Transportation Week 2

Pre-K students were introduced to a new song and story. They loved singing this familiar tune and doing the actions with their Pre-K friends. 

The Wheels on the Bus

My Truck is Stuck

This is a great rhyming book to build literacy skills and have a lot of fun reading! The Pre-K students engaged in this story by listening for their part and trying to help get the truck unstuck by showing their puppet at their turn in the book.

Games Day!

 
We love Games Day! Pre-K students practiced turn-taking, pre-numeracy and fine-motor skills while having fun playing 3 games: Pop-Up Pirate, Who Knows Whose Nose, and Porcupine Pop.

More Transportation Week Fun!

Playing Hot Wheels in the water table

The Go Noodle Rollercoaster song!

See a few more pictures of our week here. We were having so much fun in the afternoons, it seems we didn't stop to grab the camera! We promise to take more pictures next week!

Upcoming

Feb. 5  Early Dismissal 10:45am, 2:25 pm
Feb. 6  No School, Teachers' Convention
Feb. 13 Valentine's Party: All students welcome on this day
Feb. 17 No School, Family Day

Transportation Week

The Pre-K's explored the world of Transportation this week with new songs and special activities.

The students loved holding one of the vehicles while they listened for their part. When they heard their vehicle's name sang they put the picture in the middle. It is a fun rhyming song that builds important literacy and listening skills. It is sung to the tune of  Twinkle Twinkle Little Star. Other Transportation songs we sang with actions this week include: Baby Car, Bicycle, and Drive my Car. 

Name Rockets

The Pre-K's matched the letters of their name to their name tags and then pasted them in order to make a rocketship. They loved adding glitter for the fire after! 

Drawing Mat Man

The Pre-K's worked on their fine-motor and pre-printing skills by drawing mat man as we sang the mat man song. The mat man song is great for building body awareness and the Pre-K's did a great job drawing a person!

Paper Plate Cars

In this fun fine-motor skills building craft, the Pre-K students first painted their car, half paper plate, then once they were dry, glued on all the parts: wheels, windows, and bumpers. 

Transportation Stations

We participated in 3 rotating car stations. The Pre-K's made a car snack, drove cars on the different tape roads we made in the hall, and painted roads on paper by driving hot wheels through paint. These activities support fine and gross motor development and were loads of fun too!

Galaxy Glitter Bottles

Finally, thank you to everyone who sent in plastic bottles. Each student got to pick a bottle and their choice of glitter. With the addition of clear glue, warm water, and lots of shaking, these glitter bottles were ready to go! We love to shake them up and it is very calming to watch the glitter fall. You don't have to worry about these bottles making a mess, we have glued the lids shut so they should be safe for your children to enjoy.

See more pics of our week here.

Staffing Update

Pre-kindergarten has recently had a staffing change. As the school needs and dynamics change throughout the school year, our educational assistants are sometimes shuffled to best meet the needs of the students within our school. Our morning class has welcomed Mrs. Howatt to the team, welcome Mrs. Howatt! Ms. Sloan will now be working full time in grade two with Ms. Coleman's class. You will be missed Ms. Sloan, be sure to sneak down for hugs whenever you can! 

Upcoming 

January 31 No School, PD Day
Feb. 5 Early Dismissal Day
Feb. 6-7 No School, Teachers' Convention
Feb. 14 Valentine's Party, everyone attends

Space Week

It was as cold as Mars as we continued with our space theme. We learned a poem this week called 5 Little Astronauts. The Pre-K's took turns holding one of the five astronauts as we recited the poem and performed the actions.

The Sun and the Moon

After singing the action song, Mr. Sun, we completed our Sun art this week by glueing our painted sun to paper and painting the sun rays with q tips.

We sang our zoom zoom song and read a book about the moon looking closely at the craters. The Pre-K's practiced their scissor skills cutting out the circle for the moon and further developed fine-motor skills by spreading and pressing during the making of our moon.

Dressing for the Weather

We had a great discussion about winter and the gear we need to keep warm. The Pre-K's did a great job recalling all of the warm clothing items we wear. They helped sequence the items in the order we dress in and we hung the visuals in our hall to remind us as we work on dressing independently at home time. It was too cold to go outside so we brought some snow in!

More outer space fun!

Science experiments, building with the Poddley, and playing in our gross motor corner with the trampoline and crash mat all made our Space Week a blast!

See Pictures of our Week here.

Upcoming

February 5th  Early Dismissal
February 6th and 7th No School, Teacher's Convention
February 13th Valentine's Day Party, all students attend
February 17th Family Day, No School

Happy New Year!

We welcomed the new year Pre-K-style by practicing the countdown, watching fireworks, and making fireworks painting with fun paintbrushes made from straws.

Zoom Zoom Zoom

We learned an action song that had us blasting off into space. It was a great kick off to our space theme. We built numeracy skills by counting down and gross motor skills as we moved our hands and arms in different directions, practiced a crouching stance, and of course jumped as high as we could as we launched into the sky. You could try it at home!

