McDonald's-Fun Was Had by All!!

I'm sure you're children are arriving home very tired!  It was a beautiful day for a walk to McDonald's.  As soon as we arrived we ordered our food and the children sat around the tables with us in the playland area.  The staff at McDonald's was very helpful in getting us situated.  After eating, the children took off their shoes and entered into the playland area and had a blast.  There weren't very many children there besides us so it was nice as we had enough room to play.  It was wonderful to see the children interacting with each other and learning how to maneuver the tunnels and slides.  It's encouraging to see the children developing friendships and learning how to problem solve.  Many of them were helping their classmates as they were a bit timid in trying out some of the tiers and tunnels.  They gained a lot of confidence and they were very proud of their new accomplishments.  It was a fantastic trip!

McDonald's!

Every morning this week my morning message has been about our trip to McDonald's as we're counting the days! The children have been so excited as the number of days gets less and less and now.......finally we're going tomorrow!

The weather forecast looks great so we're looking forward to a great trip tomorrow and I'll write about it tomorrow night!

The Human Body

This week we'll be looking at the human body as we continue learning fun songs like the Hokey Pokey and Head and Shoulders. We will also compare our body with the insects body as we sing the Insect Song that follows the tune of Head, Shoulders, Knees and Toes but it uses Head, Thorax, Abdomen, Abdomen. We found many creatures outside on our walks so we talked about their body parts and this week we'll take a closer look at them and compare them to ours!

Nurse Karla will also be conducting Hearing and Vision Screenings this week and next week and she will send home a paper about it with your child.

We will also finish up our All About Me books that the children are authoring and we hope to have them ready to send home sometime next week. The children are very excited about our McDonald's trip! We have it marked on the calendar that we use everyday so they are learning about the meaning of words that deal with the passage of time, such as weeks, next week, and just how hard it is to wait for the trip!

Last week we made goop, which is cornstarch and water, and it makes a wonderful mixture that acts like a solid and a liquid. It's a wonderful feeling when you get your hands covered in goop and it's very easy to clean up! You just add a little bit of water to a box or two of cornstarch in a bin and you can play for quite a while as you roll it into a ball and then watch it disinegrate in your hands and become a liquid. The children enjoyed experimenting with this this mixture!

I will be sending home some questionnaires with your child tomorrow and if you have any questions about any of them or anything else about your child's classroom please let me know and I'll be happy to talk it over with you. We are thoroughly enjoying the children in the Red Room this year! It's a wonderful group of children and we are learning a tremendous amount each and everyday about friendships, trying new things, and about letters, shapes and sounds!

Our Five Senses

This week we are starting to learn about our five senses! We are using them in so many ways! It's so fun when the children learn about their senses and they start pointing out how they are using them. We have definitely used them when we're outside on our walks and on the playground. We've also been using our senses with our afternoon snacks and with our Fruit Loops yesterday we collectively decided that we used all of our senses with that snack!

Dates to Remember:

• McDonald's Field Trip on Thursday, September 30th-please send in your permission slip in as soon as possible.
• Wednesday, October 13th is School Picture Day. Please send in your order form and payment in with your child anytime before that date.
• I will be sending home permission slips for our next field trip which will be on Thursday, October 14th to Circle S Farms.

As always, if you ever have any questions please call me at the school or send in a note with your child!

The Gingerbread Man

We read The Gingerbread Man story both yesterday and today and the children loved the story! Today we made our own gingerbread cookies from scratch and they were a lot of fun. We decorated them with icing, raisins, and chocolate chips and they were delicious. We have great cooks in the Red Room!

We sent home permission slips for our walking trip to McDonald's on September 30th. If you have any questions about the trip please feel free to call me at school or write me a note.

There Was an Old Woman

We've been enjoying our walks and our playground time this past week with the beautiful weather. We've taken a few different walking routes to see the sights and hear the sounds of the last few days of summer. We also took pictures of trees around our school so that we can compare them as the seasons change. We walked close to the pumpkin water tower and the children enjoyed that! In circle time, after our walk, we discuss what we saw and heard and we're learning a new song about September and about summer. We heard some insects that we think might be locusts so we read about the locusts and saw how they looked in our library book. Later on this week we'll learn a new song about the parts of an insect as we compare that to our body parts as we sing, Head, Shoulders, Knees and Toes.

