A NEW year!

Although the snow hasn't been flying, it's still cold AND it's supposedly still winter. We've been talking about winter, winter animals and winter activities.

We've been talking about penguins, polar bears, snow bunnies, and other animals that like the cold weather. We've compared winter clothes to summer clothes and classified animals. We've even guessed and then discovered what keeps animals warm in the winter. We've talked about snow, and while there was snow on the ground we've melted some to see what is actually IN the snow. We discovered that besides water, there's a LOT of dirt.

Soon we'll be working on Valentine's Day projects, but until then, keep warm!

Pumpkin Painting

After going to the pumpkin patch there are so many things to do with our pumpkins.  The first thing is to paint them!  Painting on a new medium is way too much fun to stop at just a face, so we all painted every inch of the pumpkins.

It started out as pumpkins of many colors but quickly turned to black pumpkins.  Aren't they beautiful??!!

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.

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