Happy Valentine's Day
PK 3.1 Newsletter
Dear Preschool Families,
With the year being half over, we are beginning to have the children do a little more for themselves here at school. At snack now, they are opening their own cookies. We are encouraging them to put their own chair away when they are done with it. We are helping them learn how to fold and put away their own napping mats too. These children are already great at putting on their sweaters by themselves and are learning the tricks of caps, zippers, snaps, and buttons. At this age they seem to enjoy taking responsibility for their things so we are encouraging them to be more independent whenever we can.
Building Towers: floor by floor!
When your child plays with blocks, building replicas of the world around her, she is like a little scientist, experimenting with balance, structure, space, and even gravity!
Have you ever watched your child attempt to build a simple tower, only to have it fall down at a particular height? Perhaps you have noticed that she or he tried different ways of placing the blocks until finally she/he created a tower that stayed up! Amazingly, what they are doing is using the scientific method of experimentation, observation, and cause-and-effect to solve the problem of the tumbling tower.
This week the children worked together to create this OUTSTANDING structure.
Our Building unit is about construction and measuring! children simply love building and the this construction site area allowed the children to build large scale projects in minutes.
We added:
1. A tool box: with measuring tape, big paint brushes, child-size spanners and screw drivers.
2. Nuts and bolts: Twisting nuts and bolts together is great fine-motor practice and the children will relish the opportunity to try out some real builders kit.
3. Hammer and nails: Banging nails into blocks of polystyrene is good for younger children.
4. Clipboards: to draw our buildings!
Using light to draw buildings...
While some of the children arranged the building shapes on the projector the other children used a white board marker to try and trace the shapes on the wall.
This was particularly challenging since the children had to figure out how to stand out of the way of their shadow and still draw around their shadow all at the same time…
A mystery letter every day!
This is a fun letter exploration game perfect for our circle time just now that we are learning to write. We connect the dots to reveal the mystery letter on Ms. Ginni's board. Then we brainstorm to generate words that start with that Mystery letter.
Chicka Chicka Boom Boom
We are all very excited with this book! we are learning a lot about letter shapes and letter sounds.
We are basing some of our letter activities on the book called "Chicka Chicka Boom Boom by Bill Martin Jr."
The children love this video, please share the video with them.
Mr. Ricardo's Visit!
Thank you to Mr. Ricardo Giraldo (Samara's dad) for coming to our classroom to talked about buildings and construction sites. The children enjoyed the visit and they were really excited to use the hard hats and the safety vests during the presentation.
If you would like to come to school to talk about your career please let me know! We love to have visitors in our classroom.
(Si algun papa o mama desea venir a la clase a hablar sobre su profesion esta bienvenido! Nos encanta tener visitants en el salon)
Valentine's Day Breakfast
When the kids asked me what Valentine’s Day was, I told them it was a day that we tell people that we love them, and sometimes we give those people cards, or flowers or presents, or we just say it to them.
On Friday, we enjoyed a very special breakfast to celebrate Valentine's day. Thank you to all the parents that helped with something and if you didn't have a chance to cooperate, do not worry! we will have more cooking activities.
The children helped with the heart shaped sausages and Ms. Maria and Ms. Ginni helped with the eggs.
We will do the pretzels dipped in chocolate this Wednesday because on Friday we ran out of time.