PreK News
January 17- Feb. 2, 2024
Thank you!
Thank you so much for joining us in class at Mustang Discovery Night. The children were so excited to show you around the class and hopefully they told you of the many things we have been learning. It is exciting to see them grow and we enjoy hearing all they are learning and sharing each day.
Winter Study
Winter: We have been so busy exploring winter in all of the classroom subjects. In art, we made snow people using our name as the base for how many snowballs to use- it's so fun to count how many letters are in our name and to compare it with our friends! We also made penguin and polar bear pictures with Ms. Scarpace during art class.
A big topic of study has been The Arctic and Antarctica, the earth, the poles, the equator, and all the animals that live at or near the poles. We used the globe from the K classroom as a model for discussion and loved hearing all the ideas we have about planets and our earth. We learned that Antarctica is colder than the Arctic and most importantly that polar bears and penguins live on opposite sides of the earth (even though we like to play with the toy ones together!). We had some class discussions and read some books about the various penguins and were especially excited about the littlest one (fairy penguin) and the biggest one (emperor).
In math, we used the emperor penguin as a measuring tool, comparing our heights with that of the tallest penguin. We love seeing our pictures up on the wall with strings of our height and noticing that we are all quite close to the size of this penguin. We also used penguins as a way to count out numbers on our Ten Frame cards. We are practicing making groups of ten and also counting by tens to 100. It can be tricky (especially to conceptualize tens without seeing the pieces) but we always remember to use our built in tools to help us make ten (thank you fingers!)
In science, we had such fun making sparkly crystals! This was truly a science experiment since we watched it fail 2 times before we were able to get the borax/ hot water ratio just right! Our favorite part is seeing the crystals form slowly as we check the progress throughout the day!
In our sensory table, we are completely thrilled with the realistic snow and love running our hands and arms through the cool snowish material. We have also had a wonderful time finding winter treasures inside our other snow tables!
All this special winter play has given us some fun new vocabulary words- please ask your child if they remember what these words mean: HIbernate, Adaptation, Migrate, Nocturnal, Camouflage. (it is so incredible how much this PreK class knows!)
Rain, rain, rain...
Isn’t it wonderful to have our creeks fill up and our plants get watered with all this rain?! Our class thinks that the puddles and all the water in buckets is the best part of the rain! This week we had some time outside playing while it was sprinkling and we thought it was just so fun to mix and stir and pour the water with the wood chips and with the sand. We made food for the animals with it, bathtimes for everyone at the zoo, pots of “hot chocolate”, and special magic stew. So much fun!
We also decided to try and measure the rain to see how much the storm brought to us. We used one of our containers and measured it after finding 2 inches of rain in just one afternoon!
Our MAKER space is open! We are having such fun using lots and lots of tape with all our “loose parts” (bottle caps, small boxes, tubes, popsicle sticks, etc). We are learning to work with different materials and are practicing making things over a period of days before bringing it home. This area will grow over time to include more materials, different tools for adhering pieces together, and some design elements. We are so excited by this added space and we enjoy working with so many friends to make all types of things.
Upcoming Events/ Reminders
February 14th We will be celebrating on the 14th with some classroom fun. The students will decorate a bag in class that we will use to collect cards from friends. You are welcome to have your child bring in cards and please note, the school has requested no food or candy items. You can bring in cards the day before or Valentine's morning. We will have the students pass them out during class time.
February 9: Special Dress for Lunar New Year- wear Red (or uniform)
February 14th: Valentines Sharing in Class
February 16: Free Dress
February 20th-24th: Winter Break No School
February 28: Donut Day (8-9am) info in Memo
March 1st: Hidden Villa Field Trip, Each child needs a caregiver to attend with them. Tour starts at 9:15 and will last until about 10:45. We will have snack at the farm together following the tour. More details to come.
Groundhog Day
Did you hear about Punxsutawney Phil? This is a fun one for the children to wonder about and a great way for us to learn about an animal that hibernates underground. On Feb. 1st we read a story about Groundhogs Day and then took a vote:- yes it sees a shadow, no it doesn't see it. The no's (spring soon) outvoted the yes's (more winter) 10-8 and the class was excited to hear it did not see the shadow and spring may come early! (Luckily we’ve had all the rain this week in case we do get an early spring!) We then read a few more stories about the groundhog and had a great group discussion about the whole home that a groundhog makes underground. Of course we think it's silly that they have a 'bathroom' but quite clever of this marmot! We worked in our journals to create our own version of an underground home and they were all so detailed!
Writing Poems with our Buddies
This past week, we met with our 4th grade buddies and had a great time working with them to write winter poems! The children talked with their buddy about different winter ideas and they made notes with words we wanted to use in the poem. For some groups, they focused on winter things related to our senses- taste (hot chocolate), touch(freezing snow), etc. Others focused on fun things they liked to do in winter. After generating ideas, the 4th graders wrote the words and the PreK students added drawings. Such creative works they all developed- you can read them in the books we put together for the class.