Chapel

Every Tuesday we go to chapel in the morning for about 15 or 20 minutes. We have chapel in the main sanctuary, and we sing songs, and Mrs. Dawn has a lesson that usually reflects the topics we are talking about in our classrooms.  This month we are also using our chapel time to practice for our upcoming Christmas program.

The prayer we sing in chapel every day is "Thank You Jesus" ask your child to sing it to you. Here are the lyrics and the tune is London Bridges.

Thank You Jesus for my church

for my church, for my church

Thank You Jesus for my church

Thank You Jesus!

Repeat but switch my church to "my friends" or "my family" 

Here we are standing on the altar practicing our songs for our Christmas program. For the Christmas program we will be on the left side of the altar if you are looking at it from the pews, so get a good seat as they are excited to sing for you. 

The children really are learning to be good listener and sit in the chapel quietly as they listen to Mrs. Dawn and the lesson she has to share. I am proud at how well they are doing and how much they enjoy sharing and contributing to the group. 

November flew by

We stayed busy throughout the month of November and I can't believe that December is already here. In November we talked about the changing season, especially the leaves and animals that are preparing to hibernate for the winter. We also read books about the Pilgrims and Indians and had our own Thanksgiving Feast.

Here are a few pictures from the fun we had during our fall days in November.

We sponge painted a class leaf to decorate the hallway. The children enjoyed mixing the colors and working together. 

We had all sorts of different nuts the children were able to explore and crack open like squirrels. They were surprised to find out how hard it was to actually open the shells and get the nuts out.  We decided squirrels must have really strong teeth. 

Our fall trees have already come home, but we sure had a great time making them. We by painted the trunks with coffee (boy did the room smell good that day) and then we pounded colored pasta into a million little pieces to make our "fall leaves". I hope you are enjoying them as much as they enjoyed making them. They turned out great. 

One morning when the children arrived at school they saw that our class tree had lost all of it's leaves. They used rakes to collect the leaves, then we jumped in them and used the parachute to make them fall from the sky.

Octoberfest

Our annual Octoberfest was a huge hit. We had a beautiful day and the children had a lot of fun participating in the different activities from the costume parade to the hayride finale.  

Our class was filled with a lot of wonderful costumes. We had a police officer, Buzz Lightyear, Diego, Snow White, Spiderman, a pink ladybug, a red ladybug, a bumblebee, a green dragon and even Mickey Mouse!! 

"Pumpkin" bowling and bean bag toss were two of the games the children were able to play during the Octoberfest. All the children enjoyed being able to get outside and play some fun carnival games with their friends. 

The hayride took us around the church parking lot. The children enjoyed watching the tractor and waving at their friends as they passed the playground.  

Spider muffins were a yummy treat we got to enjoy during our fun week of fall holiday fun. The muffins were not only cute they were quite tasty too and everyone gobbled theirs up, eyeballs and all. 

During our fun with spiders we painted our hands and made spiders with up to 10 eyeballs and 8 "finger" legs. 

Pumpkins were also the focus during our week. We were able to hammer tees into a HUGE pumpkin Ms. Terri brought into the class. We also opened the pumpkin to check out the seeds inside.

 A great time was had by all the children during our fun week of fall festivities. Now on to November and more fall fun. 

All Things Red...Apples & Fire Safety

The last two weeks seemed to have flown by and I am just now getting a chance to update you on all the fun things we have been doing in the classroom. Hopefully you have been hearing about them at home and seeing pictures on here is just a way to revisit our fun learning experiences.

We spent a week learning about apples and all they have to offer. The children already knew so much about different kinds of apples, what to do with the seeds and even what yummy things you can bake with apples. It was amazing.

We did an apple taste test, with Granny Smith being the favorite apple of choice by almost everyone which was a total surprise if you can have seen their puckery faces as they tried this one.

  

We worked on fine motor skills by lacing worms through apples with the corresponding number. Everyone loved the slimy feel of the worms and was able to take a turn lacing,  sorting and making patterns with  all the different colored worms.  

As a cooking experience we went over to the kitchen in the gym building and made apple bundles, which are small individual sized apple pies. The children were able to use an apple peeler, slicer, corer to get the apples ready for our bundles. We even were able to get the peel off one apple in one long string that was long enough for all of us to hold at once. 

After apples we dove into another red topic with our Fire Safety Week October 11-14th. We learned about Firemen being helpers in the community as well as what to do in case of a fire. 

The children really loved role playing as a fireman with the fire truck that we had in our classroom. We sure put out a lot of fires this week. :-) 

We read the book Stop, Drop and Roll and sang a song about what to do if we catch on fire. They brought home their fire on Wednesday and hopefully were able to tell you what we did with it in the classroom. :-)

We also painted "fire" using yellow and orange paint. We used a plastic wrap technique that kept everyone's hands clean and made for some pretty happy painters. 

With the rainy weather we played in the gym building instead of the playground. The children had a great time, bouncing on the hoppy balls, building blocks, throwing balls and just running and having fun. 

