Transportation March 31-April 4

Books This Week:
Subway Sparrow
Mr. George Baker
How Will I Get to the Beach?

Discussion Topics/Questions This Week:
-Underwater Transportation (Super Submarine book)
-Sorting different kinds of transportation-Public and other city transportation
-Space Travel (I want to be an astronaut book)

Small Groups For This Week:
1.Parking Lot Letter Car Game- In groups, students will be matching uppercase or lowercase letters to the picture with the matching beginning letter sound.
2. Turn taking game- We will use a Thomas the train board game to encourage turn taking, language, and math skills.
3. Sink and Float Science Experiment- We will use different materials to predict what will float or sink. Then after we conduct our experiment we will record our results.
Journaling Activity- We will be creating a book to discuss the kind of transportation we would use.  Each day a different mode will be written. (Air, Land, Water)This will continue into next week

Centers
Rug Activity- ramps and cars
Science-things that spin and do not spin
Art Table: making paper airplanes and hoop gliders
Blocks: building roads
Sensory Table: Sink and Float Exploration
Book Area: books about transportation
Writing Table: making driver's licenses
Dramatic Play: Submarine Play with periscopes
Puzzles and Manipulatives: pattern blocks with  transportation


Songs, Word Play, and Language
-Bingo (with FRITZ)
-She'll be coming around the mountain
-How do you from A to B?

Handwriting and Letter Play Small groups
-We will continuing a program called Handwriting Without Tears. It's focus is on letter formation and letter awareness. This program reinforces proper grasp and trying to strengthen fine motor muscles.
-Sounds we hear in letters activity
-We are working on letters with diagonal lines such as K, M, W, V, X, and A.
-Alphabet Arc Activities
-Talking like robots (encouraging turtle talk to say each phoneme in a word)

Preschool Manners
-When an adult tells you to wait, say, 'Okay', and your waiting words.
- Our waiting words are "When you wait quietly, I get what I want".
- This life skill is promoting appropriating ways in waiting for attention or objects.

Grease play for the preschool today

Today we went to watch a special presentation of the BHS play Grease.  

Robot Demonstration Today

Today Emmett's Dad came in to show us how robots can move and how they can help us.  Visit our blog to see the visit of this amazing demonstration.  A big thank you to Emmett's Dad for amazing us today.  

Video of our visit from the Burlington Science Center

The video can be viewed by visiting our blog page.

Art show in the high school

Today we walked to the lower library in the high school to look at their art displays. We saw photos, clay art, art posters for their play Grease, and sketches. It was interesting to look at all of the art. 

Transportation March 24-28

News: 
Science Center Show will be on Tuesday March 25.
Grease Show- We will go to the BHS Auditorium to have a special preview of their musical.
Please ask you child about them.

Books This Week:
Fritz and the Beautiful Horses
Mr. George Baker
Freight Train

Discussion Topics/Questions This Week:
-Pedestrian Safety
-Bus Safety

-Transportation for recreation
-Science Show

Small Groups For This Week:
1. Ramp Bowling (this will continue)- using a ramp we will roll a ball to knock down the pins. We will change the height of the ramp to see if it changes how the ball rolls.
2. Transportation Spinner Graphing Game- we will spin a spinner to see which mode of transportation it lands on. Then we will graph our results.
3. Uppercase Letter Sound Truck Sorting- We will listen to sounds in the beginning of words and put them in the correct truck to match the the uppercase or lowercase letter
1. Fine Motor Activity-Cut shapes then glue them to create a truck
2. Building Bridges- We will build a bridge out of paper, cardboard, and a block. We will put pennies on each and observe what happened.
3. Hoop Gliders- We will build them and then see how far we can make them go.  We will put numbers in the hall to reinforce number recognition with this activity

Centers
Rug Activity- ramps and cars
Science-things that spin and do not spin
Art Table: making paper airplanes
Blocks: building roads
Sensory Table: Sailboats and water
Book Area: books about transportation
Writing Table:drawing maps
Dramatic Play: Airport -We loved this so much we will repeat
Puzzles and Manipulatives: puzzles about transportation


Songs, Word Play, and Language
-Bingo (with FRITZ)
-She'll be coming around the mountain
-How do you from A to B?

Handwriting and Letter Play Small groups
-We will continuing a program called Handwriting Without Tears. It's focus is on letter formation and letter awareness. This program reinforces proper grasp and trying to strengthen fine motor muscles.
-Sounds we hear in letters activity
-We are working on letters with diagonal lines such as K, M, W, V, X, and A.
-Alphabet Arc Activities
-Flipping Letters with spatulas

Preschool Manners
-When an adult tells you to wait, say, 'Okay', and your waiting words.
- Our waiting words are "When you wait quietly, I get what I want".
- This life skill is promoting appropriating ways in waiting for attention or objects.

