January in Room 102

Where do we start? January has been packed with some amazing stuff already, and we still have one week left! Everyone came back to school after the holiday break ready to jump right in. Sometimes we have difficult transitions after a long time away from school, but that really wasn't the case, and both the three and the four-year-old classes were ready to be busy.

Our threes had several firsts this month. We met Miss Martha for our Movement is Fun class. Movement for the three year olds starts in January, when we've had a chance to become acclimated to school and new faces. In movement class, all of the children have opportunities to work on balance and coordination skills, as well as spatial awareness. One of the first things we do in each movement class is to "find our own space". The children are expected to find a place in the large room where they can sit without touching another child. You'd be surprised how hard this is! At the end of each class, the children find their own space again, and have a few minutes to "cool down" and breathe deeply. So far, movement has been a big hit! During movement, all of the children are asked to take their shoes and socks off, so that they may feel the carpet on their feet. We would ask that in the coming weeks, you encourage your children to try to get their own shoes and socks on and off at home. We are always there to help, of course, but this is one of those skills that we often do for our children (mostly for the sake of time!) and they really are able to do this for themselves.

When it was VERY cold outside, the 4s did yoga to keep moving!

At the end of Movement is Fun, the 3s find their "own space" and try to lay quietly...easier said than done!

Another first for the threes was meeting Stacey Elattar for the first time. Stacey comes to our classroom for Snacks With Stacey, where the children learn about healthy foods. Both the threes and fours love when Stacey comes to play the stop light game - ask your child what a red, yellow, or green light food might be. During SWS this month for both threes and fours, Stacey talked with the children about birthday parties. Because we are celebrating Village Preschool's 40th birthday this month, the children learned about healthy snacks to eat at parties, too!

Stacey reads Whopper Cake to the children and talks about birthday parties

Both of our classes have been busy exploring building with different materials. We brought in a marble run at the beginning of the month, and it has been really fantastic to watch what has happened with it. They first began to build without giving much thought to how the marble run actually works. Then, their play began to really take shape as they had to work together to figure out how the marble run really works. We helped to scaffold the play for the older children by adding different materials to the block area: blocks, tubes, and ramps helped further the play that was already happening with the marbles. One day, we gave the children straws and ping pong balls and asked them to figure out how to build a structure that the balls could go in - a bigger version of the marble run! When children work together to build, they are working on social skills, negotiation, cooperation, compromise, and initiative just to name a few. Building structures gives children opportunities to work on patterns, measuring, estimating, gravity, balance, and spatial awareness. This list could go on and on. And surprise! They probably didn't realize they were even working on all of those skills!

Finally, as always, we like to incorporate literacy throughout our day, and have added many books about building to our bookshelf. Be sure to look at the "what we're reading" link to your right to keep up with what we are reading in class. Whew! It seems like this post could keep on going - we really have been so very busy! Thank you, as always, for sharing your amazing children with us. It really is a joy to watch how much they've grown and changed already this year, and how each class is becoming its own little community of learners.

It's Beginning to Look a Lot Like Christmas!

Holy wow! We can't believe it's already Christmastime! Where has our year gone? We know you've probably seen remnants of glue and glitter coming home, but we thought we'd show you some photos of what has been happening in the classroom. We've had a present wrapping station, where the children can work with paper, scissors, tape and boxes. They've really loved it, and have surprised us with their talents! We read The Gingerbread Baby, and we decorated "gingerbread houses" (really they were cardboard boxes, but you wouldn't have known it when we were done with them!). We have also read so many opportunities to sing, both with Miss Jenny, and just on our own. We are learning new holiday songs as well as the old favorites. We have also had a nativity set in the classroom. It's always funny to listen in to the children playing with the set. Sometimes they tell the story of the Baby Jesus, and sometimes they add blocks, the farm set, and maybe even a few cars to the mix! We love this time of year because we get to see the wonder of it all through the eyes of 3, 4, and 5-year-olds. Is there anything better than that?

We hope you all can join us for the Christmas sing-along. The 3-year-old class will gather on Thursday the 18th at 11am, and the 4s will sing on Wednesday the 17th  at 11am. Remember, there is no school this Friday the 19th for the 4s, and we will all see you back after the new year. Our first day back is Tuesday, January 6th. Have a safe and wonderful holiday break!

