October Happenings

In our first month of preschool, we focused on just getting to know each other. October was a great time to play with the students and assess their strengths and areas where they can grow. Our first two classes were focused on assessing their alphabet knowledge. 

 October 8 - Introduction to Preschool
We read "Chicka, Chicka, Boom, Boom" by Bill Martin, Jr. and John Archambault. Using felt letters we retold the story making the letters climbed up our coconut tree. For snack we continued the theme and made Chicka Trees using graham crackers for the trunk, apple wedges for the leaves, raisins for the letters, and peanut butter to hold the letters onto the tree (Alphabet cereal could have been used but I didn't think of it until we were eating). 

Other activities for the day included making a Chicka tree with a paper towel roll for the trunk and adding sticky foam letters to the trunk to spell our names. For our outdoor play we started to learn the different hand holds for parachute play. Since it was our first day together, we had a lot of free play. The students played with the puppets, listened to a story on tape, and read/listened to books.

For homework the students were asked to talk to their parents and think of three to four things that would help them get along with the other students. They came up with be kind, share  the toys, let someone else go first, take turns, and listen to the teacher.

October 15 - Classroom Expectaions

We started our first science project, observing the ever changing leaves on trees. These observations will culminate in the spring with a lesson on photosynthesis. We gathered some of the falling leaves and used our magnifying glasses to observe the structure of the leaves. As a group we created Potato Head people that reflected how we felt at preschool.

For outdoor play we played with hula hoops, but not in the usual way. We did "The Hokey Pokey" putting our body parts in and out of the large hula hoop. Then we showed how well we could jump from one hula hoop to another hula hoop. To focus on balance we walked around our hula hoop keeping one foot inside the hula hoop at all times. Then for fun we rolled our hula hoops just to see how far they would roll.

For snack we focused on alphabet recognition. Peanut butter was piped onto crackers, the vowels were on square crackers and the consonants onto round crackers. To get a cracker we had to look at the tray of crackers, find a letter we wanted to eat, and then ask "Mother may I have a cracker with the letter '__' on it?"  This game was a big hit and they have wanted to play it over and over.

For our music time we learned a song about a bird that talks all the time and we "don't to be a yak, yak bird talking all the time". The homework for today was for each student to take a "ME" bag home and put four to five items in it that would tell us about them.

October 15 - All About ME
Everyone was beside themselves with excitement and anticipation. Each student shared the items in their bag with the pride and enthusiasm that only a 4 year old can produce. We colored the second tree observation in our Science journals.

The first student loves pink, drawing, Legos, blocks, and milk. The second student loves to sing, do her homework, reading books, and her blankie. To help with one to one correspondence we learned to play "Snail Pace Race" by Ravensburg. For our group activity,  strengthen fine motor skills, we made origami dogs.

For today's snack the students got to create their face and then eat it. It was a blank paper plate with banana slices for eyes, baby carrot for the nose, apple wedge for the mouth, and cheese slices for the hair. Outdoor play consisted of learning different movements with the parachute.

After outdoor play, we started creating our own book  titled "ME". Homework was to have each family member trace one of their hands onto a piece of construction paper. The student was to cut out all of the hands and place them on a tree trunk. This became a visual representation of their family tree. 

October 17 - Our Bodies
Again there was much ado as the students arrived, wanting to immediately share their family trees. 

 Our first activity of the day was to color our second tree observation. Fall is upon us, the leaves are changing, and it is important to document these changes. We then continued to work on the pages of our "ME" book. We put our finger prints into our books and then took the magnifying glass to see how they are all different. We also introduced the listening station and how to properly use the ear phones and the CD/tape player.

For snack we created bodies. A cheese stick provided the body, the arms, and the legs. We had a Ritz cracker head with a craisin mouth, raisin eyes, and tangerine segments for our hair. We also learned that if you are very careful while pealing the tangerine you can create an elephant. For our outdoor play we learned how to "jump rope" with hula hoops. This was a new concept and it will take a lot of practice to master the skill of jump rope. The hula hoop is a great tool in learning this skill because it is stiff and easier to control than a jump rope. We also used a hula hoop to practice our left and right by singing and playing "The Hokey Pokey".

After all of our hard work with the hula hoops we came in, made and decorated origami houses. Our homework was to make a Feelings Face (paper plate with mouth cut out, second paper plate for back, with 3 mouth shapes traced onto it.)  The student was to draw a different mouth emotion onto each mouth shape. Then with an adult discuss when they might feel that emotion, i.e. smile when they got an ice cream cone. 

October 22 - Feelings
It was obvious, as the students shared their Feelings Faces, that they had given some thought to the different emotions that were displayed. As I have gotten to know my students better, I see a direct correlation to the emotions depicted and the student's personality. Today we started using the number line to count from one to twenty. 

Our math activity was creating pictures with "Playful Patterns" by Discovery Toys.

This morning's book was "Hattie and the Fox" by Mem Fox and Patricia Mullins. As a book extension the students retold the story using small plastic animals. The only animal that we didn't have was a fox. Not to be deterred, we created an origami fox to help us retell the story. Our snack was 'Go Fish'. We took pretzel rods (our fishing pole) and dipped them into peanut butter (our bait) and caught Fish crackers. To round out the snack, we had yogurt and apple juice. Outdoor play consisted of an assessment of gross motor skills. The homework assignment was to take home two books, to read the books, and then discuss what they liked about each story.

Note: Preschool was cancelled on the 24th and the 29th to take care of some licensing requirements.

October 31 - Halloween Party
Halloween was in the air, on their minds, represented by their choice of clothes,  and even on their faces. Their homework assignment had long been forgotten so there was no sharing of the things they liked about the books read. We just created a day of controlled crazy activities. We started the morning with a quick read of "There Was an Old Lady Who Swallowed a Bat" by Lucille Colandro and Jared D. Lee. We learned a finger play called "Five Little Pumpkins;" made spiders (dum dum sucker with 2 pipe cleaners [cut in half] wrapped around the stick and bent to look like legs) and ghost lollies (Kleenex wrapped and tied around a dum dum with green marker eyes); walked the spider web catching our spiders; ate tangerine jack-o-lanterns, bat shaped bread with Nutella, yogurt, and drank apple juice. Sadly there were so many activities that no pictures were taken. Homework was to be safe Trick-or-Treating.