Leprechaun hunt video posted

Please click on the link below to see our leprechaun hunt video from today.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L-KFDRjYuCE&list=PLvsrSF4vVNlH-fHoXz_nQZN-V7zNl-tDg

Transportation March 17-21

We are starting a new unit this week: Transportation

Books This Week:
Fritz and the Beautiful Horses
Mr. George Baker

Discussion Topics/Questions This Week:
-What is Transportation?
-Transportation then and now (cars now/horse then)
-Why do we use transportation?
-How do people travel? (land, sea, air)

Small Groups For This Week:
1. Ramp Bowling- using a ramp we will roll a ball to knock down the pins. We will change the height of the ramp to see if it changes how the ball rolls.
2. Counting to 5 Books-We will use different vehicles to create sets of 5. (ex-3cars and 2 trains create a set of 5 vehicles. We will cut, glue, and write numbers to create a book. 
3. Transportation Spinner Graphing Game- we will spin a spinner to see which mode of transportation it lands on. Then we will graph our results.
1. Land, Sea, Air Transportation Sort- We will sort vehicles by their mode of transportation.
2. Uppercase and Lowercase Letter sort
3. Fine Motor Activity-Cut shapes then glue them to create a truck.

Centers
Rug Activity- Train station with tickets and conductor
Science- ramp exploration
Art Table: making paper airplanes
Blocks: building roads
Sensory Table:construction site
Book Area: books about transportation
Writing Table: traffic light
Dramatic Play: Airport
Puzzles and Manipulatives: puzzles about community


Songs, Word Play, and Language
-Bingo (with FRITZ)
-She'll be coming around the mountain
-Diagonal Line Song (HWT)

Handwriting and Letter Play Small groups
-We will continuing a program called Handwriting Without Tears. It's focus is on letter formation and letter awareness. This program reinforces proper grasp and trying to strengthen fine motor muscles.
-Sounds we hear in letters activity
-We are working on letters with diagonal lines such as K, M, W, V, X, and A.
-Alphabet Arc Activities

Preschool Manners
-When an adult tells you to wait, say, 'Okay', and your waiting words.
- Our waiting words are "When you wait quietly, I get what I want".
- This life skill is promoting appropriating ways in waiting for attention or objects.

Science Experimentation with ramps and pulleys

 In our classroom, we have been learning how simple machines help us in many ways.  In our unit book Dr. DeSoto, the character is a mouse dentist who uses pulleys to help him  pull himself up to examine larger animals.  During choice time, we have a pulley experiment where one child puts objects in a bucket and then pulls on the string to pull it up.  The other child then puts their hand in without looking to try to guess how many objects are in the bucket.  This is a favorite activity.

 We have also been painting using ramps.  They put paint on a roller then place it on a ramp.  It is a fun way to paint and discuss ramps.

We have also been exploring ramps at the science table.  We have experimented using objects that move fast and slow to compare how the objects differ in size and shape.

These concepts will also reinforced in our next unit of transportation starting next week.

Community Unit March 10-14

This is our last week of Community
Books This Week:
Wilfrid Gordon McDonald Partridge
Knuffle Bunny
Harry and the Bucketful of Dinosaurs

Small Groups For This Week:
We will be completing a uppercase to lowercase matching book using mailboxes and envelopes.
1. Community Helper Bingo Game
2. Building Buildings- We will use blocks to build buildings.  We will balance them until they fall then record how many blocks we used before it fell.  Then we will compare our results using words such as the most, least, and equal.
3.Community Helper Tool Book. We will talk about what types of tools each helper would use then create a book.

Let's Talk About It
Caring for our community
More discussion about pulleys and ramps

Centers
Art Table: ramp painting 
Block Area: Blocks and community people
Sensory Table: Dinosaur Dig- Dino bones, sand, and paintbrushes
Book Area: books about community
Easel: open ended painting
Writing Table: markers
Dramatic Play: Eye Doctor
Puzzles and Manipulatives: simple machines(ramps, pulleys)

Handwriting
We will continuing a program called Handwriting Without Tears. It's focus is on letter formation and letter awareness. This program reinforces proper grasp and trying to strenghten fine motor muscles.
-We are working on letters with diagonal lines such as K, M, W, V, X, and A.

Songs, Word Play, and Language
-Hello Neighbor Song
-Firetruck Truck
-Diagonal Line Song (HWT)

Preschool Manners
We are continuing on this skill.
-When someone is in your way or has something you want, say, "Excuse me" to get them to look at you, then you say"May I____________?" to get what you want.