The children have a little book about the nursery rhyme, There was on Old Woman Who lived in a Shoe. They colored their books last week and we'll use them this week in circle so they can follow along as they learn the words. This week we'll start a new rhyme called:

My Ten Fingers

I have ten fingers-1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10 (point as you count),

and they all belong to me (point to self).

They can do many things, would you like to see? (point to a child).

I can raise them up high (say in a high pitch as you raise your hands).

I can bring them down low (say in a deep voice as you lower your hands to the floor).

I can clap them in front (clap in front), I can put them behind (hide hands behind you).

I can creep them to the top of my head (crawl up your face), and jump them into my lap to hide (quickly move them to your lap and out of sight).

Our Daily Schedule

Now that we've settled into a bit of a routine, I wanted to share with you our daily schedule so you'll get a glimpse into your child's day!

Our Daily Schedule

The children come in, unpack any papers or lunchboxes that they might have in their backpacks and share a hug or two if they want. Then we have a notebook for each child with a sample of their first name and they write their name on their own and we have a date stamp so they stamp their work with today's date. They put their notebook in a bin when they are done and then they are free to play. We go to the bathroom and then it's time for Morning Welcome.

During Morning Welcome we sing a welcome to school song for each child, give more hugs for those that want it, read our morning message and then pick jobs for the day. I write a brief message to the class in the morning either pertaining to the theme or the day's activities. I always start with:

Good morning,

Today is Monday (or whatever the day of the week is)

Then I write a few sentences.

I always sign it with.......Love,

Ms. Hilda

This morning message allows me an opportunity to talk about so many things and I can point out letters and punctuation marks. The children are learning about question marks and periods right now. Then we pick our jobs for the day and we head up to breakfast.

After breakfast we are taking advantage of the beautiful weather and either playing on the playground or we're taking a walk. We come in and have a drink at our table in the Red Room and then we bring our chairs over to Circle Time. At circle we start with the calendar and the weather and we also discuss the season and we sing songs about the month, days of the week and the current season. Then we get to move around a bit with an action song. We do a shared reading of a nursery rhyme or a rhyme that pertains to our theme. Then I have the children move in close to my chair for our reading time so that they can all see the pictures and we can discuss the book together.

We go to the bathroom and then it's Activity Time. Activity Time is when the children have free play in our play area of the Red Room and we pull them out to do art and to work at the table with one us. We might do this individually or in small groups. We also open up the sensory table at this time. After we clean up we play a game at the table before heading up to lunch. This game varies from fingerplays such as "Where is Thumbkin?" to clapping out the syllables of their name to playing listening games where I make a noise and they have to identify the sound as a whistle, a drum or a timer for example.

After lunch we go to the bathroom, brush our teeth, and relax for a few minutes and watch a video with our favorite stuffed animal. Some of our children nap at this time and the other children either go outside for a walk or we go to the Yellow Room to play games with their friends.

We go to the bathroom and then head back to the Red Room to reunite with our friends that took a nap and we all have snack together. We end our day with music which might be singing action songs, playing musical chairs or marching in a parade. We sing a goodbye song to all our friends and gather our backpacks and then we head up to the buses!

I hope this insight into our day helps and please let me know if you have any questions!

Thanks,
Hilda

Enjoy the Fruits of Your Labor!

I hope that you're enjoying the fruits of your labor today as we have a day off from school and hopefully you're enjoying family and friends this weekend! We will have a short week this week with only three days but we'll make the most of the days we have together as there's much to learn in preschool!

Last week we read about families and what makes up a family....people that we love, whether they are near or far! This week we'll start concentrating on each child and their valued place in the family and within their new community, the preschool classroom. It's a new beginning for our children as they realize they are part of a new group with new rules, new friends and new things to learn everyday....it's all very exciting!

With this new week and this beautiful weather we'll be talking some walks and we'll start talking about the seasons. We'll take some pictures as we walk along and we'll do this periodically throughout the school year so we can compare and see the different seasons through pictures. We'll start with a few trees near our school and observe what they look like now and we'll record the changes they go through for each season. We'll let the children compare and contrast their observations and tell us what's happening as we help them with the vocabulary using words and/or pictures. We'll also talk about the sounds of each season as we spend some time outside with our walks and our playground time. After some time outside this week we'll write down the sounds of the season as a group and gather our thoughts on paper.