January 23rd, 2015

N is for Nest!

This week we learned about the letter Nn

...and we started our unit on weather.

We first studied clouds.  Reading It Looked Like Spilt Milk, we observed how clouds take lots of shapes.

Then, we made our own clouds.

We also had a chance to study how warm water will rise up into the the cold sky (or a plate of ice cubes) and create droplets.

This week, we met Mr. Kyle, a preschool music teacher we hope to incorporate into our program on a weekly basis.

To further emphasize our number recognition, we built a community of cars (each one being numbered 1-20).  They had a chance to drive around, then ultimately wind up in their designated parking stall (also marked 1-20).

It's a good thing I went into the child development industry rather than urban development.  My poorly designed streets ran into one another and created terrible collisions and nonstop gridlock.









Thursday we read Strega Nona, a humorous story about a noodle pot that wouldn't stop boiling noodles.

n is for noodles!

Then, we made our n-noodles...




















...and fished out numbers from noodles.

Working with the __IT word family, we had fun with our take-home book.

Miss Corinna also had fun experimenting with swirling-whirling colors.

Because, why can't we make a rainbow swirling-whirling storm cloud?

January 16th, 2015

M is for Moose!

This week, we learned all about the letter "Mm".

We also took the opportunity to examine the Arctic and the people and animals who inhabit it.  We collectively constructed a sugar cube igloo (and didn't sneak any bites!)...

...and were proud of our finished product!

We studied the Inuit people and their  way of life, then we made some faces.



















We also looked at lots of slides of Aurora Borealis. While we understood it was a night sky phenomenon that can be seen from the arctic, I stopped short of explaining the earths geomagnetic field lines to my preschoolers.

But that certainly didn't stop us from creating our own interpretative abstract art of the northern lights. 

This was a good time for our m-moons.

This week, we also practiced recognizing and counting 1-20.  While we're pretty solid on 1-10, numbers 11-20 will definitely be reviewed often for the remainder of the school year.

And we had fun with the __ET word family.

Towards the end of our week, we shifted our focus to Martin Luther King, Jr.

It can be difficult to find age-appropriate written material on the civil rights movement.  In my class, we've been learning that Martin Luther King, Jr. was a man who used gentle and peaceful ways to help Americans change their mind about how people are treated.  Teaching the whole group, I refrained from getting too specific.

When creating their take-home book, I simply used the words of our MLK song that were already familiar.

We also had fun creating our handprints...

...to make a friendship wreath.

:)

January 11th, 2015

This week, we learned about the letter, "Ll".

L is for Lacing!

And lattes.

Coming back from Christmas break, it was nice to begin with L.  Actually, in classrooms that do not follow the alphabet in ABC order, teachers will often begin the school year with this (followed by T, F, etc.).  This is due to the ease in which the sound can be discriminated and also the simplicity of the printed letter.  This teacher, however, still prefers starting with A.  But, after a long Christmas break, L was very welcome.

This week, we also began our unit on winter.  We read Jan Brett's The Mitten...

...and then we paired mittens.










We played with forest animals in the snow...
















...and sent bears to their caves for a long hibernation.

We also spent some time observing grizzly bears in Alaska by accessing several bearcams.

l is for little lamb

Totally unrelated, we had fun with little lambs, too.

I have a growing number of students who are ready to take the next step in their pre-literacy skills.  Each week, we will take the opportunity to create and sound-out words in preparation for kindergarten.  This week, we started with the __AT word family.

We will also have fun crafting our own take-home books each week.

Preschool is hard work!  But, we always make sure to take the time for the most important things.