Colors Colors Everywhere!

The next two weeks we will be doing a unit on COLORS. Each day we will designate a color to focus on. If possible, please have your child wear that color.

Week of September 12th:
Monday- BROWN day, wear good walking shoes for our “Safari” Scavenger Hunt.
Tuesday- RED day
Wednesday- RED/WHITE/BLUE day as it is National Anthem Day!
Thursday- BLUE day

Week of September 19th:
Monday- PINK/PURPLE day
Tuesday- YELLOW day
Wednesday- ORANGE day (every Wed is orange day for Character Counts)
Thursday- GREEN day

WEEK ONE:
On Monday, the preschoolers went on a Safari Adventure. Marty the monkey was in the school and made a mess in our room. We followed the color clues to find the BIG monkey. Marty was hiding in the motor room and was kind of nice to bring us some yummy treats...we ate the bananas for snack. Pictures will be uploaded soon.

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We will be reading some of my favorite stories this week including: Eight Silly Monkeys Jumping on the Bed, Llama Llama Red Pajama, White Rabbit's Color Book, and once again we will read Brown Bear, Brown Bear (it's so good we will read it again!).




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On Tuesday, we will be doing our first cooking lesson. We will make chocolate pretzel cookies (rolos on pretzels). The recipe can be downloaded here.

We are still working on learning are peers names but we are all having lots of fun! Our day goes by so fast and we just never seem to have enough time!

Parents- be on the lookout for information coming home this week for Scholastic Book Club, Star Student, Family Fun Friday's and Birthday Club! If you have any questions or concerns, please contact me at 216-642-5870 x 1412 or tgruskiewicz@independence.k12.oh.us

Hanging Out In Preschool

Welcome Back to School! If you haven't been in the preschool room this year, I have gone "bananas" with the monkeys! Our preschoolers love the monkeys and we spent the first week doing lots of fun activities around the "Monkey" theme.

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We read a few stories, including Cliffords First Day of School, If You Give a Pig a Pancake, and Brown Bear Brown Bear. After reading Brown Bear, Brown Bear, we made a class book which is very similar but has everyone's picture in it and it is called Monkey Monkey Who Do you See? Look for it to come home with your son/daughter sometime in the next two weeks. Please return it once you have shared it with your family so everyone has a chance to see it. We also worked on a sequence activity with the story If You Give a Pig a Pancake. We LOVE our SMARTBoard! Your child brought home a paper version of the sequence activity for homework. I will try to send home homework on Thursdays so they have something to do on Friday since school is not in session. I hope parents encourage their child to complete the homework and return it the following week and will give students a sticker/stamp for completion. I would like the students completes the homework rather than the parents doing it for them. I am not looking for correct work, but trying to instill the importance of working on things outside of the classroom. Thank you for your support with this.

We had a great first week and enjoyed going to computers, library, and gym. Our gym day is Thursday so please have your child wear comfortable clothes and athletic shoes. Our song for the week was "Five Little Monkeys Sitting in a Tree". Sing it at home and I am sure your child will sing along. They loved the alligator puppet who SNAPPED the monkeys.

ONLINE ACTIVITIES FOR HOME:
Check out this link for an online monkey story and a counting game. You can also print off a craft to do at home.

**Mystery Bag will be coming home with your child soon. Please put 1 item in the bag along with 3 clues about the item (You can write all three clues on the same piece of paper). If you have a chance to rehearse "reading" the clues, that would be great. If not, I will help them read them.

Plant a seed.....April is Garden Month

This week we our learning about seeds and plants since April is Garden month. With all of the rain that we have been getting, plants should be sprouting up everywhere!

Our letter of the week is Ss for seed and our color of the week is green. On Tuesday we will be planting seeds. Let's hope they grow!

