Some Farm Life Unit Pictures!

Building a Farm on the rug

Reading all about Farm Life

Giddy Up Horsey! 

Playing on the Farm

Enjoying  a farm puzzle

Fun in the Farm Sensory Table

Newsletter-January 22,2018

This week we continued our theme of Life on Farm. We began by learning that working on a farm can be a lot of work, but there are some tools and machines that help farmers with their work. The tractor was a favorite machine that helps farmers pull a wagon. It can also help plan seeds in the soil of a field in a row(many at one time). We talked about other tools farmers use such as a shovel, a hoe, and even a pitchfork! We talked about how farmers raise certain animals like cows, chickens and horses. Farmers also grow crops. We discussed how we use wheat, corn and cotton. Ask your child which crop he/she felt was the most important.( We made a graph as as clas and it ended in a tie between wheat and a cotton.

During Literacy Circle and Small Group this week we introduced segmenting words. We broke apart the beginning sounds of words from the rest of the word. This was a big challenging at the beginning of the week, but as the week progressed the children really seemed to grasp the concept. We also learned about the letter Ss.

During Math Circle and Small Group this week we added fingers to make 5, modeled stories added 1 more and introducing story problems with the number 5. The children really enjoyed making up their own stories beginning with a few of something and then adding to solve a problem.

Our Story Time book this week was called Otis By Loren Long. Ask your child who Otis was and who he became good friends with? (Hint:Otis is a little red tractor and his friend is a baby calf).

We had a great discussion about how Jesus wants us all to have inner peace, how jesus came to show us how important it is to be peaceful in our homes and in school and in our daily lives. We can all do kind things, be loving and ask for forgiveness when sometimes we may not make the best choices or hurt someone unintentionally.

Hope to see many of your at this Sunday's 9:30am Mass. January 28th, here at Blessed Sacrament Church to begin the celebration of Catholic Schools week!

Catching up on January

Catching up on January:

The Week Of January 8, 2018:

We hope you had a healthy and joyous time with family and friends over the break. Although it was nice for us as well, we are so happy to have everyone back in school.

This week we continued the theme of All Around our Community as we learned about the different kinds of communities where people live.  We learned some people live in the city, some live in the country, some live in a town, and others live on a farm. We learned about some things that are the same in each community (Ask your child - hint: children go to school; people have neighbors; people can grow a garden) and some things that are different (hint: cities have buses and busy streets with crowds of people trying to get from one place to another usually quickly; the country has more wide-open spaces with grass and trees, etc.)

During Literacy Circle and Small Group this week, we focused on rhyming words (words that have the same sound at the end). We found them in our weekly poem, and enjoyed many laughs together finding them in our small group game. We needed to have our best listening ears on to be able to hear which words really rhymed!

During Math Circle and Small Group this week, we reviewed all that we learned throughout this unit about geometric shapes - cubes, spheres, cylinders, cones, rectangular prisms; and we experimented to make new shapes. (Ask your child why some shapes stacked better than others.)

Our story this week was The Ugly Vegetables by Grace Lin.  Some

people like to grow food; others like to grow flowers. Ask your

child why this one neighborhood decided to grow both!

Talking about Martin Luther King, Jr., gave us an opportunity

to help the children learn that working together and

always striving for peace is the best way to live in any

community.

The week of January 15, 2018:

This week we began our unit all about Farm Life. We started out by talking about the many aspects of the farm in terms of day to day life on a farm, the animals that live on the farm and if we would like to live on a farm. Most of us decided that we would like to live on a farm and help take care of the animals. We also worked on the letter Gg this week as well. We are working hard on writing our letters with many different mediums from crayons, pencils and even dry erase markers. We love using the white boards!

This week we enjoyed playing in the dramatic play area which was set up as a barn scene. We played with barnyard animal puppets and could even wear animal masks to act out some farm yard fun!  We loved getting to act out our favorite farm animals with our friends. We also enjoyed playing with toy farms and animals as well as the items in the sensory table. So much farm fun to be had!

During small group time we worked on writing the letter Gg, identifying things that began with the letter Gg and working on the sound that the letter Gg makes. We also worked on identifying the beginning sounds of many words. This was a little tricky so we are going to keep working on it over the next few weeks.

During math circle we talked about the many ways we can make 5. We used various counters to demonstrate how the number 5 looks the same no matter what we used. We enjoyed adding items together in different orders to make 5 and realizing that the final number never changed! We really enjoy learning all about numbers.

Thank you for donating all of the great supplies that were brought into the class this week. We appreciate them all so much. They really do help us out so much. We could not make the class as great as it is without your help and support!

December 1, 2017

What a busy week we had! Santa's Workshop, class pictures, a visit from Officer Hart and book buddies, how much more fun can we have?? The two favorites of the week were definitely meeting Santa and our visit with Officer Hart and his service dog. We loved getting to ask him questions about his job and learn all about what he does in our community. What a wonderful way to help us learn more about community helpers this week!

We really enjoyed having time to play in our centers this week too. We loved playing in the sand table, playing with the fire station, using mini white boards and working on creating numbers with mini erasers. We also really enjoyed learning about geometric solids, especially cones because then we got to talk about what kind of ice cream cones we liked to eat!