We had a great week! Hopefully on Tuesday we will have a visit from the real firemen and firetruck and the children can WOW them with all they have learned and know about fire safety. 

A Week Full of Friends

This week was all about friendships old and new. We talked about what makes a good friend, who are friends are and how to be a good friend. On Tuesday we started out our week talking about friends by reading A Rainbow of Friends. Then we worked together to make a friendship rainbow with our hand prints. Most of the

children loved getting their hand painted and getting messy, however we do have a few holdouts in the messy department. ;-)

On Wednesday, we read The Rainbow Fish which talks about being a good friend by sharing. We then made our own rainbow fish, using water colors, tissue paper and they even got to add a shiny scale or two. Ask them about the shiny scale, rainbow fish had all the shiny scales but wasn't happy until he shared them with his friends. They did such a good job sharing the scales and making beautiful fish!!

We also used fish in the math center to fish for numbers. The children used magnet fishing poles to fish for numbers in the "ocean". They really enjoyed catching fish and also a friend or two when the magnets connected.

Thursday was our Friendship Day. We enjoyed sharing out furry friends during show and tell and also snuggling with them as we read the book Corduroy.

We had a lot of different furry friends come to school with us on Thursday! Teddy Bears, Puppies, Dora, a Panda Bear and even a jellyfish!

Thanks to everyone who brought in fruit for our friendship fruit salad, we had a yummy variety and a very colorful salad. We took turns mixing the fruit and serving the salad during our snacktime. It was delicious!

A House for Me

This week we talked about houses and the different types of houses that people and animals live in. We even had a visit from a box turtle, which tied in great with our story Who's House is this? a book we read about animal houses.

After reading the 3 Little Pigs the children had a chance to build houses out of straw, sticks or bricks. I think they liked the "huff, puff and blowing the house down" the best.

We worked together to build houses out of Trio blocks that we would like to live in one day. They have some great imaginations and expectations of what their houses will look like in the future.

We added water and rocks to our sensory table. The children enjoyed playing in the table during our center time. We even took it outside our classroom and shared centers with Ms. Courtney and Ms. Sally's class.

We used shaving cream to draw houses, faces and letters on the table. The children loved how cold and smooth the shaving felt on their hands. Most of them really got in to the activity and were covered in shaving cream. Our room smelled great when we were finished!!

All About Me

Our All About Me week was great fun. We learned all about ourselves and what makes us speical. The children had a great time telling about themselves, drawing themselves during art and singing about how unique and special they are.

We sang a song during the week called "Special Me" It is sung to the tune of Twinkle Twinkle Little Star.

Special special special me

How I wonder what I'll be

in this big world I can be

anything I want to be

Special special special me

How I wonder what I'll be.

Puzzles were made using the children's faces, and they had to try to find the two parts of their faces and also their friends. We made some fun combinations that sure made us laugh.

During our center time we made self portraits of ourselves while looking in a mirror. It was interesting to see what parts everyone chose to include on their body.

Our Me Bags were a huge hit. Thanks for helping your

child fill their bag with things that make them happy. They were very creative! We had a great variety of things that you could tell made them so excited as their faces lit up as each thing was taken out of the bag to share. I was so bummed that I did not get pictures of them sharing their bags. Some of the things that were shared were crayons that showed our favorite color, pictures of family members far away, of course there were favorite lovies or snugglies that make us feel safe and even a food that makes us feel happy tucked inside the bag to share with our friends.

During our circle time we used body parts made out of construction paper as well as blocks to build a person, then played what part is missing and the children had to figure out what body part had been taken away. Everyone got a chance to guess and take away a part.

Our First Day was Great!

We had a wonderful first day of preschool! Everyone enjoyed exploring the classroom, singing and listening to a story during circle time and playing with our new friends and teachers during centers. Ms. Amy even stopped by to sing with us and give us a small taste of what we will be doing with her in Music and Movement this year.

Checking out the frogs in the Science center was a favorite of everyone. Especially when you get up and close and personal with the magnifying glass. Lucky for us they are plastic and won't hop away so everyone can enjoy them.

Our art activity for the day was painting with dot paints. For those children who gave it a try they seemed to really enjoy all the bright color circles and splashes the paints helped them make.

Finally it was lunch time and the children could not wait to see what yummy surprises they had waiting for them inside their lunchboxes. After a long summer, their tummies had a hard time waiting until 12:30 to eat their lunch.

Tomorrow will be filled with more fun and learning as we continue to explore all the exciting things 3 year old preschool has to offer.

The Start of a New Year

Ms. Terri & Ms. Maria are hard at work getting the classroom ready for school to start

on September 6th. Getting the classroom cleaned and ready, and all the supplies gathered for our 'Wild' year of learning is a lot of fun as we anticipate all the exciting things we will do throughout the year. Can't wait to meet all our new 3 year olds.

Don't forget if you have pictures of your child and all their favorite people and things, please bring those to us as soon as possible. We want to make sure every child has something to look at and bring them comfort as they begin this new school year.