K is for kicking

This week the preschoolers learned all about the letter K, the color black and the shape of a hexagon!

 

 Here are some of the kids making a Big K and a little k with their bodies!

For Show-&-Tell Taylee and Liam both brought Key's and Elle brought her Kitty Cat.

 Abby enjoyed corrisponding numbers with clothes pins!  She did an excellent job!

 

 The preschoolers are all improving their pencil grip and in writing their names!

 This was our last week learing about our amazing bodies.  Today we focused on the importance of exercise and eating healthy.  Here are some of the preschoolers stretching.  Liam's face is the perfect expression for what he was saying as he stretched, "it hurts, it hurts!"

 We did some jumping jacks, sit-ups and running around the yard!

 

 We also talked about how playing can be healthy for your body too.  Here are some pics of the preschoolers doing what they do best!

 

We also learned about the different food groups and how important it is to eat healthy meals and snacks.  Each preschooler received their own place mat with a plate as we ate our own snacks from each of the food groups.  We enjoyed apples, crackers, cheese, lunch meat, lettuce (or giraffe leaves as we called them) and some gummy worms (which was the favorite of most!).

 

After our snacks the preschoolers had a bunch of pictures of different foods and had to come up with a healthy meal for them to eat and put it on their plate.  It was quite funny what some came up with!

 

Here's Abby's plate she picked a pretty well balanced meal!

 It was a fun month of learning all about our Amazing Bodies!  I'm looking forward to our theme in February ... "It's a Small World." 

J is for Jumping

Our letter focus for today was "Jj."  The preschoolers had lots of fun j-j-jumping around!

 

For Show-&-Tell Connor brought a Jumping kangaroo with his Joey, Abby showed us a beautiful Jewelry box, Brennan brought a Jungle book, and Charlotte shared a Jam sandwich with all of us.

We had a special half-birthday celebration for Taylee today and learned more about her.  She is 3 yrs. old, her favorite animal is a "doggie," she likes granola bars (which she shared with us for a snack! thanks:)), pizza, noodles, nuts, and chocolate milk, and her favorite colors are pink and purple. 



We continued learning about our amazing bodies as we focused on our personal Hygiene today. Unfortunately, I had forgotten that my camera battery was low and it died shortly after we started class ... So, I don't have pictures of all the activities, but we did have fun!

 

We first started to talk about the importance of taking care of our teeth ... specifically brushing and flossing them.  All of the preschoolers got a mini oreo and we ate them up and then looked at each others teeth.  Of course there were a lot of chocolate cookies stuck in them!  

 

We learned about cavities and if we don't take care of our teeth they will get little holes in them.  Here is one picture of Elle cleaning all of the oreos out of the tooth on our white board.  She had to brush them really well with the toothbrush to get all of the black food (marker marks) off of them.

 

We also practiced flossing by putting playdough in lego blocks and pretending it was food stuck in our teeth!  The preschoolers had a lot of fun trying to get the sticky food out!

 

We also learned about germs and the importance of not spreading them!  To teach this concept I got a squirt bottle and pretended like I had a really big sneeze ... what would happen if I didn't cover it up ... water (or germs if from our mouth) would get all over everyone ... GROSS!  However, if I covered my sneeze with my elbow, shoulder or hand it would stop the germs from getting on everyone else!  Some of the preschoolers got a little wet from this activity, while others chose not to have the squirt bottle squirt germs on them:)!

 

We also talked about the importance of washing our hands, not only after we go to the bathroom, but whenever our hands touch our mouth or we sneeze into them.  When washing they should try to scrub while singing the whole ABC song.

 

To help them remember, the preschoolers drew a picture of their face with a hand covering their mouth that says:
"Cover your mouth, cover your sneeze .... and then you wont spread the disease!"

 

Sorry for the lack of pictures, I'll be sure to charge my battery for next week as we learn all about the importance of nutrition and exercise.

 

Also, thanks to our special guest, Abby's Dad, for his help today!

 

Have a great week!



I is for Itchy

 Today we learned all about the letter "Ii." 

We read a fun story that talked about inchworms, iguanas, insects, and igloos.  We also learned that the letter I sometimes has 2 sounds ... a short sound like in the words above and a long sound like in ice, ice cream, and iron.

 

The preschoolers are doing AWESOME at singing their days of the week song and counting.  Please continue practicing this with them at home.  It also helps to identify objects with a number as you are counting.

For Show-&-Tell Elle brought an ice pack and Liam brought some ice cubes!

 Our theme this week was our 5 senses.  Let me introduce you to Mr. Potato ... our classroom mascot for the day.  He helped us learn all about our senses and why they are important to us.

 

We also learned this fun song to go along with the tune of "Where is Thumbkin?"

5 senses, 5 senses

We have them, we have them

Seeing, hearing, touching,

smelling and tasting

There are 5, there are 5.

 

 

As we explored each of our senses I encouraged the preschoolers to use words to describe what they saw, felt and smelled.  This little activity helped to build their vocabulary and think "outside of the box!"

 

Touching:  The preschoolers were able to explore this sense by playing with goo at our sensory table and playdough.  We also had mystery bags where the preschoolers had to explain what they were feeling and guess what the object was (cotton, rock, sand paper, plastic egg, etc.).



 

 

Smelling:  We all sat in a circle and passed items around that we could smell and then voted on our favorite ones.  We used a variety of smells including candle wax, cocoa, and spices like basil, garlic, cloves and ginger.

We also explored smells outside ... here is a picture of the preschoolers smelling the rosemary plant in my front yard!

 

 

Seeing:  For our sight we talked a lot about the colors of the rainbow and learned a new song that teaches us those colors in order.

 

We played a little "I spy" game outside and each of the children had to find one color of the rainbow and tell it to the rest of us.  Here are the place they went to and things they found...(red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo and violet too!)

 

Tasting:  Of course this was one of my favorite experiments today!  I'm sorry if your children came home and said they tried yucky things.  We learned about our taste buds and had some taste test with lemons (pictures below are priceless!), pixy sticks, salt and we had to end with yummy oreos which Taylee and Charlotte greatly appreciated! 

 

Hearing:  I didn't get many pictures of this sense, but we played items that we could hear like a train whistle, a rainstick, and the piano.  We practiced listening to really quiet voices and making our ears listen really carefully.  We also used our own bodies to make noises. To finish it all off each preschooler left with their own maraca noise maker! 

(FYI: Each child promised me that when their parents asked them to stop shaking their maraca they would ... You can remind them of our little preschool saying,

"HOW DO WE OBEY?

RIGHT AWAY!")

 

We had such a fun day today experimenting with our own 5 senses and learning how amazing our bodies really are!