Mrs. Nettie's Pre-K afternoon class

Hello from Ms. Nettie and Ms. Lisa :o)

     We are already 1/2 way through September and the children are learning with each passing day. We have focused on letter's A- D and enjoy concentrating on a letter a week. The children really enjoy the object hunt for the letter of the week. This activity really gets the children thinking. I have put out objects of a letter we have learned from a previous week and also the current letter we are working on. The children then need to decide what objects belong in the container marked "Aa" and what objects go in the container "Dd".  The children have created "beautiful butterflies" and redid an old classic. Butterfly, Butterfly, What do you see? I see a _______ looking at me. 

We also made "caterpillars" made out of the letter "C". Using two different color C's we had the opportunity to practice AB patterns as well. This week our focus was letter "D" and you might have noticed some ducks  popping up at home. The "beak" is made out of 2 letter D's. We named some actions words that our duck can do that start with the letter "D".  Dive, duck, dance, dip down, draw etc.... The children sure do get thinking about words  that begin with the letter "D". We also have started rhyming words and continue to review "opposites". 

Remembering September 11, 2001

Grandparent's Day was a blast!! We thank all our Grandparents for sharing that special day with us. We also had Grandparents that were not able to join us in our heart. A big "thank you" to Ms. Melissa our Music Specialist! She taught the awesome song that the class sang to their Grandparent's to the tune of "Take Me Out to the Ball Game". She also sings a "Moose on the Loose" song that is the favorite of the class and myself. Thank you Ms. Melissa, you are AWESOME :o)

I really enjoyed the "All About Me" information that came back. The class created some personalized hanprints that came out so adorable! We hope to hang them in the hallway for parents to admire.

I know I've said this before, but your children are amazing and I enjoy each day with them. We have some special and funny moments throughout the day and Ms. Lisa and I find ourselves laughing along with the children :o)

Looking forward to sharing the holidays with them!

:o) Ms. Nettie and Ms. Lisa

We are Rocking in Pre-K!

Teaching Dinosaurs!

Making Clouds with shaving cream and glue!

 Pre-K AM is hopping!  We have been learning our Zoophonics animals and have now turned over the cards to show that the  animals are shaped like the letters they make the sounds for.  I am so impressed by how much they know!  We have spotlighted Allie Alligater (Aa), Bubba Bear (Bb), and Catina Cat (Cc) so far.  This week we are focusing on Dee Dee Deer (Dd).  The animals love all things that start with their letter!  Our Show -n- Tell has been absolutely awesome with the kids bringing in things that are that animals favorites, for example last week (Cc) we had Captain America, cats and cars brought in among other items that start with Cc.  It's been really fun! We looked at clouds and planted "carrots" last week!  This week we are looking at lots of things that start with the letter Dd like dinosaurs as you can see from the picture.  They are sure interested in them.  Can't wait to finish the week!

We also celebrated Grandparents Day for our MWF students!  It was a huge success! It is so much fun to get to know these sweet kids grandparents!  We have our Grandparent's Day Celebration tomorrow for our T/TH students and we are looking forward to meeting and celebrating with their grandparents!  We have learned a great song, "Take me to our Grandparents" that we will be singing to them when they come tomorrow!  It is so great to be able to share our day with them! Thank you to all who came and celebrated with us!  We have been working hard preparing for them to join us. They have also been so excited to show their grandparents around our class!  Thanks again for having such wonderful children!  Pre-K rocks!!

Mrs. Eileen's P.M. 2's

 

 

Yay!  We are so happy to be filling up our walls with all the wonderful art projects done by our fabulous 2's!  Our tree is full of apple's, as we introduced the letter Aa two weeks ago.  These are no ordinary apples, we had the children spread glue on the apple color of their choice and sprinkle jello on them to create a nice textured look.  To quote one of our amazing 2's, "It smells like candy."  We also made number books and had the children place 1 apple sticker on the #1 page, 2 on the #2 page, etc... and finished off the week with an alligator puppet in honor of Ally Alligator our Zoophonics friend.  

You'll notice our busy bee's and butterflies flying around our trees!  The children painted the plates yellow and black and transformed them into our very own bee's.  The butterflies were made having them use markers to scribble scrabble designs on them and squirt water on them to create a beautiful watercolor butterfly.  Bubba Bear was honored making our very own bears out of paper plates painted brown. We had lots of fun watching them not only paint the plates, but their hands, arms and occasionally a cheek!  

