Tuesday, May 6, 2014

It's that time of year...many reminders!

It's here...The Week of the Young Child, May 5th-9th.  We are celebrating the blessing of young children, especially all of the young children here at Zion!  As part of the celebration, there will be optional dress-up days this week.  The remaining days are listed below:

Wednesday:  Spirit Day-Wear red or white or Zion wear

Thursday:  Stripes Day

Friday:  Mismatched Day

The last day of preschool is Wednesday, May 21.

Join us for "Popsicles at the Park" on Thursday, May 22 from 9:00 - 11:00 am at Laurel Park.  Come and play with your preschool friends and enjoy some yummy popsicles to kick off the summer!

We had a fun day in preschool!

Our "home" dramatic play was buzzin' this morning!  Look at Olivia reconstructing the world as she sees it!!! 

Isaac was cooking up some lettuce pancakes!

Will was expressing his creativity, using his imagination as he played with trains.

Two little chefs...stirring up their next meal!

Tangrams were very popular today.  These "puzzles" not only allow children to practice recognizing shapes, but also work on spatial awareness!

Our last friend got to see "How many inches tall are you?" Cameron  was measured in inches, then had to find that number on our graph.  Once found, he wrote his name in the correct space on our graph.  Understanding standard forms of measurement is an early math skill!  But, how awesome is it, in the excitement of being measured, we are also working on identifying numbers and getting practice writing our names!

The final results are in...43 inches had the most with 7 friends.  Our smallest was 40 inches and our tallest was 51 inches!

Laughter and playdoh...sounds good to me!!!  As always, not only fun, but great for strengthening small motor control!

We switched things up for check-in this morning.  Each child wrote his/her name in the column that answered the question, "How do you feel today?"  Everyone agreed that "Excited" had the most and there was a 2 way tie for the least!

This was Cameron's first chance to try the kinetic sand!!!  What is kinetic sand???  It's sand that sticks to itself (not you).  You can pack it, pull it, and shape it, but with a touch of a finger it will move and "melt" in your hands!  We learned to be very careful with it, to make sure we don't let it fall on the floor.  We also decided only 2 friends at a time while this special sand is in the table.  This is awesome for fine motor skill development and expressing creativity.  (If you are in the classroom and want to check it out for yourself...let me know!!!  It really is quite awesome!)

The kiddos were still excited to see tricky mouse bring milk and cookies for us to practice our uppercase and lowercase letters.  Since success for all children is different, there were some uppercase and some lowercase letters for the children to choose.

I saw many favorite colors today as we celebrate day 2 of The Week of the Young Child.  We saw many of those same colors in the yummy popsicles we got again today!!!

To begin small group time we practiced our recalling skills (cognitive).  Each child was given a chance to be "The Recaller".  He/she went to the opposite side of the room and hid his/her eyes. Another child hid under the blanket.  "The Recaller" returned and had to tell the group which child was "missing"!  Not only did we work on recalling, but also self regulation.  It was difficult to keep the secret of who was under the blanket, when all he/she wanted to do was shout it out!!!  We did a GREAT job!

For our first center, each child received a bag of skittles.  His/her first job was to sort the skittles (by color) into an empty egg carton or ice cube tray (sorting is an early cognitive skill).  Once sorted, each child was given a graph to complete.  First count the red skittles, then color that number of boxes.  Then, count the orange and color that number of boxes, and so on.  The ability to count and quantify are early math skills.  As many of the children finished, I heard things like:

"How many yellow do you have? I have 3!"

"Look, I have the most green skittles."

"My orange and yellow are equal."

One more day of cookies and milk?!?!?  Each child was shown a glass of milk (uppercase letter), said the letter aloud, and then found the matching cookie (lowercase letter).  Success for all children is different.  Success for some is being able to recognize the uppercase letter, then getting help from a friend to find the lowercase letter.  Success for others is being able to recognize the uppercase and lowercase letter on his/her own!

We used our fine motor skills to weave lacing cards.

Alex got to be our guest reader today!

During Jesus Time today, we were reminded of the story of Peter's surprise and the people that prayed for him to be freed from jail.  We learned that there are many times and many reasons that we pray.  We pray to ask for help when hurt or afraid.  We pray to tell God we're sorry, if we made a poor choice.  We also pray to thank God!  We can pray for any reason, any time!!!