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Christmas Trees- Sequencing Skills
Our amazing preschool teacher, Jennifer, is back home in Michigan this week with her daughter, Chloe, visiting family and enjoying a few much-needed weeks off work. Before she left, she prepped us a few great activities to enjoy with the class in her absence, like this tree project.
In addition to being a fun craft project, which all of our preschoolers love, it was also a lesson in seriation. Seriation is the process of putting objects together in a series, from largest to smallest in this case. Seriation builds on the child's awareness of different attributes. Practice in this area develops math skills.
First, the preschoolers concentrated on gluing the rectangular shapes in order, from shortest to longest to make a Christmas tree. They spread glue on thier Popsicle sticks using a brush. After arranging their rectangle shapes, they used more glue to add decorations.
Our Morning with the Beetles and Centipedes!
Unfortunately, Layla was sick today so Jena took an un-planned day off to care for her. Luckily, Roberta was available to come in. We switched things up a bit and decided to all go on a walk together first before classroom time so that we could be back to cook the pesto talapia & noodles for lunch. We spent about an hour walking around and checking out the Junction's Christmas decorations.
First we stopped by Petco to say hello to the baby ferrets, guinea pigs, and cats. Victoria came up with the brilliant idea to count and talk about all of the decorated trees that are up in the Junction for the holiday.
Above is a picture of today's very small Centipede class being goofy in front of a Christmas tree. They were having so much fun trying to find the next tree, and singing some Christmas songs together.
Light a Candle for Peace
As I am sure your preschoolers have shared with you at home, we've been singing festive holiday songs during circle time over the last few weeks. We are learning the words and melodies, gaining confidence in our memories and our voices. At the Kenney Home last week, we sang Christmas songs for the residents. They loved singing along with us to Rudolph, Deck the Halls, and Jingle Bells. For Hannukah last week, we learned the dreidel song and Hava Nagila. Yesterday when I picked Layla and her friends up after school, they were singing a song that I had not heard before. I thought it was lovely, however, so I taught the kids today. Here are the lyrics if you/d like to sing along at home.
Light a Candle for Peace
Light a candle for peace
Light a candle for love
Light a candle that shines all away around the world
Light a candle for me
Light a candle for you
That our wish for world peace
Will one day come true
Growing Our Family
Scott, Layla, and Jena are looking to grow our family by adopting another baby. Please view our profile and share with anyone who is looking to place a child for adoption.
Watercoloring Coffee Filters
After dance party every morning, the Beetle class heads into the kitchen for a special group project. Today, Victoria offered the toddlers yellow and blue watercolor paint, brushes, and coffee filters.
There are many areas of learning that we can and do focus on during their morning free play. As they explore watercolor, we can talk about blue and yellow and help them notice how they can create green when they blend the two colors together.
We can point out how they can make different types of marks, dots, and lines with their brushes. We can encourage them to use their senses of touch and sight. We can build their vocabulary by offering new descriptive words that they may use to talk about what they are experiencing.
The paint is bright. The paper feels soft. The brush handle is smooth.
A play-based philosophy, which is what we call ourselves at Tiny Tribe, allows kids the opportunity to play. Learning takes place naturally and as teachers we are simply here to provide support and facilitate that learning.
Our Hands and Clay
Every morning during class time the Centipedes have a few choices set
out at the two tables in the kitchen area. In the preschool room, the
desks and floor are open for choice use of puzzles, games, and small
manipulatives (like magnets or rubber band peg boards). The writing
center is also available for drawing with colored pencils, crayons, and chalk,
stamping, and stenciling. Today the sensory table was also out, filled with our snow science project from yesterday.
The clay was a highly desired activity today and some preschoolers had to wait patiently for a turn at one of the four chairs at the clay table. Lena set to work creating a ring of "candy".
Anna Lee contently rolled "snow balls" of all sizes and colors. Squeezing and rolling the clay builds the preschooler's finger muscles, which will aid in writing later.
Aliza and Jena rolled long "snakes" and used them to make letters. Q for her sister, Quinn, A for Ava, and D for her dad.
Ava made three Vs for her mom, Vanessa.
Many of the preschoolers sat and created for twenty minutes or more using only their hands, clay, and their imaginations.
Celebrating Hannukah
Today the Beetles joined the Centipedes for a large group circle time to light the menorah for Hannukah together. Typically, we light the menorah after sundown and we leave the candles to burn all night. Because many of the kids wanted a turn to help light the candles, we lit them during the day and blew them out between each turn.
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Happy Hannukah Everyone!
The Centipedes learned about Hannukah today. They talked about the miracle of the oil lasting 8 nights giving hope and joy to know that the temple was saved and the families could return home. We practiced singing one of our holidays songs "Dreidel, Dreidel, Dreidel" so they could sing it to our friends at the Kenney Home tomorrow. They then helped make the Matzoh balls for the Matzoh Ball soup they ate for lunch. During snack time, while the dough was chilling they played Dreidel using their O's instead of coins. Before nap everyone gathered to watch as Jena lite the candles for the 3rd night of Hannukah. Each child awake shared in a treat of a chocolate coin and helped unwrap today's Hanukah present. Take a peak at the smilebox below to see more of our day
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Community Center : Open Gym
Today the Beetles took a field trip to a local community center for their open gym. The kids loved going in the jumpers and going down the slides. One of their favorite thing to do was going down the toy roller coaster.
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Watercoloring Leaves
Today the preschoolers were fully engaged in the process of adding watercolor paint to coffee filter leaves.
It takes practice and concentration to squeeze paint into the bulb of
the dropper, release pressure until the dropper is above the leaf, then
squeeze again to allow the paint to flow.
In a sense, this activity is a science project that happens to produce
an end-product, the leaves, capturing their moments of exploration into a
piece of art.
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