Our song that we are learnign this week is called Dig A Little Hole.
Dig a little hole
Plant a little seed
Pour a little water
And pull a little weed

Check out these fun activties:
Dottie's Garden (online story)

Games for number concepts

Tiny Seed by Eric Carle (video)

Last week, your child should have brought home a password card for Reading Eggs. Click here for the Reading Eggs website. I would suggest going to "The Playroom". This is a great way to help your child keep up with their letter identification and letter sounds during the summer.

Spring is Here!

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It has been a while since I have updated the blog...sorry but this time of year is crazy busy.

This is our last week of school before Spring Break. Our theme this week is spring and on Monday we went on a walk to find signs of spring. Our letter this week is Uu for umbrella and we will be making Upside Down Pineapple Cake. We will be reading lots of stories this week including The Crunching Munching Caterpillar, Rabbits & Raindrops,Hopper Hunts for Spring, and Rain.

The preschoolers are working very hard on writing and identifying numbers. The PM class has started working on graphs. We are graphing the weather for the month of March and used a bag of skittles to make a graph of the colors.

Our songs this week include Little Bunny Foo Foo, Five Green Speckled Frogs, and Five Little Ducks. We are going to make watercolored butterflies for craft activity so we can add some spring color to our room.

Teddy Bear, Teddy Bear...

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This is Teddy Bear Week at Preschool! Along with talking about teddy bears, we will also be learning about feelings. For our cooking lesson, we will be making banana bread as we are learning letter Bb. We have many great activities going on this week including a Teddy Bear Picnic on Thursday. Please send in a teddy bear on Thursday as we will have a "BEARY Special Day"! Along with our bear picnic, we will be measuring our bears, writing a story about our bears, and graphing our different bears.


There are so many great bear stories that it was hard to choose just a few to read this week. Karma Wilson has a series of "Bear" books that the kids love including Bear Snores On (we read this a few weeks ago), Bear Feels Sick, Bear Feels Scared, and Bear Wants More. He Bear She Bear is a Berenstein Bear book which we will use to work on pronouns.


Here are some bear songs that we are learning:
You are My Teddy Bear (sung to "You Are My Sunshine")
You are my teddy bear
My only teddy bear
You make me smile dear
You are my friend
You'll never know dear
How much I like you
I'm so glad you're my
Teddy Bear today.

Bear song (sung to "Row, Row, Row Your Boat")
Hug, hug, hug your bear
Squeeze him very tight
Hold him high
Help him fly
Then hug with all your might.

Teddy Bear, Teddy Bear (sung to "Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star")
Teddy bear, teddy bear, turn around,
Teddy bear, teddy bear, touch the ground.
Teddy bear, teddy bear, reach up high,
Teddy bear, teddy bear, touch the sky.
Teddy bear, teddy bear, touch your shoe,
Teddy bear, teddy bear, I love you!


LOOKING AHEAD:* Wed, Feb 23rd is an Early Release Day. Preschool will dismiss at 2:00 PM.

Head, Tummy, Knees, and Toes

This week we are learning about body parts and the five senses. Along with the song Head, Tummy, Knees, and Toes we will be learning letter Nn for nose. Nachos will be our yummy snack that we make for our cooking lesson.

Eric Carle is a great author and we will be reading another one of his stories this week: From Head to Toe. Listen and follow along with this video of the story.

Practice rhyming and identifying body parts with this fun song:
Touch your nose, Touch your chin,
That’s the way this game begins.
Touch your eye, Touch your knee,
Now pretend you are going to sneeze,
Touch your hair, Touch your ear,
Touch your two red lips right here.
Touch your elbows where they bend,
That’s the way this touch game ends.

We will also be popsicle painting to make scratch n sniff paintings. This is simple yet lots of fun! You can make your own smelly paint at home. You can also freese the "paint" to make popsicles so you don't have to worry about spills. Check out how to make it.

Another fun activity is making Oobleck....playing with the green slime is always a hit! Check out how to make it here.

Scholastic Book Orders are due Feb 10th. Remember you can order online by using our class code: HHZ7D.