The 2's have been quick to pick up on our routine and it has been a joy as they recognize when it's time for singing time, washing hands, snack time and closing circle time.  During our closing circle time we've been able to introduce them to signing the abc's and some new shapes as well.  It has been a joy for us to get to know each child and see their faces light up as they notice their family collages that we've decorated the walls with...We love, love, love being a part of each child's life...thank you for allowing us to be a part of their first learning experiences!

Mrs Gillian's PM 3s

Here we are well into our 3rd week at school and raring to go.  The kiddos are getting comfortable with our routine and feeling ownership over the classroom.  They are all getting to know each other a little better and having lots of fun playing with their new friends. 

This week has been another great success and i feel so lucky to have a class full of little sweethearts so keen to learn and grow everyday.

A favourite friend in our class room is "Radar" our guinea pig - the kids love to go say hello to him and feed him a carrot or two!!!  And sometimes Mrs Laree will take him out for the children to have a little pet of him :)  They can't get enough of him!!





We have been so busy over the last 3 weeks working on our "All About Me" and "My Family" units. All units have a number of centers that the children explore which include Art, Playdoh, Math, Science, Sensory, Drama and Language Arts.   The kids have had so much fun learning all about their new friends and talking about their families.   

We have also started working on our Handwriting Without Tears using the wood pieces (big line, little line, big curve, little curve ) in a number of different ways mainly through songs and games to get the children familiar with the 4 different pieces.  We also meet our Zoo-Phonics friends everyday.  Most of the children are now experts with the letters/sounds A-E excitedly shouting out Allie Alligator, Bubba Bear, Catina Cat... as soon as i hold the pages up quickly afterwards saying the sounds while doing the action - they are little sponges i love it :)

We have also been busy working on name recognition over the past couple of weeks through various fun activities such as sand art and musical chairs (with names on chairs)...



The kiddos have also had soooooo much fun with all our messy art projects such as shaving foam painting, cloud dough, slime, hand printing, gluing...The art activities are definitely a favourite with most of the kids.  Loving to get their hands dirty while having fun and laughter with their friends.

Another favourite over the past couple of weeks is our music time with Mrs Melissa, she is busy teaching us songs for a very special day coming up "Grandparents Day" :)  All the kids love love love this time especially at the end when the big parachute comes out!!!  Thank you Mrs Melissa for visiting our classroom every Monday and Thursday!

 I can feel this year is going to be AMAZING and am looking forward to teaching these precious kiddos every afternoon, they are all so excited to be at school and I'm excited to have them in my class :)

Ms. Nettie's Pre-K afternoon class!

Here we are finishing our 2nd week of preschool and I am so privileged to have such an AMAZING class filled with little minds ready to bloom. 

Our  mornings start out reciting the Pledge of Allegiance. We review that we live in the United States of America and the colors that represent our country are red, white and blue.  I have a classroom of excited smiling faces volunteering to hold the flag with great pride each morning. 

We have all enjoyed getting acquainted over the past 2 weeks and I love hearing about your child's weekend every Monday and Tuesday morning. This gives your child time to adjust to speaking in front of a group and really builds a great rapport between all of us. I hear some great stories and I hope to send some home too :o) Found out that Ms. Lisa, our aide, has fed a beluga whale!

Knowing the classroom expectations is very important to achieve a successful year. We have been going over classroom rules and expectations and a wonderful book that has aided us in understanding this is, "Have you Filled a Bucket Today". This book talks about filling an imaginary bucket with acts of kindness throughout your day. We have created our own little bucket and I will be passing out little hearts called "goodness" when I witness children practicing acts of kindness with each other. I anticipate needing a good stash of  "hearts" for this class as there are so many wonderful, caring children. 

One of my favorite times of the day is "Circle Time". During this time we go over the month, day and year. We also recite the days of the week and months of the year through singing. The children enjoy being actively involved in song while learning "Calendar". We also started our "Guessing Jar" where the children have to guess how many items are in the jar. The children soon discover that there are more of a smaller object and less of a bigger object. We create a "mini story" together and review letter sounds and letter identification. The children enjoy generating sentences for the mini story and love going on a hunt for a letter that needs to be identified. 

