Fire Safety can be Fun

Last week Steve and I took a mini vacation to Florida. We pulled the girls from school and met my brother in Orlando to spend a few days at Universal. Not to worry, while I was off having fun with family our class had a special treat. Mrs. Faulk's daughter joined our class for the day. The children looked like they had a great time creating their fire truck snack.

Emily and Aileen show their fire trucks

Sorting and counting our ingredients

We had no idea cooking could be this fun

Michaela - always ready with a smile

Drew with his finished product

Building a ladder with pretzels

Almost ready to take a bite

Eli with such attention to detail

Where oh where did September go?

I can not believe we are already in October. Fall is my favorite season of the year and we have many exciting projects in store. Last week we made our own applesauce in the crockpot. We also made apple pizzas. We have been enjoying honey wheat toast and apple butter during snack time too.

 We even made 'caramel apples'.

After we read the book Ten Apples Up On Top we tried to balance apples on our heads. 

Turns out this is REALLY HARD !

We had a few special events last week also. We celebrated DisAbility Awareness Week. The children heard a story "Everybody Plays". We watched a puppet show and had a speaker from First Steps talk with the children about adaptive play therapy. It was a week full of fun events.

Mr. Moore is teaching the children to follow a beat, with DRUMS. Music last week so so much fun.

And of course our favorite Daily 5, Read to Self

              

      

Fruit Math

Last week we combined a birthday, math and snack for a fun event. The children used fruit to make patterns, counting on, and practicing ordinal numbers.

                  

 

We have introduced the sounds of most consonants and the vowel sounds for /a/ and /o/. The children are quickly using their new skills to sound out words. Last week we also learned the parts of a sentence. We noticed capital letters and end marks. We used predictable sentences to read new words. The children started with pictures of 'school' items. We worked on identifying beginning sounds, and then the children were able to find the correct word. Click the link to listen as the 'read' aloud their sentences!

http://vimeo.com/106746740

A Preschool Picnic

Each week we try to center our crafts around a theme. This week we talked about picnics. In math we have been working on counting numbers up to 12. We are identifying numbers, writing numbers (that number 8 was a tough one) rolling dice and counting out the right amount, and naming which number comes next.

Of course we have to do all these things preschool style. The children used tweezers to put ants on a picnic blanket for one of our math activities this week. 

The fine motor practice with the tweezers also helps improve their pencil grip and letter formation. I love it when one activity covers so many skills and looks like play. Perfect for Preschool. 

We are also working on quickly recognizing the amount without counting all the dots on the die. Numbers are presented in a 'standard configuration' on dice. The children are practicing placing dots in the correct formation when given a number.

Try playing at home. Roll a die, ask your child what number comes next. The faster they are able to name the number without counting from 1, the stronger their cardinality of the number. 

In Daily 5 we introduced 'Write the Room'. 

Each child has a clipboard hanging at the front of the room. We use our clip boards when we are working together on the rug. What the kiddos really love is walking around the room with their clip boards. They feel so 'official'. 

Each week we place pictures and words (or letters) relating to the theme of the week. The children have identical pictures on their papers. They walk around the room on a scavenger hunt to find the pictures. When they find the picture, they write the word on their recording sheet. At the beginning of the year this activity is used for letter recognition and formation practice. As the year progresses it becomes a vocabulary building as well as a reading activity.

And of course we ALWAYS have time to play.

And of course our end of the day procedure... dancing. Click the link to take you to a vimeo of our class dancing to the Gummy Bear song.

We <3 to Dance

HOPE September's Virtue of the Month

Each month the students of St. Monica will focus on a specific Virtue. Our Teamwork Tuesday activities (7th Graders will be our buddies this year) will try to revolve around the virtue when possible.

Yesterday we introduced our virtue and attempted to have a deeply theological discussion about what HOPE really means. 

We talked about hoping someone feels better. 

Which led us to talk about hoping we get things for Christmas. 

In an attempt to guide our conversation back to 'Religion' I suggested that the birth of Christ is pretty important at Christmas too. 

Which led to 'those bad guys who killed Jesus'.

Insert another attempt by me to guide the conversation back to HOPE.

"Yes Jesus did die on the cross for us but what is the really great part about Easter?"

Which led to Easter baskets.

Again last ditch effort "Yes but we also get to go to heaven one day". 

Which led to the best part of the lesson on HOPE: "Mrs. Exline, I do not want to go to heaven..." long pause " I am afraid of heights."

And that ladies and gentlemen is how to teach Religion in Preschool.

I HOPE you enjoyed a peek into our day.

Have I mentioned how wonderful your children are.

And just for fun, hopefully our little vimeo link takes you to a clip of our darlings practicing their phonics sounds. 

Daily 5 Vimeo

A Daily 5 Miracle

As part of our literacy block each morning, we use a program called Daily 5. Another SMS teacher and I read a book several years ago by 'The Sisters' Gail Boushey and Joan Moser and decided to dive head first into a new way of thinking about literacy. Mind you none of the practices are particularly new to education, they are simply streamlined and presented to the children in a much more appropriate way.




Fast forward three years and now all our classes from Preschool to 4th Grade use Daily 5 for our literacy instruction. The premise of the program is to use mini lessons whole group and to allow for individualization during small group skill practice. Daily 5 also incorporates a high amount of self selected, self directed learning time. This is rarely an easy task in Preschool. Just two years ago we did not even begin Daily 5 with our kiddos until January when we felt they had established routines well. Last year Janna and I were confident the kiddos were even more mature and could handle introducing Daily 5 in October.

 I must say your children are AMAZING. We decided this was the year we would hit the ground running. We began Daily 5 on our first full day of school and the children are doing a phenomenal job.

We are explicitly teaching skills in small groups and then moving those same tasks to our 'Daily 5 tubs' for the children to use independently. Daily 5 allows us time to watch the children guide their education. The children are working together, mimicking patterns of instruction they hear us use, reteaching a friend when help may be needed and even showing themselves they can do things independently.

We have never seen a group of children so quickly embrace the 'how and why' of school. Our first few days of school have been so amazing. The children are cooperative, productive, and most of all kind.

                    We are just so excited about all the wonderful things we will do this year!