TTh Preschool News - Week of April 6 & 13

W and X Week? Already??

W...We know that in all things, God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose. Romans 8:28

For W week, we learned about all kinds of weather! We ready one of our big books called "The Wind Blew" by Pat Hutchins. And we read the story "The Rainy Day" by Anna Milbourne and Sarah Gill.

We had fun with new green play dough at our greeting time
We played with our new Magnetic Letter Learners
We brought out some small, colorful bears, with a small scale to weigh them
We played with some new File Folder games that had us matching capital letters


But the most fun we had was probably playing with the water and the Water Works toy at our exploration station. The preschool offers our apologies for any wet sleeves that came home that week!!

X is for...Exalt the name of the Lord! Isaiah 24:15

For letter X week, we learned about Eggs (which kind of sounds like "X" doesn't it?)

We heard the stories "The Golden Egg Book" by Margaret Wise Brown and "Chickens Aren't the Only Ones" by Ruth Heller. The second book told us about many different animals that come from eggs. So to go along with that idea, we used sponge brushes to decorate some egg shaped papers, and on the inside, we drew pictures of what was inside our eggs! There were so many wonderful ideas...be sure to look at them in our hallway when you come to preschool next time!

At the exploration station, we played with plastic eggs to find the matching half. There were also foam letters and lots and lots of Easter grass in there as well!

Since we are learning about eggs, it was the perfect time to introduce the oval shape. The children know their shapes so well! We are so proud of them!

During our center times, we took children out in the hallway in groups of 3 to learn a new game. It's called the All Around the Town Game, and it is so much fun! (It's also a great learning tool to develop language and matching abilities, reading and memory skills, and following directions. Basically, it's a table size rug with a little town and roads on it. We take turns rolling a die. It could land on red, yellow or green. We pick the matching card, and it tells us where in the town we should go. We get to pick any vehicle we want when it's our turn.

This game has been a HUGE hit in both of our classrooms! It would also make a great family game for home.

See you all at preschool,
Miss Jean, Miss Lacy and Miss Pat

MWF Preschool News - Week of April 5 & 12

Dear Parents,

It is hard to believe that we are almost at the end of our alphabet and the preschool year. These two weeks we focused on Letter W and Letter X. Most of the students really enjoyed the worms we brought in for Letter W week. For show and share one of the children brought in a wallet from another country he received while traveling abroad. Our favorite item for Letter X week seems to have been a miniature xylophone. It was a class favorite for many. We have had beautiful weather and have spent the majority of our small group time outdoors playing in our playground.

Our themes have mostly been spring and God's creatures. Thank you to one of our parent helpers who assisted with a craft on Easter Monday. We made coffee filter flowers for our bulletin board. They turned out lovely. The next time you are near the classroom, please feel free to stop in and take a peek. We have also purchased some new literacy resources for our classroom which we have been using frequently. Thankful for God's blessings. Have a wonderful spring!



Here were some other highlights of our past weeks.

Used scissors to cut out leaves for our spring flower craft.
Created a beautiful butterfly by using eyedroppers and various colors of paint. We painted on one half and then folded our butterfly to create symmetry.
Used magnifying glasses to explore a variety of plastic insects.
Painted with watercolors on a walrus template.


Listened to the fingerplay "Five Little Speckled Frogs" at circle time.
Read Come Rhyme With Me by Hans Wilhelm, One Duck Stuck by Phyllis Root and The Wide Mouthed Frog by Keith Faulkner.
Practiced counting with our Busy Bugs Math Cards.

Continue to enjoy this beautiful spring weather! And enjoy the two newly planted maple trees in our playground. Thanks to all of you who made it possible with our fundraising AND for the dads who came in on Saturday morning to help plant them!

Your Team,
Miss Lori, Miss Donna, Miss Pat and Miss Jean

Letter V Week

The Very Good News this week...

Christ is Risen! He is Risen Indeed!

Enjoy celebrating the Easter miracle with your families! We'll see you back at preschool in April after our spring break!

T-Th Preschool News - Week of March 16

Jesus said...

"Unless you change and become like little children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven."

It's already letter U week, the perfect time to learn about the opposite words, Under and Over!

We made beautiful "Under the Sea" pictures this week, using some blue/green transparent paper. The children had fun using shapes to make collage fish for their artwork. Also, this week, we made beautiful candle pictures based on the song "This Little Light of Mine."

At story time, we read the books Under the Sea and Under the Ground both by Anna Milbourne. They are two of the wonderful Usborne books that were purchased from last year's fundraiser. Absolutely beautiful books!

For fine motor skills, we practiced writing our names in our name books and we played with the Stack and Sort toy. We loved stacking the pieces oh so high! We also played with our dry erase boards.

For large motor fun, we played a game in the classroom called "Stand on Your Toes." The children love listening to this song and doing what the music says. Each line ends with "this is the way we do it." The teachers get a real good work out with this, too! Here are all of the things we do along with the music...

Stand on your toes and stretch up high

Reach to the sky like you're climbing a rope

Hands on your waist, bend all around

Shoulders up and down

Spin your hands together

Stoop and touch the ground, and jump back up
Marching in place

Hop and kick your feet, first one now the other

Jogging in place

Do jumping jacks

Shake your arms out, high and low

Take a deep breath, and let it out

Sway side to side and clap your hands

Everybody give yourself a hand!

Lots of moving UP and down with that song! See you next time!

