thank you!
• Also, there will be No School Monday January 19th or Thursday January 22nd.