Having So Much Fun in 5 Day Pre-K This Week!

Hello Everyone,

Our first full week in Pre-K went by very quickly! We continue getting back into the school routine. We have been talking a lot about Jack & Jill's School Rules which are:

We take care of our friends and teachers.

We take care of our things.

We take care of ourselves.

We began our Reading Street Curriculum this week. Our first unit is Building Our Homes. Our Reading Street book was The House in the Meadow by Shutta Crum. “Over in the meadow there's a spring wedding, with the couple's 10 best friends to celebrate. What's next? A house! 9 diggers, 8 masons, 7 carpenters, 6 well diggers, 5 roofers, 4 plumbers, 3 electricians, 2 painters, and 1 inspector show up with all their trucks and tools to build a new house. And when the couple and their friends have a house-warming party, a new baby comes, too!”

Our vocabulary words from our story were build, carpenter, paint, climbed, pipes and roof. There is a song that goes along with our book each week. This week our song was Build A House...the children really liked this song. We sing and come up with movements to go along with the song each week.

We also learned Time to Rhyme a great introduction to the interactive charts of this curriculum. We talked a lot about words that rhyme. Try asking your child about this song-they know it well!

The other books we read this week were That's What Friends Are For by Julia Hubery and Edward Gets Messy by Rita Meade. We listened to Llama Llama Time to Share by Anna Dewdney.

Our Centers this week:

Discovery Table: Sensory Matching Cylinders. We did this as a group activity. Each child had a cylinder. They were to feel it and then feel the board and try to match it. With just the sense of touch. The children loved doing this. We talked about the different textures....smooth, rough, soft, bumpy were some of the words they came up with.

Math Table: Color matching pegs and picture boards

Art Easel: This class LOVES to paint. I extended free art painting this week. We are using new palettes of paint with many different colors.

Art Table: Decorating a school shoe (from Pete the Cat)...the children used markers, stickers and gems to decorate their shoe. There were hole punchers and some children made laces for their shoe. My favorite part of the art projects is seeing what the children create with the materials provided. Check them out on our Bulletin Board outside of our classroom.

On Wednesday, Thursday and Friday, there were materials to make a house (craft sticks, colored popsicle sticks, cotton balls, markers). Each house has been different and wonderful. One child was using the cotton balls as smoke from the chimney while someone else was using them as clouds.

Writing Table: Coloring Sheets and Mat Man Worksheets, along with white paper

Blankets went home today. Please launder and send back in on Monday.

Please feel free to contact me if you have any questions.

Sincerely,

Mrs. Kelley