It's Beginning to Look A Lot Like Fall

This week we've been talking about all the changes that come during the Fall season: changing colors, changing weather and temperatures, changing activities.  We went for a short neighborhood walk to discover some changes and found leaves already falling on the ground!!  Of course, we had to make our own fall trees!

More Than Shapes

They may only look like circles, squares, triangles and hearts to you and I, but learning about shapes is an important early childhood skill.  Children not only learn to recognize that shapes make up everything in the world around us, but they begin to understand spatial relationships, 3 dimensional thinking and other important skills needed in advancing math skills.  So while it only looks like we're "playing" with small, colored shapes, what you'll really find is a child discovering many things about the world around them.  Just look at the pictures to see some of the skills they're mastering:  classifying, sorting, ordering, patterning, stacking, designing, constructing, communicating ideas, counting, one-to-one corespondents, addition, and there is even a 3-D graph in there.  All these skills are important for Kindergarten and beyond.

Recent Media Concerning Apple Juice

I'm not sure who Dr. Oz is, although I do have a friend who reads articles and books he has written, so I'm not sure how creditable or not creditable he really is. I tend to lean towards distrust of the media, but many of my child care colleagues around the country are posting about and becoming very concerned about his recent reports on arsenic in apple juice.

I have read the reports, and admittedly the original findings and amounts were startling. But, then I read the juice rebuttals, which kicked my conspiracy theory genes into high gear! Who do you believe?

While I think the arguments on both sides are persuasive, I've chosen, here at Magic Moments, to simply cut apple juice (and all other juices) out of our menu planning and simply receive our fruit needs from whole foods. I've had many different doctors and dietitians tell me that fruit juice is not really great for children nor adults. It's full of sugar which plays with blood glucose levels and can lead to rapid tooth decay.

So, our beverage choices will be milk and water. We'll still eat plenty of fruit, but by avoiding juice I really don't have to decide if Dr. Oz is correct or the Juice Companies. :)

As always, if you have concerns with this decision, please talk to me. Thanks!

What We're Doing in Preschool

We've been having fun in preschool  Here are some fun photos..

Reading Books

one to one counting

Graphing and counting

Scissor skills

more scissor skills

5 little monkeys swinging in a tree
Teasing Mr. Alligator, "can't catch me!"
Along comes Mr. Alligator, quiet as can be
To snatch that monkey right out of the tree!

Music and Movement

Week of Sept 12-16

The weekly menu cycle is "2" Please see tab above for menu.

The following is the Activity Plan for this week.

Zoo Field Trip

We visited Hogal Zoo during our Summer 2011 field trips.  The animals were great, but we were all worried about the very loud dinosaurs that were found around the zoo.  The greatest fun was riding the zoo train and petting real animal fur!

Petting a leopard skin

You Just Have to Wiggle and Jiggle

Click here to see Dancing to a marching band at the Days of '47 Float Preview

Preschool Activities Week of Sept 6, 2011