Activities during our week include Art, Playdoh, Math, Science, Sensory, Drama and Language Arts. We have enjoyed exploring these areas during centers and I have enjoyed working with your child one on one. I love providing manipulatives that can be explored and then used as a tool for learning. This week we used our colorful gems for sorting and then made an AB pattern with 2 chosen colors. The excitement in their face when they were able to share their pattern was priceless. They also used the gems to make the letter "O" and then search the classroom for objects that began with the letter "O". 
Since we are in the "Ocean" room we needed to learn about my favorite place to relax, the ocean. The children have learned about tide pools, kelp forests, and plants and animals that live in the ocean.  

We end our day with the infamous "Mystery Box". This box will rotate throughout the year. There are 2 boxes going around with our Monday/Wednesday/Friday class and our Tuesday/Thursday class. If you haven't received the "Mystery Box" it will soon make an appearance at your home. All you need to do is pick a "nonliving" item from home to put in the box and write 3 clues to describe what's in the box. It's a fun way for your child to become confident in front of a group. I have to say, the mystery box is the most anticipated part of the day :o) Yes, I did get a live creature in my years of teaching ;o) Thankfully you-tube wasn't around that long ago to see my expression of what was in the box. 

I feel blessed to be apart of this FABULOUS group of students and look forward to building memories filled with Happiness of their preschool experience!

Ms. Dessie's PreK PM  classes are awesome!  We have had a great first few days getting to know each other and learning the school routine.  We took a tour of our Jungle room by going on the Safari jeep and looked at all the animals and the different areas in our room; like the Art, Math, Science, Language Art , Play dough, and Dramatic play area.

We have read some very good books.  One book we read was "Have You Filled a Bucket Today."  We have based our Class Behavior Management on the book.  Ask your child how they can fill their bucket and others' buckets with good things.  If your chid says that their bucket is green that is wonderful behavior.  If their bucket is yellow that means that they need to think and make better choices about filling buckets with good things.  Red means...well...stop a behavior.  I do not think we will have many red colors this year  because we have such great kids that want to do good things.

We love meeting our new "Zoophonic" friends.  We have reviewed A-H this week.  Ask your child what sound and action does Allie Alligator make?  or Bubba Bear?  or a favorite Honey Horse?  We have also introduced our wood pieces for the "Handwriting without Tears" program.  Big line, little line, big curve and little curve will help us learn to write our letters.  Our "Tap, tap, tap" song with our wood pieces is becoming a favorite of everyone.  It will be a classic I feel.  I can not stop singing it in my head!

We loved music with Ms. Melissa and singing about a Moose drinking juice (hilarious song) and doing a freeze dance with our ribbons.  Thank you  Ms. Melissa for the fun!

Look for a blog entry about our PreK Pm classes in Ms.  Dessie room every month.

The First Day of Pre-K AM - Wow!

Wow!  The Pre-K AM classes are rockin'!  Our first day of school has just blown by and we couldn't be happier with them!  We have some great memories from the first day of school, like our classroom safari and giraffe limbo games.  We were able to have music class with Ms. Melissa on Monday and just adored her.  She will be visiting us again on Thursday!  We can't wait!  This week we are getting used to the classroom and how it all works.  We worked at the centers: Art, Playdoh, Math, Science, Sensory, Play and Language Arts and just loved every minute of it.  Tomorrow we will be starting our Handwriting without Tears program by getting used to our wood pieces, calling them by their names:  Big Line, Little Line, Big Curve and Little Curve.  They will be a huge part of our daily schedule!  Make sure to ask your preschooler about them.  This program helps them get comfortable with writing/drawing because it always stays at the  developmentally correct level for these 4 yr. olds.  I just love it!  You will be seeing our work coming home in the next couple of weeks from it. 
This week we are looking at all about school and will be reading, "Have you Filled a Bucket Today?" Our classroom behavior program will be focused around it this year.  We will learn about how to "fill" someone's bucket while filling their own at the same time.  And also how not to "dip" into someone's bucket.  They will all be making their own bucket to take home, so be sure to ask about how it works.
So far, we are looking at such an Awesome year! The students are getting along so well and are all excited to be at school!  I'm up to the challenge to keep it like that all year long!  Yay!