Sparking Minds, Enriching Souls, Inspiring Futures
While reading the book Whose Vehicle is This? by Sharon Katz Cooper, students guessed the names of the people who operate vehicles as part of their jobs, such as train engineers, fishermen, pilots, bus drivers, astronauts, and more.
At the Writing Center, children drew pictures of community helpers at work and were encouraged to describe how the vehicle helps each community helper do their job.
Next week we will explore the ways people stay safe as they operate or ride in vehicles.
This week we continued our unit on Transportation, by reading the book What Do Wheels Do All Day? by April Jones Prince.
We created a chart by categorizing types of transportation – land, water and air during whole group time. We thought carefully about how different vehicles could move.
In the Science Center we continued our exploration of ramps by finding out which objects could roll, and by covering the ramps with different types of materials to determine what would make a good ramp and why.
In the Writing Center we introduced maps and the children had an opportunity to create their own types of maps – road, rail, treasure and even our home!
Next week we will continue to explore our unit of transportation by looking into what types of community helpers drive certain types of transportation.
Pre-K began a new unit all about transportation! We learned that transportation means the way we travel from one place to another and that there are many different kinds of vehicles that help people, animals, and things travel! We brainstormed different kinds of vehicles that we want to learn more about and explore.
After reading The Bus for Us children brainstormed the different transportation they use to get to school each morning. We answered the question “How do you get to Pre-K ?” through drawing, dictation, and writing. We then used our responses to create a graph and count the results.
This week we continued our unit on Where We Live by reading Welcome Home, Bear by Il Sung Na and
A House for Hermit Crab by Eric Carle. We discussed the many different homes where animals live such
as nests, burrows, trees, hives and barns.
We also began to explore where animals live in winter, and how some animals hibernate and some migrate.
When we return from the holiday break, we will begin our new unit on Transportation.
This week we continued our unit on Where We Live by looking at the types of homes in our neighborhood and city. We learned that a neighborhood is the space around our homes or school and that cities are made up of many people and have lots of buildings and homes close together.
At the Math Center, we traced various shapes and glued art materials to create a “shape city” mural inspired by the read aloud City Shapes by Dianna Murray.
At the Writing Center the children had an opportunity to create their own blueprints by using chalk, paper, and rulers to create a plan of a structure. They could then visit the Block Center and build that structure according to their blueprint.
Next week we will explore the different homes that animals build.
This week we started our new unit on Where We Live. We read the book The Big Orange Splot by Daniel Manus Pinkwater. The children discussed their own dream homes inspired by the read aloud. They were then invited to create their dream homes.
This week we read the book Press Here by Hervé Tullet. The children enjoyed an interactive experience with the book by using their sense of touch to make pages change as we read along.
We also created texture collages in the Science Center, using our new vocabulary and finding objects that were soft, hard, rough, smooth, bumpy and spiky.
At the Art Center we used textured materials to create our November self -portraits!
Next week we will be discussing Thanksgiving!
This past week we continued our unit on the five senses by focusing on our senses of smell and taste. We read Stone Soup retold by Heather Forrest and discussed what ingredients we would add to the soup.
The children had an opportunity to smell and comment on what they smelled in different scent containers in the Science Center. We continued this discussion at circle by talking about what things have good smells versus bad smells.
The children discussed how certain foods at our meal times tasted (crunchy, sticky, juicy, salty, sweet, sour). They explained why they liked or disliked something that they ate.
Next week we continue with the sense of touch.
This week we continued our theme on Our Five Senses by focusing on our hearing. We read Tap Tap Boom Boom by Elizabeth Bluemle and enjoyed acting out rain storm sounds from the story with our bodies and with instruments.
We also went on a listening walk around the school to identify sounds using our sense of hearing. We used new vocabulary such as loud, quiet, soft, silent and also learned about sign language.
Next week we will be focusing on our senses of smell and taste, both in school as well as through at home activities.
This week we began our new unit all about using our five senses to explore Fall!
We started by focusing on our sense of sight and discussed all of the things we can see with our eyes. We played the game “I Spy…” searching for things we could see with our eyes within our classroom.
We felt excited to go on our first nature walk and used our sense of sight to learn about the area around our school. We observed a variety objects, colors and shapes on our walk. At the Science Center we recorded our observations using a combination of drawing and dictation.
Next week we will be exploring our sense of hearing.