Families - Week 3 October 15-19

Families ThemeChildren will be exploring and talking about families and the many different ways families relate to and help one another. Through the Story Time books, children will hear about a boy who helps his family take care of his baby sister, a boy who realizes how much he has grown when a new baby arrives, a girl who behaves badly when she want attention, and a lonely stuffed bear who finds a new friend. Besides listening to stories, children will begin to recognize initial sounds in words and identify rhyming words as they build vocabulary and comprehension skills. They will also be participating in a variety of music, poetry, mathematics, science, and art activities during Center Time and in Small Groups.
Theme Concepts:
*Family members have role names: mother, father, sister, and so on.
*Some family members live together; some live in other places but are still family members.
*Grown-ups in a family take care of the children. Younger children need more care. Older children can help take care of younger brothers and sisters.
*Children sometimes get angry at parents and may feel that their parents don't love them as much as their siblings.
*Sometimes grown-ups in a family don't like things that children do and tell them to stop or be quiet.
*Families do things together that are fun.

Books This Week:
Corduroy by Don Freeman
Noisy Nora by Rosemary Wells
Whistle for Willie by Ezra Jack Keats

Small Groups:
- Which bear is first? - We will be discussing ordinals through an activity.  We will first color, cut, then glue a set of bears.  Then children will place them in the correct order on a path. (First, Second, Third...)
-Sound Cans- We will be listening to objects in metal cans and predicting what objects are in the cans.  This is related to Noisy Nora.
-Book Browsing- We will be reviewing vocabulary words  from our stories and then creating unit 1 vocabulary books.
-Marble Play- We will be observing marbles using magnifying glasses and drawing our observations.  Then we will watch how marbles more differently on different surfaces and inclines.
-Uppercase/Lowercase Bingo- We will play bingo to reinforce letter identification skills. Some groups will be matching uppercase to uppercase and other groups will match uppercase to lowercase.
-Book Browsing- We will be reviewing vocabulary words from our stories and then creating unit 1 vocabulary books.

Centers
-Dramatic Play-  Noisy Nora's Tool Shop
-Sensory Table- marble mazes

-Art Table- piggy banks

-Writing- unit words
-Blocks- Building Car Tracks with battery operated cars
-Math- Ipads - Bubble Ball App (a marble rolling app to promote problem solving)
-Library- Books about families

Let's Talk About It
-Time for Bed book
-Birth Announcements
-Discussing our birth weight and length -Thank you for sending in the information :)
-Cook Books and Recipes (related to Noisy Nora; when she follows a recipe with her mom)

Songs, Word Play, and Letters
-Rhyming Words Song
-Dr. Jean Alphabet
-Stand Up
-Down by the Bay
-If your name starts with ____ raise your hand, jump, clap your hands (following directions game)

Handwriting
-We will be continuing our color books for the Handwriting Without Tears Curriculum. We will focus on proper grasp holding our stubby crayons.

Preschool Life Skills
We are continuing to review our previous skills 1-3.
1-When a teacher calls your name, stop, look and say, "Yes".
2-When a teacher tells you to do something, do it "Right Away".
3-When a teacher tells you to do 2 things, do it "Right Away".
We will reviewing our skill from last week:
"When something is too hard, first try then say,"Can you help me please?"

SuperFlex
We have also been learning about how to be "flexible" in our classroom when something does not happen the way we thought it would.  We have introduced the children to the newest action hero, "SuperFlex".  He has the power to be flexible and is a great problem solver.  If you child receives a "SuperFlex Award", they demonstrated great flexibility in a situation at school.