Who's in the Art Room?

WE are!!

This year, the full-day children in prekindergarten will 

visit the art room each week. 

This week we met Mrs. Ciganek (sounds like mechanic) 

and learned the rules of the art room.

The art room is a bit different than our classroom.

The tables are shiny and the chairs are actually stools.

Mrs. C. read us a great story called Little Blue, Little Yellow.

Then, we printed yellow dots

 

and blue dots using a cork and suddenly... green dots emerged!!

Ask us HOW that happened.

Thank you, Mrs. Ciganek.

Question-of-the-Day

Each day the children have the opportunity to answer a question-of-the day. Question-of-the-day is a graphing activity and is used to teach young children how to collect and organize data in a graphic representation as well as teach them how to analyze the data.

From a mathematical perspective, graphing and answering questions can help children understand and use mathematical language such as more than, less than, equal, and the same.

Reading the questions each day supports the development of emergent literacy skills. When children engage in this type of activity they are learning to understand that print has meaning, track the print in the sentence, and use picture cues to help them understand the text. 
Can you predict which color apple will be the favorite in our class? 

Which apple do YOU like best? 
 Survey says...

Pre-K Meets Mat Man

This week the children in prekindergarten 

were introduced to... 

He is part of our Handwriting Without Tears program and 
we learn to put him together utilizing the wood 
pieces from the program. 

Mat Man teaches the children about body awareness and with the help of a special song also helps the children learn to draw a 

person containing all the correct body parts.
Mat has one head, 

two eyes,

 one nose,

one mouth,

 two ears,

one body,

two arms,

two hands, 

 two legs,

and two feet.

Of course we had to add some crazy hair to make 

Mat Man look fancy too!!

Ta-Daaaaaaa!

We love Mat Man!!

Big Vocabulary Learning Through Play

The children are learning many new vocabulary words 

by playing with the wood pieces from our 

Handwriting Without Tears program.

Each capital letter and number can be made 
using these 4 types of lines.
The children are beginning to use these big words as they 
refer to the different positions of the lines;
vertical, horizontal, diagonal, top, middle, bottom.

They have fun trying to identify which wood piece they 
are holding while their eyes are closed.


Another favorite activity is the Mystery Bag. 

All 4 wood pieces are hiding in the bag and the children have to reach in guess which one they are holding.

This past week we learned a new song called Tap, Tap, Tap.
The children needed to listen very carefully
in order to follow the directions.

In this picture the kiddos have their wood pieces in 'sleeping'  position waiting for the song to begin. 

(Can you say "CUTE?")

Next, comes 'ready' position.

You can reinforce these concepts at home by using our new vocabulary words in your everyday activities.

What's in Your Toolbox?

The children in pre-k are working on 

their third problem solving strategy.

Last week we learned about the powerful WALK AWAY tool. 

It was the perfect strategy to use during our week 

learning about all the wonderful body parts God has 

blessed us with and all the awesome things they can do.

This week, we are learning to ASK a friend if we need or want something and are finding that friends don't get quite as upset when we take the time to use our words.

Enjoy practicing these new strategies at 

home with your little people.

The World is a Rainbow

The pre-k children have been engaged in a color exploration unit for the past two weeks. We have read many color stories and poems, and have been having so much fun exploring a 
variety of art materials as we learn more about 
the world of color and color mixing.
The full-day students have participated in a 
few extension activities and experiments.

Painting and mixing colors at the easel is always a thrill.

Experimenting with colors at the 
WONDER table and the light table.

Practicing cutting skills and creating sticky tape collages.

 

Growing water beads and learning about absorption.

Start with dry orbeez.

Add water and wait.

Building a calming jar with the fat, water logged water beads.

Using a fun tool called a funnel.

Sorting colors in the sensory table.

Experimenting with paint dot bottles.

Doing cool color experiments like this walking rainbow.

 The liquid was being absorbed into the paper toweling.

WOW!!
Do you see the orange and the blue?
Ask your child HOW this happened. 

Painting a beautiful mural outside in the glorious sunshine.

 Thank you, God for beautiful colors to fill our world
and for our eyes to see them.