Welcome to the 2014-2015 School Year

1st Day of Preschool

We are ready for a new year of exciting learning experiences and preparing for kindergarten. We kicked off our first week learning about classroom rules and expectations.  We read a story about Pete the Cat who was rocking in his school shoes.  We took pictures of our own school shoes and put together a classroom book of the class "rocking in their school shoes."  We learned about bus safety rules and are ready to ride the school bus next week!

Learning About Weather and Plants

In the last month at the preschool, we have been learning about weather, worms and gardens.

After investigating and observing worms all week, we took a trip to the park to release the worms

Will the wind blow it?  We blew air through straws to see if air would blow different objects.  Afterwards, we recorded our answers on a chart.

Exploring how tornadoes start

Making a rainstorm with water, shaving cream and blue food coloring

A "sunny" snack

What will grow from these seeds?

We experimented with beans in a bag and planted our own beans to watch grow

Planting seeds and learning about a plant's life cycle

We can eat a whole plant!

Voting on our favorite flower.  The class favorites are roses and tulips!

Reading and Breakfast With Dad

We want to thank all of the dads, grandpas, (and moms!) who joined us for reading and breakfast with Dad at the preschool. 

 

Preschool Valentines Crafts and Snacks with Mom

Thank you to all the moms (and dads!) who came to the preschool last week to make valentine crafts with the class and have snack.

Making a valentine tree handprint

Making butterflies

Making valentine bears

Making valentine bumble bees

Winter Wonderland

This month we have been learning about winter, snow, and arctic animals

MATH ACTIVITIES

Working on counting, quantifying and recognizing numerals by placing the correct number of snowflakes on the playdough mats

We've been working on measuring.  We made a class book measuring how many mittens long we are and then using rulers and tape measures to see how many inches we are.

We also discovered that an emperor penguin is 4 feet tall.  We measured to see if we were taller than an emperor penguin and then how many baby penguin chicks we were.

 

Counting the parts of a snowman and enjoying a yummy snowman snack made of fruit and pretzels

 

LITERACY ACTIVITIES

Writing "yes" or "no" predictions to the questions about penguins

We were surprised to learn that penguins use their wings for swimming!

 

We made snowmen and wrote our names

Being authors and illustrators!  The class wrote and illustrated a snowman story together.

SCIENCE ACTIVITIES

Discovering how arctic animals survive in icy cold temperatures

Experimenting with ice and salt at the science center

ART ACTIVITIES

Penguin paintings

A fun penguin craft and writing facts we learned about penguins!

Happy Thanksgiving!

Modeling our turkey crowns

What are we thankful for?

We are thankful for our new computers in the preschool!  Thank you Brock and Uati

We are thankful for wonderful parent volunteers who spend time in the classroom!  Thanks Christy for bringing in Turkey BINGO for us to play!

We are thankful for friends!

All Aboard--Transportation!

Learning how to work together to build the number train puzzle!  We counted to 20!

During letter "T" week we learned about the word "transportation."  We brainstormed ways we could get from one place to another. 

We sorted out transportation counters by land, air, and water and made a graph to see which one had more.

The race is on! We played a car racing game by rolling a dice and writing the letter on the dice to see which letter would win!

Trying to find Chadron on the map

We introduced different maps and talked about map symbols and what they mean.  Then we drew our own maps!