Mrs. Mudd's Preschool Blog : Thursday, November 17, 2016

Thursdays are a great day to be thankful in preschool!

We were excited to see a yellow "tablecloth" for us to create on this morning...drawing pictures of what we are thankful for. We will be using this (and the one we started yesterday) for our Charlie Brown Thanksgiving feast next week!

Zion's 1st - 6th grades participated in World Sport Stacking Day today. Preschool was invited to take a peek at what sport stacking is all about!!!

And...we played on the "big kid" playground again today! First we had to remember a few rules to keep us safe (especially for our friends that were not here yesterday)...then we got to play, play, play in this warm November weather!!!

A few new pics of our playground's progress...there are exciting things happening!!!

Mrs. Mudd brought with her 6 items. These items all had to do with things found outside in nature, especially during the Fall season! All 6 were covered with a towel, then 2 taken away! What was missing? I couldn't fool them, they did a great job of recognizing and recalling (an early cognitive skill).

Then...surprise...guest reader, Mrs. Helmkamp, came to read to us the last three books from the Missouri Building Block Picture Book selection for this year.

(bummer...I forgot to take a picture of one of them!)

Then each friend got to vote for his/her favorite book using the iPad and a QR code!

Mrs. Helmkamp tallied the results and sent them to us in an email...the winner is...a tie...

"Bunnies!!!" and "Vincent Paints his House"

Today we introduced the letters "I" and "U"!

We remembered start your letter "at the top" then big line down, little line across, little line across for the "I" and big line down, curve around,and big line up for the "U"! Then we came up with words that start with "I" and "U"!

Anytime one of our friends thinks of a word that starts with "I" or "U" we can add it to our big letter. Or, if at home, your child sees a small picture or item that starts with an "I" or "U", bring it in and he/she can glue it to our big letter!

Then we practiced writing "I" and "U" with crayons (nice and short to reinforce proper grip)!

Thank you to Emma! She brought in a few pictures she found at home that started with the letters "I" and "U". She did a great job taping them to the correct letter!

Time for small groups (centers)!

With me each friend had a chance to show what he/she knows about patterns! Success for some was finishing a pattern I started. Success for others was creating his/her own pattern from start to finish!

With Mrs. Dose, we continued with step 3 of our turkeys. Earlier this week each child traced his/her hand and dictated 5 things he/she was thankful for. Time to create...each child cut out his/her hand (VERY tricky) and glued the hand to the tube to make turkey feathers! Check them out on our bookshelf in the hallway...they look awesome!

We had some magnet fun in the sensory table! In the corn were new, hidden items! We used magnets to find the buried treasures. But, it was tricky, not everything new could be "picked up" by the magnet!

We had some crows looking for a scarecrow! Each scarecrow had an uppercase letter on it and each child had to find the lowercase match on a crow! (Recognizing and identifying letters is an early literacy skill). Success for some was recognizing the uppercase letter and getting help from a friend to find the lowercase letter. Success for others was recognizing the uppercase letter and being able to find the lowercase letter on his/her own!