Preschool News
by Lyne Rerucha
December 22, 2008
Math concepts such as counting, patterns, and sequencing abounded in our classroom early in December. We used the anticipation of Christmas day to our advantage at calendar time, as the children tried to figure out how many days until December 25th. To help us better understand the passage of the days we created a pattern chain. Each picture represented a day, every day we removed a picture from our pattern and counted the days remaining until Christmas. To help Santa we have been writing him a note each day. This note contained the number of days before he visits our house. The challenge posed each day to the children was, “Who can write the number (?) to help Santa?” Each passing day the excitement mounts.
I will share some of our circle time activities the children participated in which strengthened our math skills. “Throw the Number Cube” this game is played by throwing a gigantic dice into the air when it lands the children have to identify the numeral and then clap or jump that number of times. “Movement Patterns” each week we create a three part movement pattern and the challenge is to remember it from day to day and to become quicker and more synchronized as the week progresses. “Estimation Station” during this activity the children obviously had to estimate how many objects were inside the estimation jar. This is a fun and easy game you can play with your child at home.
10,9,8,7,6,5,4,3,2,1,0! Blastoff! This was the preschool battle cry when we explored the night sky in mid December. The children created their own space ships from paper rolls, tin foil, and tinsel and then pretended to be space explorers while listening to a story set to music; this proved to be one of our favorite activities along with our exploration of stars. The children used flashlights to simulate stars. We turned out the lights and danced our stars upon the ceiling discussing some interesting facts about stars. During this unit of exploration the children also viewed a short interactive song video called, Planets. This video introduced us to some new science vocabulary such as the planets names, galaxy, atmosphere, space, and more. After viewing the video, the children were introduced to the globe and we discussed how it was a small model of our planet earth. The children enjoyed watching the globe spin on the floor to illustrate how the earth spins in real life. Our world is so amazing to learn about!
As you know, Chef Combo our favorite puppet who teaches us everything we need to know about letters and their sounds comes to visit every week. He has now introduced us to letters Aa-Ll. Each week he brings us a story and a game helping us learn our letters and their sounds. During our night sky unit Chef Combo brought in the “Big Dipper”. The children ladled out ping pong balls which had various letters written on then and then the children practiced naming the letter and the sound of that letter. When learning about the letter Ll we read the book The Lamb Who Loved to Laugh and we played the game Limbo going lower and lower each time we had a turn.
Preschool News
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