Friday, February 24, 2017

Ms. Nicole's Ranch Room 2017 Round up!




We’re off to a great start in 2017 in the Ranch!  We laugh, we play, we create and of course we make the best of friends.  This week we brought out the “Doctors and Nurses” dramatic play bin and set up our own little urgent care!  The students took turns being both doctor and patient to each other.  (And yes, they pretended to cry with each and every shot!)  They showed such care and compassion for each other-what a joy to see! 





















Landon and Anya are writing letters to their friends and mailing them during “free play” in the morning.  Some of our greatest lessons come our of this creative playtime each morning.  I love to see the fun ideas they come up with-like mailing letters to Santa, or creating their own grocery lists.  The are starting to create words by sounding them out and spelling them on their paper.  It is a super impressive kindergarten skill that I love to see!





Another important aspect of “free play” is the carpet area where we play with our train tracks, cars, people and animals.  Our students love to build intricate train tracks and play with the animals.  The shark is always one of our favorites! It typically leads to the kiddos squirming around on the rug like sharks and minnows!






On the day before winter break we enjoyed a relaxed day watching the Polar Express and having hot chocolate.  The students each brought a book to share for our book exchange and we all talked about the fun things we hoped to do over the break. 







I am so impressed with the academic progress of our students this year.  We have an incredible amount of students that are already reading and spelling words.  Many of them are reading our small early reading books too!  Wednesdays are the kids’ favorite day of the week because we play “Wacky Word Wednesday”.  We toss a ball around that has a bunch of consonants written on it.  They pick a consonant, then someone picks a vowel, and then they toss the ball to a friend to get another consonant.  Once we have all 3 letters we sound them out as a class, segmenting each sound, and then blending them all together.  Then we decide if we made a real word or a wacky word…it’s usually wacky!  Just yesterday we tried to make as many real words as we could, and we did!  We made 8 real words and only 4 wacky words.  Lucky for them, either way, they are practicing the foundational skills of reading.  EVERY student is participating actively and reading the CVC words!




 






Snack is our social time and we love to share all about our family and favorite things.  During snack we also practice our table manners, taking turns and being respectful.  The are quite the little citizens!  Overall, class time flies by because we are always having so much fun together.  


Wednesday, February 22, 2017

PM Pre K Fun: Kangaroos & I Love You's

Come take a peek at the fun things going on in the Ocean Room...


Our class had some special visitors to help us learn the Letter K:


Izzy & Bindi, two kangaroo rats from Australia!

We toured Fry's Marketplace on our field trip and learned about healthy eating.




Check us out!!

Baby, it's cold in the giant freezer!
Meeting Larry the Lobster





Playdough is still popular in our room as we build strong fingers and imaginations!



We've learned all of our lower-case ABC's and are now working on upper-case letters and alphabetical order.
  



We love writing on our Fundations boards!

Ms. Marina has taught us about major and minor scales during music.


R is for rainbow...we used special prism glasses to see all the colors in our room.


Hunting for rainbows!


We've started a new math activity: the Estimation Jar. Thanks to all who have filled it. It's so fun to count, sort and pattern with new items each week!




Thank you, helpers! We all have to pitch in to keep our classroom ship-shape.



X marks the spot...practicing handwriting with our smartboard.


Puzzles with new friends

Thank you to our visiting dental hygienists who cleaned and checked our teeth!

 

Valentine's Day Fun

Fruit Kabobs

 


Counting Kisses


Lots of love!














Tuesday, February 21, 2017

Hello from the Space Room, Ms. Dessie and Ms. Debbie

We've been busy in the Space room!  Here are some highlights from the past several months.
  Field trips, celebrations, special visitors, and lots of learning and fun going on in the Space room!

Using different means to make letters: playdoh, candy corn


                                                      
                              
They love using the Smartboard to practice letters, shapes and numbers.
 
 Fall in the Space room was a lot of fun and hands on experiences.
  Exploring pumpkins, making leaves with corn syrup, painting with marbles, 
pumpkin patterns, and playing with leaves.  We love fall in the Space room! 





Raking leaves is fun to do, fun to do, fun to do!  Raking leaves is fun to do, to do, to do, to do!


 
                             
Writing has become an everyday assignment.  
All of the students have made wonderful progress on their letters.  
We are very proud of them! 
                               




Exploring our world with goggles, magnifying glasses, and experiments.

                                                

Making elephant toothpaste

Math time:  
Roll-A-Reindeer, learning about money, practicing shapes,
 building shapes with q-tips, counting bugs in a jar. 






Parties and celebrations!
Thanksgiving, Christmas, Hanukkah


We had a special visitor talk to us about how Hanukkah is celebrated and
 he taught the students a few songs and how to play with a dreidel. 
 It was a great learning experience! 
                                               
                                                 We also ate latkes and applesauce!  Yum!   
                                        
 

Making gingerbread houses. 

I spy......on a gingerbread house! 


Field trips:  Schnepf Farms and the Grocery store
Picking vegetables

Petting goats
                                    

  Fry' grocery store 



Art projects: painting with bubble wrap, water color salt art, 
 

                                                                             Bear masks

 Playtime


                                      


We were so lucky to witness the transformation of a  
caterpillar into a beautiful butterfly right before our eyes! 




         
  We had a special visitor: a kangaroo rat!  
Two of them, mom and daughter.  
Mom's name is Izzy and the daughter's name is Bindy.  
They were amazing to watch and to learn about!    




 Well, that's all for now.  We hope you enjoyed looking at what we do in the Space room. 
 We have a lot of fun and we learn tons of new things every day!  
Love, Ms. Dessie and Ms. Debbie