Self-Help Skills and Play....

Wow, a lot is going on in our classroom this week.  There's so much I want to talk about...I'll just do the best I can and add more later if I miss anything.

Preschool is a time for PLAY.  Not a time for worksheets, drills, or flashcards.  That is not to say that learning is not happening EVERY SINGLE MINUTE.  Examples follow:

We have started using a character-building curriculum called Baby Doll Circle Time in our classroom with awesome success.  (I can admit when I'm wrong, and I was skeptical about this, but I WAS SO WRONG!). This activity teaches empathy while we are taking care of our babies, rocking them, singing to them, dressing them, etc.  Every child loves it and participates.  I will post more pictures as I take them.

I would also like to make some comments about how proud we are of our class for beginning to take responsibility for themselves.  Their self-help skills have skyrocketed for only being in school for 3 weeks!  They are using their words with friends, calming themselves down, making decisions on what they want to do, planning their activities, serving themselves food and drinks, cleaning up after themselves and just generally taking care of themselves.  It's wonderful to see.  We are always available for support, but we are so pleased with how the class is not only taking care of their own needs, but helping other children as well.   

Our APPLE PROJECT is moving ahead quickly.  We have done so many activities with apples, I don't think I could really write about them all, but there are some I want to touch on.  We had one activity that every child participated in and did amazing things with...we made constructions of little apple pieces and toothpicks.  Great fine motor practice, problem solving and engineering.  And the discussions...!  This was a really good opportunity for the kids to use new vocabulary, ask questions, answer questions and talk about what they did.

 

 

 

We did some more apple art, stamping with the inside of the apple with apple colors.  Our art has been very mild so far, I'm hoping to get some messier projects going soon....



 

 

 

Doesn't this look like fun?  This is a sink or float activity that perfectly demonstrates scientific inquiry in preschool.  First we talked about the apples, handling them, and deciding if they felt heavy or light.  We made predictions about what we thought would happen.  We set up our experiment, tried it out, found out if we were correct or not, and revised our hypotheses if necessary.  I bet you didn't know that your children were scientists....

 

 



 

Another important skill that we want to teach our class is gathering information, and what the information actually means.  We did an apple taste test, with everyone trying a small piece of all the different color apples we had, red, yellow, green and striped.  Then each child chose their favorite, picked a matching paper apple, write their name on it and added it to our class chart. 

 

 

 

 

We do a lot of counting and talking about what this chart tells us and what it DOESN'T tell us (data analysis).  You will see a lot of charts this year from us.