Sept. 16th - 19th

What an awesome week our Pre K students had!  The excitement for "National talk like a pirate day" had them thrilled for Friday.  Any reason to dress up and celebrate is reason enough for us!

This is Miss Marie, one of the kindest most gentlest hearts I have known.  Miss Marie has been helping in our afternoon Pre K class as we have been working with understanding our new students and the dynamics within the classroom.  Miss Marie and Miss Terry will also begin to assist in the Morning Pre K class as we have seen the success in the afternoon class.  Their positions in the class are for helpful reminders and classroom safety precautions (cleaning up after their use in a center or something similar).  Miss Shelly and Miss Scooter will remain working with students that need extra attention and assistance with direction and understanding how to work through emotions and frustrations.  Thank you to Miss Marie and the success from one week in the afternoon class has proven a helpful hand and support is evident within our facility.

Family style dining continues to be a huge hit with our classmates.  They are enjoying pouring their milk, serving their fruit, and learning how to set the table and clear it.  We strongly encourage you at home to practice these skills.  In the classroom, we use two hands on our plates.  Always thumbs on top (to help prevent spills) and when carrying our cups, one hand around the cup and one covering the top.  Slow walking feet are helpful as our eyes on watchful what is around us.

In Science, students were able to smell different scents and use words to describe what they were smelling.  Was it spicy smelling?  Sweet?  Strong?  Sour?  I love when our Pre K students work together as a team to solve a problem and communicate what they think it might be.  Working together and collaborating is an important part of life that our Pre K students are learning each day!

In the block center, students were using treasure maps to make their own treasure land.  Some students chose to use our career people to act out the treasure hunt while others used to map to imitate a "world" of their own.  Growing and feeding off of their imaginations will continue to further their development.  Imagining a dinosaur attacking a treasure island . . . only to a four year old, right?

Our playgrounds also gained truck loads of new mulch and rocks!  While our playground was being enhanced we got the opportunity to play on the adjoining playground on our property.  It was like Christmas morning releasing them to an area that Pre K hasn't played in yet.  So much fun to see them enjoy the Pre School I and toddler playground.

ARGH!

Showing off our hooks!  During this fun project, students were exploring different textures of soft fabrics compared to the aluminum foil.  Learning how to describe these attributes were fun to explore!  And pretending to be Captain Hook made it so much cooler too :)

During Pre K, we do small group projects as well as large group (entire class) projects.  During this time our students are beginning to learn how to listen, understand directions, and manipulate a craft/idea.  During our Pirate day, students made parrots has a large group.  

Making our pirate hooks are more one on one or small group activity.  During this time the teacher leading the activity is able to communicate and encourage a stronger learning opportunity with each child.  Small group time is also a great opportunity to introduce new concepts.  In this case, learning how to describe textures was a great lesson!

Dates to remember:

Tuesday - Fire Engine visits the classroom

Wednesday - NO CLASS MEETING, Field Trip to Sherriff's Office

Friday - Super Hero Day, Suit up with a cape and let's celebrate being SUPER AWESOME!!!!