Looking for something for your child to do this summer? Check out the Summer and Beyond Fair being held on Feb 19th (it is free). Click here for the flyer. The complete directory will be handed our at the fair and is also available by clicking here (it is 78 pages long so you may not want to print it). The school district is not responsible for any fees, transportation, or other costs associated with any of these programs. We are sharing the information in case you are interested.

PLEASE REMEMBER TO VOTE ON FEB 8TH! WE NEED YOUR SUPPORT!

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Being Healthy is Fun!

This week we will our two week unit about healthy bodies. We will spend this week exploring how to keep our bodies healthy with nutrition and exercise. Our letter of the week is Xx for x-ray and for eXercise. Check out starfall.com for more letter the week words. We will be making CheX MiX for our cooking lesson this week. This is always a huge hit with the kids. Visit chexmix.com for several recipe varieties you can try at home.

Dole has a great website for kids......check out SuperKids for fun way to get healthy. Here are two games on their website:
1. Catapult Game
2. Drop & Catch

Many activties in the classroom will relate to our story, The Very Hungry Caterpiller. Watch this great video version of the book. There are so many great concepts in this story including sequencing, days of the week, numbers, food groups, and the life cycle of a butterfly. Click here for website #1 that has lots of great ideas you can do with your child. The ideas are endless. Here is website #2 with more activities from DLTK. The kids loved reading this story.....let them help you read as they can repeat the phrase "but it he was still hungry."
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We are really working hard to learn our numbers 1-5 and also extending patterns. You can reinforce this concepts at home very easily. Check out this link that has information regarding Math Activities for Preschoolers.

Here are some ideas you can try at home:
Egg Crate Counting
Take a simple egg crate and number the bottom of each space with permanent marker from one to five. The extra spaces can be cut off or left blank. Give your preschooler a plastic bag full of any small, interesting items like mini-M&Ms, jelly beans, beads, dried peas, pebbles, etc. Have your child match the number of items to the corresponding number in each space. To make the game more fun and challenging and to develop small hand coordination, have the child use child's-sized plastic tweezers to place the items in the cups. Children can also use the same items to fill plastic Easter eggs with numbers on them.

Sticker Chart
Take a piece of butcher block paper and write the number symbols from one to five vertically on the paper. Give your child an inexpensive book of stickers. Have the child put the correct number of stickers next to each number. Children may also enjoy drawing the correct number of pictures or gluing the correct number of pompoms or buttons on the paper.

Patterning: Fruit Loop Necklace
Making necklaces by stringing fruit loops on yarn is a preschool math activity that can reinforce many skills. First have your child sort the fruit loops by color. Then use the different colors to create patterns. String a pattern on yarn first and then ask your child to create the same pattern. Have your child create a pattern for you to create. When a necklace has been strung, have the child count the loops as he slides them. Children love to practice counting backwards as they eat the cereal off their necklace. Make sure to wash hands before this activity!

Short Week!

With school being closed on Monday in observance of Martin Luther King Jr., this week is going to be a short week.

This week the preschoolers are learning about space ( focusing on sun, moon, stars, Earth). There isn't a ton of resources out there for this theme but I have managed to find a few.
Click here for an online book called The Flying Train.

Our letter of the week is Ss for sun and star. We will be learning a few nursery rhymes including Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star & Star Light, Star Bright. To go along with our letter Ss, we will be making star sandwiches (PB & J using a star cut out) for our cooking lesson on Tuesday. We are working hard on number recognition so our story Five Shiny Stars will help us with the number 5 this week.

Reminder that Family Fun Friday is this Friday. Please arrive at the Children's Musuem by 12:45 so that we can pay the admission and begin our tou promptly at 1:00. We have a very large group this time!!

Penguins, Polar Bears, Pancakes, & Pigs

Pp is our letter of the week and out theme is Arctic Animals (penguins/polar bears) but we can't do Pp week without reading the story If You Give a Pig a Pancake. We will be making pancakes for our cooking lesson to go with our story on Tuesday. Click here for the recipe card.