Enhancing the Literacy Experience

This week, both classes did activities based on the books we read during circle time. Take one look at Pinterest and you'll find a thousand "crafts" to go along with the books we read to preschoolers. If you look at these pictures, you'll notice that the children were given materials and sent to work without a goal in mind. Open-ended activities ensure that children are using their imaginations, their social interaction skills, reasoning, mathematical and scientific thinking skills - all while having fun! The outcome might not be pretty, but it's the process that matters in room 102, not the product. Enjoy!

we read this book with 4 year olds, and then made our own volcanoes! 

the children had trays of baking soda

and cups full of colored vinegar

they used pipettes to squirt the vinegar into the soda. small motor development is disguised in many ways!

we read Not a Box with our 3 year old class

we used markers...

and tape...

and scissors...

and even our whole bodies!

What's New?

What's new at preschool? So much! We've been busy these past few weeks with so many different activities. We all made it through Halloween, and have been enjoying the amazing fall weather while we have it. If you haven't done so, please take time to check out the bulletin board outside the classroom, as it details SO much of what we've been doing in the classroom with literacy. We are ALL readers, writers, and illustrators - even when the reading, writing, and illustrating might not look like what we adults might imagine. The children in both the 3 and 4 year old classes have been so interested in books that we decided to make our own library to share. What started as just introducing books by looking at their parts and learning about the people who make the books turned into quite a project. Recently, one of our 4 year olds came up to us with a book she had made and had decided that it, too, needed to go in our library! We couldn't be happier to see the children making these awesome connections, and wanting to share their work.

raking leaves on the playground

water color painting outside (looks more like a nail salon!)

Last week, we had art workshops on Thursday and Friday. On Thursday, Miss Renee came into our classroom and brought the art with her! The children picked out different nature items and dipped them in paint. They then put the acorns, pine cones, and leaves into a large container with paper and a lid and shook it. When they opened the container, the children saw that the nature items had painted a picture! On Friday, the 4 year olds went upstairs with Miss Debbie and worked their way through 4 different art stations. They painted pine cones, worked with clay collage, did leaf printing, and even got to decorate a wooden acorn. Both groups loved mixing art and nature.

Food for Thought...Self-Regulation

Sometimes the dark rabbit hole of Pinterest actually produces something worth talking about - like this article about self-regulation in children. We thought we would share it with you. Consider it food for thought, as we know self-regulation is a huge part of what your kids are working on every single day in the classroom - and at home. Enjoy!

Village Preschool Had a Farm...EIEIO!

We had such fun this week with the visit from two different farms. On Thursday, the 3 year-old class had a visit from Stable T Farm. The farmers brought a pig named Dora, along with goats, a rabbit, a duck, and a chicken. The children were able to pet the animals and were also able to talk with the farmers and ask questions. Did you know that a pig can be domesticated? (That isn't a word that the children learned, but they did learn that the farmer and his wife keep Dora the pig as their house pet!) Imagine that!

On Friday, the 4 year-old class had a visit from A-Z petting zoo. This farmer set up a small fenced in stable and the children were able to pet and feed goats, a cow named Daisy, a donkey, and an alpaca! Each child got a cup of feed for the animals, and we soon learned that it was like candy to them - the children were very popular with the animals! Some children decided they'd rather look from a distance, which was just fine, too. We talked with the farmer about how the alpaca has a long neck like a giraffe. It was probably more noticeable because he had recently been sheared! At the end of our day on Friday, the children made a recall list of things they remembered or things that they learned about the animals.

At the water station this week, we washed farm animals.  We also spent time drawing pictures about the farm during work time.

During small group time in both the three and four-year-old classes, the children worked with the geo-boards. These wooden boards have nails in them, and the children are given rubber bands to stretch over the nails. Some realized quickly that they could make shapes, and when we added pumpkins and farm animals to the tables, the children spent a lot of time making their own stables. Not only were the children using the small muscles in their hands to stretch and place the rubber bands, they were using eye/hand coordination, as well as their imaginations! So many fun stories came from this activity. In fact, when it was time to go to work time, many of the children chose to stay at the tables and continue playing with the geo-boards!

Finally, on the playground this week, the 3 year-olds had taken out the large wooden blocks and had started to make a pile of the blocks on the stage area. When it became clear that the intention was to make a giant pile of blocks and try to climb on them (eek!) we asked the children if they could think of something they could do with the blocks that would be more safe for everyone involved. It doesn't always happen like this, but on this day, the children began working together to take down the pile, and to create something new - a boat! It was such fun watching the amount of teamwork that went into what happened next, that we knew it needed to be captured in photos. At one point, one of the boys said, "look! we are working together as a team!" Yes they were, indeed.

We hope you're all enjoying this amazing fall weekend!