Pre-K: Winding Down and Moving Up
This week was filled with more review of concepts we’ve practiced throughout the year but in ways that we might not have tried before. Your children were game to try it all! We also started to focus more on the fact that our school year is winding down, mostly by learning a graduation song and counting the number of school days we have left...Martine and I seem to be much more emotional about this than your children are, which is as it should be!
Language and Literacy
We introduced a slightly addictive game called Kaboom this week. We tried it with both letter sounds and with simple CVC words. Pre-K loved it and inspired me and Martine to think about lots of different ways we could play it next year. Here is a link, in case you’d like to try it at home (note that we just used all the same color popsicle sticks and it was absolutely fine): https://www.themanylittlejoys.com/alphabet-kaboom-a-simply-brilliant-preschool-game/ Children also wrote a book about a frog who goes on lots of adventures - check out the story in our classroom!
Math and Science
We reviewed a lot of math concepts this week through using legos, dominos and bingo. Children are really enjoying creating and playing games with each other and don’t realize that they are learning and practicing counting on, addition and comparative thinking as they play. We also brought out our 10-frames again. I called out a number, they filled their 10-frame up appropriately and then wrote the cardinal number in the correct box. We were so impressed by how far children have come in linking multiple ways of representing numbers!
Martine designed a fabulous STEM activity for Science Friday. She gave each child a paper plate, pieces of straws, strips of paper and one pompom each. With these materials, they created their own mazes, tying in the concepts of gravity, potential/kinetic energy and hand/eye coordination that they had already discussed earlier in the year! We will have this activity out next week as well so that the children who missed it on Friday can try it on Tuesday.
Art and Music and Movement
This week, children started to decorate the set for our play, ground spices to create scented playdough, and created graduation self-portraits that are pretty fabulous and on display in our classroom. We also had our last classroom session with Steve and will close out our time with him as a school next Wednesday. We were finally able to have Creative Movement outside this week, and Pre-K loved that extra time running around, trying hockey on the Bowen Hill.
We plan for next week to include lots of time outside and activities in the classroom that remind our class of how strong, smart, funny and kind they are! Now would also be a good time to start clearing out your child’s cubby and work drawer so that it’s not all left until the end of the day on Friday. A change of clothes left in their cubby and their costume card for our play left in their work drawer is sadly all they really need for the remainder of our time together.
We hope that all who were under the weather this week recover over the long weekend, and we will see you on Tuesday!
Emily and Martine
Books this week included:
We Are All Alike...We Are All Different
Happy Dreamer
What If...Then We - This was a particularly fun book to read; it presented lots of potential problems posed as "What Ifs," and then offered fun solutions. You will see a photo in this week's photos of the problems Pre-K posed and the solutions they found!
#counting #CVCsightwords #Kaboom #10frames #STEM #ScienceFriday #selfportraits