Other stories we will be reading include The Penguin Who Wanted to Fly, Penguin Pete, Cuddly Dudley Tacky the Penguin, and Polar Bear Polar Bear What Do You Hear?

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Wednesday is PAJAMA DAY for preschoolers! Wear your PJ's to school.

Below are the songs/finger plays that we will be doing this week.
Peter Penguin
Peter, Peter Penguin, marching by (March)
Toes turned out and head held high (Stand Tall)
A long black coat (Point Like Coat)
And a clean white vest (Rub Chest)
Peter, Peter Penguin, you're the best (Do Tony Tiger Their Great Gesture)

Six Little Penguins
Six little penguins off an iceberg did dive,
One bumped his beak, then there were five.
Five little penguins swam the ocean floor,
One saw a whale, then there were four.
Four little penguins spun around, whee-ee!
One spun off, then there were three!
Three little penguins, with nothing to do,
One went fishing, then there were two.
Two little penguins, having lots of fun,
One fell of, then there was one.
One little penguin, when the day was done,
Went home to sleep, then there were none.


Looking for some ideas at home? Check out these fun activities:

Ice Cube Painting
Wou will need: Penguin pattern, powdered paint, ice cube with Popsicle stick.
Directions: Freeze Popsicle sticks into ice cubes. Have the children sprinkle powder paint on white paper and paint with an ice cube on a stick.

Penguin Puzzle (Online Game)

ONLINE STORIES:
Penguin, Penguin (Non fiction)
Rumble, Grumble, Gurgle (fiction)

Did You Know........
• What kind of animals are penguins? (birds )
• Do penguins fly? (no)
• Are penguins found south or north of the equator? (south)
• How long can a penguin hold its breath under water? (about 3 minutes)
• What do penguins eat? (fish )

Penguin Ice Experiment : Freeze a long pan of water and have several objects, some that will slide on the ice and some that will not (cotton balls, dry beans, piece of felt, plastic penguin figurine, etc.). Predict and then test .... “Will It Slide?”

Movie Night! Cuddle up with a blanket and watch these great penguin movies: Happy Feet and Madagascar.

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Welcome Winter!

I hope Santa found his way to everyone's house and you had a wonderful holiday season. Welcome to the New Year and back to school this week!

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Our theme this week is WINTER and will focus on the season of winter. Our letter of the week is Ii for ice. We will be doing two cooking lessons this week, but both are very simple. On Tuesday we will make ice cream sundaes for our letter Ii...brrr just like winter! We will warm up with some hot cocoa on Wednesday. Our stories this week will include A Little Bit of Winter, The Biggest Snowman, and two Jan Brett stories called The Hat and The Mitten. The kids loved retelling The Mitten as they each had a mask to pretend to be one of the animals squeezing into the mitten. Click here or on the links below to check out the Jan Brett link for some activities/games related to her stories.

Animal Matching Game (Printable)
Numbers Game (Printable)
Mouse Concentration (Online)
Print Animal Masks to retell story
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For our craft, we colored and decorated a pair of mittens to go along with our story. The children will also be painting snowy day this week. Our songs this week include Snowy Pokey and Chubby Little Snowman.
Chubby Snowman
I had a chubby snowman, he had a carrot nose.
Along came a bunny, And what do you suppose?
That hungry little bunny, looking for his lunch,
Ate that snowman's nose. . . NIBBLE, NIBBLE, CRUNCH!!

Snowy Pokey
You put your right mitten in, You take your right mitten out,
You put your right mitten in and you shake it all about.
You do the Snowey pokey and you turn yourself around.
That's what it's all about.
Continue with additional verses:
You put your left mitten in
You put your scarf in
You put your right boot in
You put your left boot in
You put your hat in
You put your snowself in

Here are some other computer game you might enjoy!
Snowman Puzzle
Dress up snowman

If your looking for something to do at home....make homemade ice cream in a ziploc bag. It is easy and lots of fun! Click here for directions.

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