2 year old preschool class
We took our shape books home this month. We had so much fun making them. We made lots of animals with shapes; we made heart pigs, oval bunnies, rectangle tigers, diamond fishes and scary triangle dinosaurs. We also enjoyed cooking with shapes. We made yummy square brownies and star cookies. Just like in our books we made our very own circle pizzas and we usedtriangle ice cream cones to hold our homemade ice cream!
The following week we brought our teddy bears to school. We liked that very much. We made our teddy’s a cute little blanket that was paintedespecially for them. We made binoculars, went on a bear hunt and we weren’t scared. To finish off the week, we had a teddy bear picnic. We enjoyed fresh squeezed orange juice and popcorn out in the yard. For our President’s week we made star necklaces and put a shinny Abe Lincoln penny right in the middle. Our pennies wereextra shinny after we cleaned them with water, salt and vinegar. We also had fun making quarters, pennies and painting money.
Vanessa & Susan
3 year old preschool class
This month our class completed our Insect Unit. We learned about the life cycle of the butterfly and made butterfly sequence charts, ending withbeautiful, colorful butterflies. We, then, learned about the ladybug’s life cycle and why they are a favorite insect of farmers. We made ladybug puppets to bring home. Last, we learned about the importance of bees and how they are responsible for all our flowers and fruit. We made bee puppets from paper bags and were very careful of their stingers. We shared some honey and saw a real honeycomb. Our science unit for next month will be the weather.
We continued on our “letter of the week” activities with children filling their letter bags with items from home that begin with that week’s letter. The children and parents are very creative with this activity.— I have been surprised many times when a child opens his or her bag. We cut out houses for H Week and glued them together, complete with addresses and street signs. I Week was a favorite – we made our own yummy vanilla ice cream and served it with sprinkles. On J Week, we mashed strawberries, added sugar and pectin and cooked up a delicious batch ofstrawberry jam. We also made paper jets and dictated where we would go in our jets. The children came up with some inventive places. On K Week, we learned about kites and how different temperatures of air make wind for the kites.
This is my last newsletter to you. It has been wonderful teaching yourchildren this year. They are a delightful and inquisitive bunch and I’ve had lots of fun listening to their stories. I will miss them and you. Vanessa is very fortunate to have inherited such a lively and engaging group. They will enjoy the rest of the year under her guidance—they are lucky, too!
Stella
Pre-kindergarten class
We started February by celebrating Groundhog’s Day. We went outside and we saw our shadows…Oh No! 6 more weeks of winter! To celebrate the day, we made Groundhogs that popped out and a Groundhog book. To celebrate President’s Day, we created directed paintings of Honest Abe. We learned two President songs, made George Washington with his wig and talked about never telling a lie. We also made a GeorgeWashington book.
We can now write all of our upper case letters and have now started on c, o, and s in lower case. In math, we have started our addition unit. We are using cubes, bears and our fingers to find the answers.
We learned about Tu B Shvat (HappyBirthday to the trees). We made trees and learned all the parts of a tree using the “Head, Shoulders, Knees and Toes” tune. We learned about all the gifts that trees give us.
Can you believe that we celebrated Day 100 this month? We celebrated by counting to 100, sharing our 100 items that we brought to make a friendship salad and by eating “100” slices of pizza. We made a Day 100 stamp book and learned to count by 10’s.
This month we started to phonetically write words in our writing journals. Remember to continue to practice the high frequency words. Reading backpacks continue to go home everyday. We have some awesome readers!
April & Kat