Trick or Treat!

Our preschool classes celebrated Halloween today. We had many different costumes from witches to bugs, to Buzz Lightyear and Mario. Our room parents provided lots of great activities including crafts, games, and delicious snacks!

If you would like to download or print any of the pictures from this year please click on the link below.

Halloween Pictures

Pumpkin Carving & Patterson Fruit Farm

Leaf Hunt Pictures

Beginning of the Year

Skeletons, Spiders, Ghosts, & Goblins.....

This week we have lots of fun activities planned for our Halloween theme. Our letter of the week is Ss for spider and we will be making S'mores for our cooking lesson. Six starts with letter s and is our number of the week. There are so many great spider and halloween stories it was hard to choose! Stories this week include Itsy Bitsy Spider (by Chapman), Miss Spider's Tea Party (by David Kirk), The Very Busy Spider (By Eric Carl), and Hallo-Wiener (by Dave Pilkey). Mrs. Prahler will be playing Halloween Bingo with us on Wednesday. We are also learning several nursery rhymes inlcuding Eensy Weensy Spider, Little Miss Muffet, and Twinkle Twinkle Little Star.
Our Room Parents are busy planning our Halloween Parties for Thursday. The AM party is at 10:00 and the PM party is at 2:00. Please send your child to school with their costume or they can wear it to school.

Check out these fun Halloween activtities:

Monster Mash Movie (3 minutes)

Hershey's Halloween Coloring Page

Family Fun at Patterson

Several families took part in our first Family Fun Friday. We had lots of fun at Patterson Fruit Farm. We took a wagon ride to the Fun Fest area where there where lots of BIG slides, corn mazes, riding tractors, and a straw play area. We also took a short tour of a small orchard and saw a baby apple. Every tasted a fresh apple and some apple cider.
Click here to check out pictures from the event as well as this week's classroom pictures of our birthday party and pumpkin carving.

I am am working on plans for another Family Fun Friday in December.....more info to come soon!

Thank you!

I want give a big thank you to all of the children and families for making my birthday so special! It was a great day and I enjoyed celebrating with each of you. Thank you so much for your kindness and caring!~ Miss G

Pumpkins.....

This week we are learning about pumpkins and other "Pp" words. We read Dora's Perfect Perfect Pumpkin today and will read 16 Runaway Rumpkins and Big Pumpkin later this week. On Tuesday we will be making pumpkin muffins for snack. On Thursday we will have fun carving a pumpkin. All week we will practice singing the the song Five Little Pumpkins Sitting on a Gate:

Five little pumpkins sitting on a gate, (hold hands up)
The first one said "oh my its getting late," (hands on cheeks)
The second one said "there are witches in the air," (fingers flying)
The third one said "but we don't care," (shrug)
The fourth one said "we're ready for some fun," (jump)
The fifth one said "lets run, run, run," (run in place)
So woo went the wind, and out went the lights,
And the five little pumpkins rolled out of sight (sit down).

Here are some letter Pp/pumpkin activities to try at home:
Pumpkin Patterning Activity
Pumpkin Sorting Activity
Pumpkin Color Matching Game
Pumpkin Number Game

Computer Game:
Decorate a pumpkin
Sesame Street Halloween Activities


REMINDERS:
* This week is Character Counts Week. We will be taking the Character Pledge and attending an assembly on Monday afternoon along with participating in various other activities throughout the week. Please wear your orange Character Kids shirt on Monday and Wednesday.

* Wednesday is Early Dismissal. PM will be dismissed at 2:00.

* Friday is our first "Family Fun Friday"....hope to see you all at Patterson's Fruit Farm at 11:30.

* Scholastic book orders went home....deadline is Nov. 10th. You can order online or send in your order/payment to Ms. G.

* If you received an ASQ:SE survey please complete and return as soon as possible.

Going on a leaf hunt.....

Today our preschool classes enjoyed the beautiful fall day as we took a nature walk to hunt for signs of fall. We found all kinds of leaves....big, small, red, yellow, brown, orange, wet and even some crunchy ones. We even found a few acorns, some pinecones, and big buckeyes! After our leaf hunt, we made leaf shaped cookies. We will decorate our cookies tomorrow and enjoy them for snack....mmmmm! Click here for the recipe.

Click here to take a look at pictures from our leaf hunt.

Mrs. Koziol also showed us two more fun games to play on the computer. Super Why is a class hit! The Fall Puzzles and Games link has lots of memory games for acorns, spiders, and other fall items. Look to the right to find the links under "Games and Activities".

Fall is Here!

In our preschool classroom we are going to be talking about the Fall season. Our letter of the week is Ll for leaves as the leaves are changing colors and begining to fall. Some classroom activities will include Fall Bingo, cooking and decorating leaf shaped cookies, going on a nature walk to collect signs of fall, and making scarecrows for a craft. One of our stories this week is I Know and Old Lady Who Swallowed Some Leaves which will focus on rhyming words.

Our song this week is "The Leaves on the Tree" (to the tune of Wheels on the Bus)
The leaves on the trees turn orange and brown, orange and brown, orange and brown. The leaves on the trees turn orange and brown, all through the town.
The leaves on the trees come tumbling down, tumbling down, tumbling down. The leaves on the trees coming tumbling down, all through the town.
The leaves on the ground go swish, swish, swish. Swish, swish, swish. Swish, swish, swish. The leaves on the ground go swish, swish, swish, all through the town.

Fall is a great time to have some family fun! Enjoy the changing leaves and cooler air and celebrate the season with some autumn-themed activities, such as fun crafts for fall and great fall recipe ideas. Click here for ideas.

This week will be our first week for Star Students. We are excited to learn a little more about our classmates and welcome parents to spend the day with their child to see what we do in our classroom. If you have any questions about this activity, please contact Ms. Gruskiewicz.

Reminder.....please send in your form and $4 per person for our Family Fun Friday held on October 22nd. Hope to see everyone at Patterson Fruit Farm. For information about the event, please click on the link on the right side of the page (under Classroom Connections).

Fire Prevention Week

This week we focused on Letter Ff for fire. Students listened to several stories about fire safety including Firehouse, My Ff Book, No Dragons for Tea, and also Mingo and the Fire Drill. We reviewed how it is important to get out quick if there is a fire as well as "stop, drop, and roll". We played a Fire Safety Memory game with Mrs. Prahler using different picture vocabulary for fire safety. During our Math lesson, we worked on matching the fire badges with the correct numeral. We finished our fire safety week with some computer games with Sparky the Fire Dog (also posted in the links on right side of this page) and even painted a picture of Sparky! Lots of FUN!!
For letter Ff, we made fruit smoothies which were delicious! Click here for the recipe card. Our song for the week was Five Green and Speckled Frogs.