Teach Preschool Postcard Exchange 2013

The end of September is here and a month of school has already passed us by!  This summer, I took a leap of faith and joined a postcard exchange online which was organized by my favourite website for all things Kindergarten, www.teachpreschool.org.  

 

We exchanged addresses with other Preschool and Kindergarten classes in the U.S. and internationally.  Our group consists of 11 U.S. States and one school in New Zealand!  So far, we have received 2 postcards. Out of this, came a Canadian connection so I've been invited to exchange with 5 other Canadian schools stretching from Alberta to Nova Scotia!!   I put up a world map and labeled where they came from with the children. 

I used star stickers with numbers on them to show where each one was from.

 

I created personalized post-cards to send off to our friends from afar.

 

We took a walk to our neighbourhood mailbox to mail some of our postcards out.

We can't wait to get more postcards from our friends around the world.  We also look forward to mapping where they came from together.  Stay tuned...

Nature Comes Alive!

We were trying to come up with a way to get the kids writing at the Nature Table so I put some clip boards there along with some "stuff" from nature. We also added markers for fun writing because all kids love to write with markers, right?

After some kids visited there, I talked to the children about writing and how it takes many forms.  I praised the students for writing and that sparked some interest in the writing materials.

 

Then, a miracle happened!  The children found a spider in the classroom so instead of stepping on it (like I would have before inquiry learning), I scooped it up and put it in a container.  Later that day, someone found an earwig.  So we added that too.  This led to questions of whether or not the spider would eat the earwig or vice versa...

 

The children got out their magnifiers and checked them out.  Very quickly, the spider spun a web!!! I asked the kids to write down what they were thinking and they got to work.

When they got to go to the computer, this group of boys were attempting to spell s-p-i-d-e-r so they could search it in Google!  We found a YouTube video on National Geographic about spiders.  The excitement of it all!!!  

By the way, did I mention that this was Ss week?  Hmmm, spider...I believe that starts with Ss!!! Stay tuned...

 

Friday:

 

Our search for insects continued outside all week long.  Today, the students found a big spider so we brought it in and put it in a jar with some fall leaves.

The children got to work drawing pictures and recording about spiders and I found some spider facts to read to them.

Welcome Autumn!

September 22nd marked the first day of Autumn.  To celebrate and learn about Fall, Ms. Switzer and I added some fun activities for the children to explore.  We are reading Autumn books to the children as well.

Some students used corks to stamp paint onto yellow apples.  This activity helps to strengthen their hand-eye co-ordination as well as fine motor skills (pre-writing skills). It also helps the children practice their color recognition.

We also made Apple Pie Paint (from the Teach Preschool website). We put some apple pie filling and food colouring in a blender and added some tempera paint for consistency.  You can use cornstarch instead of tempera paint so it's edible!  The students stamped the paint using apples.

Other students explored our Fall sensory bin to sort and graph leaf colours that they pulled out.  This helps them to learn counting principles such as one to one correspondence (each object gets one count) as well as Data Management.  It also reinforces their colour identification.

We also put cinnamon scented playdough, cinnamon sticks, and other Fall items for the children to try;  it smells so yummy!  It also helps the children to strengthen their fine motor skills, which build the foundation for printing later on.

We added an acorn number matching activity for the children to practice learning about quantity (how much) and subitizing (recognizing small quantities without having to count every time, like the patterns on number cubes).

Apples!!!

Today, Ms. Switzer and I talked to the students about different types of apples.  They got to taste red Delicious, Granny Smith, and Golden Delicious apples.  We took a survey of which they liked best and Red Delicious won!! A great end to the week.

 

Constructing a Road

Today, the students were playing in the block centre.  Someone came up with the idea of building a road.  Other students thought that was a good idea so they got to work.

They worked together to place all of the pieces side by side (this took team work).  The road went all around the building area and the sand table.  When it was complete, the children took turns walking across it and balancing all the way around (gross-motor skills).

They really had to problem solve how to place the pieces so that they went in a straight line.  They also worked hard to figure out how to get them to go around the space (fun learning about spatial awareness).

Friday:

Today, the children built a village!

It started small...

And grew...

Letter Ss Investigations

Last week, we began our investigation into the letter Ss.  We programmed some "must-do" activities for the students to explore and we added some free explorations. We sang songs for the letter Ss and we explored some materials that began with the letter Ss (like digging Ss magnets out of the sand and cutting with scissors).

The children hunted for Ss magnets in the sandbox.

They practised their scissor skills at the cutting centre.

They explored sparkles and suns at the art centre.

They played with natural materials and put the letter Ss in our cinnamon scented playdough.
 

They experimented with spaghetti painting.

We even took our learning outdoors and played in the sand! 

We are learning a lot in Kindergarten.  The children were practising their writing in the park with sidewalk chalk!!! 

I Can Week

Last week, I introduced "I Can" week.  We put some cans and magnets in the discovery centre for the kids to explore.  We glued some googly eyes on magnets and placed them close by. I read the book, The Tin Can Man by Marcia Leonard and let it be.  The students began experimenting with the cans and magnets and slowly but surely, robot like creations came about!