Next week we will begin our Christmas unit and talk about all the things that make this season so special. There is so much to talk about from the very important religious topics to the fun Christmas crafts that we wanted to make sure we had enough time to fit it all in. We will also work on reviewing letters we have talked about so far this year rather than introducing new ones. We will finish up Unit 3 on Our Community once we return from Christmas break.

Next Wednesday is our Polar Express Day!! Be ready to have some Polar Express themed fun!! Wear your PJ's!!

Look what I wrote!

"Will you send this to my mom?"

We love white boards!

Making numbers with mini erasers!

Thank you for visiting us Officer Hart!

We loved learning about your job as a community helper!

Santa's Workshop!! We got to see Santa!!!

Geometric solids at the Math Center. Sorting and matching.

Fun at the Sensory table.

More number fun!

Thanksgiving Wrap up...

What an exciting and very short week we had last week. Everyone did such a wonderful job at the show! Have you ever seen a cuter group of Pilgrims before?!?

We did do a little bit of learning before the big day. We talked about location words to continue our learning from the week before.

Here are some pictures to show a few of these words and a few of our of adorable Pilgrims!

Working on our position words..."on top of"!

Here come the cutest little Pilgrims Ever!!

Working on our position words..."Under"

"In between"

Finally Catching up a bit....

We sure have been busy! We began a new unit all about Community this week and were lucky enough to have Mr. Spillman come talk to us about his job in our school community.We learned so much about how important his job is! We also talked about the many things in our community that we visit such as the post office, grocery store, park and library. We are really enjoying this unit so far.We also worked on the letter Uu during center time and at the writing table. We are doing such a great job with our letters!

We have loved playing in our pretend grocery store that is set up in our dramatic play area too! Of course, in honor of Thanksgiving next week, we had to put some Thanksgiving fun in there as well. Our sensory table is full of cranberries to sort, count and examine with friends. We learned all about cranberry bogs in technology and we get to have a pretend one in class as well! So fun! In our science center we used our light table to examine gel bags full of corn kernels and beans. It was so fun moving them around inside the gel and seeing what they looked like on the light table. Learning can be so much fun!

Just a reminder, our Thanksgiving Show is TUESDAY at 9:00 in the gym. After the show there will be a feast in the cafeteria with the  Preschool and Kindergarten classes to kick of Thanksgiving break. Dismissal is following the feast. There is no lunch or extended day offered on Tuesday. Please be sure to let us know when you are leaving so we know everyone is safe and accounted for! We look forward to seeing you there!

Here are a few pictures from the last few weeks so you can see all the fun we have been having learning and playing!

Exploring things at the light table

Grocery shopping!

Sorting cranberries in the "Cranberry Bog"!

Who doesn't love Mr. Potato Head??

Look at this little bean!

We love making numbers with blocks!

Carving out our pumpkin

Deciding what our pumpkin should look like.

Eww. Look at what is inside the pumpkin!

Look what I made!

Fr. Joe came to visit us during our Halloween party!

Boo! Happy Halloween!

When we can't make a pile of leaves we find the next best thing!

Halloween Party Fun!

Weekly Update-October 27, 2017

What a busy week we had this week talking all about the way we help our families at home as well our STREAM unit on Pumpkins. STREAM stands for Science, Technology, Religion, Engineering, Arts and Math. Each grade at BSS completes two units per year and this year our Fall unit was Pumpkins. We chose various activities pertaining to pumpkins that met the different criteria of these categories and had so much fun doing it. Who knew building gates with Lincoln logs for the 5 little pumpkins was engineering?? Or that carving out our class pumpkin to examine the insides and count the seeds was both Math and Science? We thought we were just having fun!!

We didn’t just have fun all week, we did serious work too. The letter we focused on this week was the letter Hh. We worked on writing it in small groups as well as coloring in pictures that begin with it to help our fine motor skills. We also worked on building it with our wooden blocks on the rug. We also worked on independently writing it the writing table if we chose to. Each child works at their own pace and we encourage them to do so.  It is amazing to watch them learn something new and really love it!

During small groups we worked on identifying and recognizing uppercase and lowercase letters, segmenting words into their onset and rime and we worked more with syllables and compound words. We are really doing a great job with it. We also worked with identifying small groups of numbered items without having to count them. This was tricky at first but we really got the hang of it! We talked about the many different ways we can make various sets of the number 4 using both fingers and concrete items. They were really impressed by the fact that they were adding like “big kids” do.

Even though it rained this week we had plenty of time to play in the classroom. We got extra time to play in the sensory table which is full of Halloween themed items, we played with balls at the train table and we even got extra time in the dramatic play area. We made the best of being stuck inside!

Have a great weekend!

Building a gate for "5 Little Pumpkins"

Carving out our class pumpkin, learning about pulp and seeds!

Loving the light table!

Our class Jack-O Lantern! We all took turns guessing how many seeds we thought he had inside....347!!!

Some Halloween fun at the sensory table this week! Making patterns and sorting spooky things with friends

Working on counting

Morning fun building!

More pictures coming soon!