Here's a peak at what we have been up to....

Pumpkin Craft

Working on some writing with our white boards

Hard at work at the Writing Center!

Our first iPad class was so much fun!

We love iPads!

Fun in the garden!

Collecting Sunflower seeds in the garden

Math Circle on the rug

Taking care of the babies in the kitchen area

Weekly Newsletter October 13, 2017

What a quick week we had this week! We hope everyone had a nice long weekend together! This week we began our unit on Families. Our question of the week was “Who is in your  family?” We talked about how God made all of our families special and we even did some graphing  to show different aspects of our family. We made a graph showing how many of us have a sibling, about how many older/younger siblings we had, and about how many people live in our house. We did a great job! We really love counting!

Our literacy unit this week really focused on syllables. We worked on clapping out the syllables in our concept words as well as other words we decided upon as a class. We really enjoyed clapping out each others names too. We sorted them by number of syllables and realized that many of us have names made up of 2 syllables! It was so much fun! We also worked on identifying some uppercase and lowercase letters. We used our whiteboards and practiced writing some of these letters as well as working on writing our names. We really liked the whiteboards. We will have to take those out again soon!

This week the letter we worked on was the letter Ff. We worked on writing it with the help of the “Crayon Song” and by using “Mat Man” to remind us that F is made up of a big line and two little lines. We even used our wooden Handwriting Without Tears blocks to create the letter Ff on the rug as well as other letters. We are really coming along with our letters and our crayon grip! Our coloring in the lines is pretty amazing too! Everyone is so proud of themselves when they realize they are holding their crayon correctly or stayed within the lines. It is such a great thing to witness!

During center time, the kitchen area was quite popular with the addition of the baby dolls. We all seemed to love playing family, taking on many different roles. We also enjoyed building with lincoln logs, playing at the sand table and making pretend pumpkins with play dough.  We enjoyed  talking

about the season of Fall and even made a fall tree to talk  about the many different  colors we see this time of year. They are beautiful and will be coming home soon!

This week we talked a little bit about Fire Safety as well. We talked about some of the things we can do if we are ever caught in an emergency too.

On Monday we will be welcoming two new students to our class, Leo and Mallory. We are so excited to meet our new friends!

Have a nice weekend! See you Monday!

Weekly Newsletter- October 2,2017

Together this week the focus was on the question: How do friends get along together?  This question opened up a lot of conversations relating to our feelings.  We learned about what it means to feel sad,  feel happy or even angry! We discussed how all people (even Moms and Dads and Teachers) have these feelings.  They are all normal and natural.  But, we also talked about what do we do with these feelings, especially when we are upset.  The children shared some experiences about when they were having these feelings and what they could do about them.  The children also shared some time with a partner and as a feeling was named, each of the children would face their partner and show (on their face) what that particular feeling looked like.  This was a fun and engaging activity everyone seemed to enjoy!  It is important to remember that because our feelings oftentimes influence our behaviors, it’s helpful if we can have some strategies in place to deal with these feelings in a positive, productive way.

During Literacy circle and small group time this week we focused on taking apart words and then putting them back together.  (In other words, breaking down words into syllables by clapping them out while speaking.)  The children enjoyed listening and clapping and then offered their own two syllable words as the week progressed.

We also worked on learning that big letters are called Uppercase letters and little letters are called Lowercase letters.  Then we played a number of sorting games, deciding which letters were Uppercase and which were Lowercase.  The children loved helping each other!

During Math circle and small group time this week the focus was on sorting by different attributes.  The children sorted objects by color, size and one child even sorted animals by their tails!

During Story Time this week the book was Matthew and Tilly,

by Rebecca C. Jones which focused on the importance of

friendship and forgiveness.

One of our open-ended art activities was learning how to

sponge paint! What a wonderful way to explore the

artist within each of us!

                               Have a wonderful weekend!

A peak at the first few weeks of Pre-K....

Outside Fun!!!

I see you!!

Look at me climb!

Working on my book.

Self Portraits

We can build our own Mat Man!!

Graphing- Living or Non Living?

Math Group- "What's My Rule?"

Using some art skills at the easel!

Math Center

"Look what I made!"

Who doesn't love playdough??

Counting and building during Math group!

Enjoying some quiet reading!

Weekly Wrap Up:

     This week we talked all about the ways we can help each other and work together with our friends. We talked about how we can share and listen to one another in order to create positive relationships. We gave great examples of how we do this in school each day. We have really begun to create great friendships in class.
     During literacy circle and small groups this week we really enjoyed creating and identifying compound words. When we identified one we would clap it out to see if it worked. Some of our favorites were "hotdog, cupcake,rainbow, toothbrush and backpack". We did a great job!
     During our math circles and small groups we continued working on rote counting to 10 as well as identifying missing numbers when counting out loud. We played a game with Ollie where he would count and if he made a mistake we had to help him identify which number he missed. We loved it!! We love anything involving Ollie!
     This week,during religion we talked more about how God made all of us special. We alos talked about who Mary was. We colored a picture of her dress from our religion book as well as worked with our Seeds magazine. We were very busy!
     Our book of focus this week was "Oscar Is Cold". This story talked about a bear who needed to warm up and tried many different ways to do so with the help of his friends. It also helped us to talk about the science topics of weather, and living vs non living. We sorted things into groups of living and non living and we graphed them. We were great scientists!
     This week we introduced Handwriting Without Tears. We began using "The Crayon Song" to help us with our crayon grip and "Mat Man". Mat Man will help up to create people like shapes as well as get us used to the terminology we will be using when talking about how to form letters correctly such as : Big Line, Little Line, Big Curve, Small Curve. We LOVE Mat Man! Learning is always fun while playing!

What a great week!! Have a nice weekend!
Miss Shea and Mrs. Spadoni

Welcome to Pre-K 1!

Welcome to Pre-K 1! We are so excited to have you in class this year! We are really looking forward to great year together! This blog will help you see what goes on in class each week! Check back each week to see all the fun we are having!