(We counted down from 5.)

Sun Painting and Scissor Skills

We started a neat painting project of a sun using plastic wrap as a paint brush. The extra awesome part of this project was that we cut out the circle all by ourselves! We first had a scissor skill lesson where we sang The Daddy Finger song to learn about our fingers and learned this poem to help us with our scissor grip.

Fingers on the Bottom

Thumb on Top

Open the Mouth

and Chop Chop Chop

We talked about the importance of helper hand too. Then we practiced by cutting straws and licorice! Finally, we were ready to cut out a shape on paper. We did great!

Pete the Cat and his Cool Blue Magic Sunglasses 

(a lesson in emotional regulation)

We read a cool story about some cool blue sunglasses that led to some great conversations about our different emotions. The Pre-K's did a great job identifying how Pete and his friends were feeling. We took turns trying out a pair of cool blue magic sunglasses that helped the book characters see things in a whole new way. We also learned a little trick. We don't need to wear blue sunglasses to see things differently, we can just change how we are thinking about it. Groovy!

Box Town

Big thanks to everyone who sent in boxes for our box town. We've had so much fun stacking, taping, and creating with the boxes!

See more pictures of our week here.

Upcoming

Next week we have a few more fun space-themed activities planned. If you have any toilet paper or paper towel rolls, we would love to have them, thanks! Also each student will need one empty plastic water bottle for a craft, if you have any of those in your recycle bin you can also send one or two of those on Monday as well. Thanks so much!

February 5th  Early Dismissal Days

February 6th & 7th No School, Teacher's Convention

February 13th Valentine's Party, all students attend

February 17th Family Day, No School

A Very Merry Christmas

We had a wonderful week of Christmas fun in pre-kindergarten. Our party day was so much fun! The students enjoyed rotating through a variety of Christmas stations. 

Gingerbread House Making

Making Reindeer Food

Can you build a snowman?

Christmas Scavenger Hunt

THANK YOU!!

Thank you to all of our families for making our party day so much fun. We could not have built houses without all of that candy, thank you for your donations! Thank you to the parents who made icing for us, we know that can be a messy job and we appreciate your efforts! Thank you to Christina Plowman, Jillian Halliday, Misun Martens, and Serena Grimson for volunteering at our party, your time and help is very appreciated! And of course, thank you to the parents who sent in party food, we thoroughly enjoyed our party snacks, it is always fun to share a special snack together on party days.

P.S. The gingerbread houses are 100% edible! They were put together with melted sugar.

Christmas Baking 

We had fun baking Christmas cookies this week. This yummy activity works on early numeracy (counting and measuring), turn taking, and fine motor skills (dumping, scooping, stirring). Here is our recipe:

CAKE MIX CHOCOLATE CHIP SANTA COOKIES RECIPE

Ingredients:

• 1 box of white cake mix
• 2 large egg whites
• 2 tablespoons flour
• 1/2 cup vegetable oil
• 3/4 cup chocolate chips + extra to press on top of the cookies prior to baking
• 1/4 cup red white and green holiday sprinkles

Directions:

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees.

Combine the cake mix, egg whites, flour and oil, mixing well. Add in the 3/4 cup of chocolate chips.

Roll the cookie dough into 1-2″ size balls and place 2-3″ a part on your baking sheets.

Gently press down on the cookie dough balls and place a few extra chocolate chips and sprinkles on top.

Place in the oven and bake 8-10 minutes. Do not over bake.

This Cake Mix Chocolate Chip Santa Cookies Recipe makes approximately 2 dozen cookies.

Looking for Boxes!

Please think of us and save any boxes you collect over the holiday season. Big, small, we will take them all! We want to make a box city with the students in the New Year. Feel free to send in any boxes you may have during our first week back. Thank you in advance!

Staffing Update

Robina Baker has had some staffing changes and it has created a domino effect for some of the educational assistants throughout our school. We will be having a couple of changes to our pre-kindergarten team in the New Year. Miss C is off to be a kindergarten educational assistant in Beaumont. Ms. Sloan will still be with us in the mornings, but will be supporting students in the older grades in the afternoons. We will be welcoming Mrs. Smith to our team full time. Ms. Sloan and Miss C, you have both been an amazing gift to our PK team. Miss C, the morning class will miss you, Ms. Sloan, the afternoon class will miss you - be sure to pop in for hugs when you can! 

Click here to see the many, many pictures we took this week!

Coming Up

We are excited to dive into our outer space theme in the New Year!

• January 8th and 9th - Early Dismissal Days
• The morning class will dismiss at 10:25 am
• The afternoon class will dismiss at 2:25 pm

Wishing You a Very Merry Christmas

From our entire pre-kindergarten team, we would like to wish each and every one of you a very Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year. We hope your Christmas has time for relaxation, family time, and fun! See you in 2020!