Miss Jean, Miss Lacy and Miss Pat

MWF Preschool News - Week of March 16 and 23

Dear Parents,

First of all we want to thank each one of you for attending our parent conferences. The students are doing wonderfully as they are heading toward kindergarten. It is exciting to see their progress. The last two weeks have been extremely busy. Our themes were farm animals and spring! For our Letter U week one of our students brought in an umbrella. And Miss Pat brought in a vase from Greece for Letter V week. We changed our small groups so the children will have other peers to play with in on a smaller basis. We have had several highlights. One, was we were able to play on our playground once again! Two, Pastor Greg discussed the Palm Sunday theme as we are preparing for Easter, and the children sang " The BIBLE " Song. And three, one of our preschool parents Miss Mary from Kindermusik gave the children a delightful spring presentation with music, instruments, puppets and scarves! LET'S BRING ON SPRING!

Here were some other highlights of our past week.

Practiced using scissors and colored and cut-out a barn template and used stencils to draw animals..
Painted with animal cookie cutters using blue paint, and made a group collage..
Dipped vegetables into violet paint for letter V week to make broccoli and cauliflower prints.
Played with our Uppercase Letter Builders Game and our Can-Do Seasons Game.
Explored various vegetables with magnifying glasses in our Exploration Station.
Some of our favorite stories were The Little Red Hen by Paul Galdone,The Butterfly by Anna Milbourne, and Barnyard Boogie puppet book by Jim Post.

Hope you are enjoying this beautiful spring weather Have a great spring break and a blessed and happy Easter! See you back in school on Monday, April 5th!

Your Team,
Miss Lori, Miss Donna, Miss Pat and Miss Jean

MWF Preschool News - Week of March 8

Dear MWF Families,

The theme for this week was our five senses. Monday the children received a vision and hearing screening from our local county health department. Everyone participated wonderfully! We also went on a walk on Friday. During the walk, we practiced using our senses. We saw a UPS truck, felt the wind, heard the local traffic, and smelled fresh air. And we were able to taste yummy vanilla cupcakes, as we celebrated a birthday for one of our students.

For our letter T week a student brought in a Teddy Bear and a little pony named Toola-Roola. On a bittersweet note, we said goodbye to one of our students who is going to a full time preschool program. We made special cards to say goodbye to him and send him best wishes. Next week we will have fun exploring the theme of Farm Animals.

Here were some other highlights of our past week...

Our local bookmobile paid a visit and we chose new library books for our classroom.

We painted with sponges shaped like the letter T and Triangles.

We drew with Chalk Cray-pas to explore other textures of creating drawings.

Played with Texture Dominoes.

Marched around our building with maracas, bells and tambourines and sang our favorite songs, including Christmas carols in March!

Watered our bean seeds and observed one is sprouting.

Used our fine motor skills and played with tweezers and counting plastic Teddy Bears and placed them into muffin tins to practice sorting and counting.
Looked at I Spy Books
Listened to the story We Are Going On A Bear Hunt by Michael Rosen. Great Rhymes and Sounds are in this book for Senses Week.
Read the story My Five Senses by Aliki.

We will see you in two weeks for our Parent Teacher Conferences. Please note that there is
NO SCHOOL on Friday, March 26. The teachers will be busy meeting with you!! Enjoy this beautiful sunny refreshing weather! (Our playground is beginning to dry...Yippee!)


Your Team,
Miss Lori, Miss Donna, Miss Pat and Miss Jean

Nine More Days Till Spring!

T-Th Preschool News - Week of March 8

Another fun filled week of learning at Tiny Treasures!

We continued our unit on the Five Senses this week, exploring the world of taste and touch! We also are already on letter T week, so we did several activities related to the letter T. I think one of our favorite times this week started out at our rainbow rug when we explained to the children how to "trace triangles." The children immediately commented on how the triangles look like pizza, and everyone wanted to say WHAT should go on top of a pizza! Here's what we heard...

Macaroni & Cheese

Peanut Butter & Jelly Sandwiches

French Fries

Rice

Paw Prints (ew!)

A Unicorn

Cheese (there must be a realist in our group!)

Crayons

Feet

Our Heads!

So, if your child is suggesting strange pizzas at home, this may be why!!

Here are some of the other things we've been doing this week at school...

At greeting time on Tuesday, we made some beautiful flower petals that will be hanging up soon! On Thursday, we played with puzzles (which gave the teachers a little more time to assess those puzzle skills!)

We brought out some musical instruments and played along to Ella Jenkin's CD "You'll Sing a Song and I'll Sing a Song"

We traced some triangle shapes and learned that triangles have 3 straight sides (just like pieces of pizza!)
We played with two science games this week - one about seasons and one about bugs

We explored some unique pieces of nature at the exploration station: Milk Weed stems and seed pods, Queen Anne's Lace stems, Locust Tree seed pods and a Wasp nest. The children were fascinated to open up the Locust Tree pods and see all of the seeds inside. They also REALLY enjoyed blowing the Milk Weed seeds around the room!

We brought out tanagram shapes to make pictures

We used some textured bug templates to make crayon rubbings

We practiced making patterns and learning colors while we played with our counting bugs

At story time we heard two more stories in BIG BOOK form: The Seals on the Bus by Lenny Hort and The Little Red Hen by Paul Galdone

We also went out to the hallway in pairs with Miss Jean to have some puzzle and name recognition skills assessed.

For a simple "Get Ready for Spring" activity, make a paper chain at home to count down the 10 more days to spring! I know I'll be making one at home (even if my kids are 18 and 20!)

Have a wonderful weekend!

Miss Jean, Miss Lacy and Miss Pat