Early Preschool February Updates
Dear Parents,
It has been another exciting month. We are so happy for our successful Little Einstein’s’ first trip to Zoma Museum. In our large group, we focused on routines and discussions that socialize us more, and boost our confidence in expressing our selves. We talked about some basic traffic rules with a particular emphasis on our school traffic routes and expectations.
Cooperative Game and Music Mondays: we enjoyed the balloon passing and tossing cooperative game for a couple of weeks by adding a little challenge one after the other. It was fun to see everyone trying to keep the balance of the balloon both on hand and a plate and pass it to their friends. The other challenge and excitement was, trying to pop the balloons by throwing against the floor and the wall. The other cooperative game we played was “Mr. Fox” by relating with numbers. We also explored different musical instruments. In addition to our movement and song time, we also had a chance to explore different musical instruments following the rhythms of various band songs. We have also started to introduce the concept of direction using some songs. The ‘Cha Cha Slide’ song was our favorite.
Science Tuesdays: exploring with our gardening idea and a change/changes in situations was our focus of this month. Regarding our gardening, we explored the whole concept of watering and hoeing the weeds in our garden. We experimented with the amount of water a plant needs in our watering session. We saw how the soil gets eroded when we pour too much water and gets easily absorbed when we poured a little amount. We have discovered the importance of a watering can and watered our seeds using it too. It was such a fun experience for all of us. We also made a couple of experiments focused on a change in situations. We used a cup of water, food colors, and droppers. We made our predictions as to what will happen to the water every time before we add a droplet of color into our cups. “Look, mine is getting green,” said Emily, when we drop a blue food color into a cup of yellow food color. We have observed the change in the food color causes in the water. It was exciting as some of unexpected changes happened in our experiment. Making goop was another fun experiment this week. After he asked for a red food color to his blue goop, Esben said, “I made purple.”
Math Wednesdays: exploring with numbers was the focus for this month. Introducing the concept of numbers and numbering was our concern in our large group time, mainly focused on one single number each week. We also explored the first three numbers: number one, two, and three in our Math session by relating to our weekly focus. We made our hands busy-on, looking around and collect anything one and anything two identical items from our classroom. And we collect anything three in our last session.
Literacy: exploring more on our zoo phonics was our monthly focus regarding literacy. We enjoyed our zoo phonics exploration by talking about the animals’ names, the story behind them, and the sound they make. We started our exploration with few animals’ stories and kept exploring. We played letter-hunting games in our school compound with the rest of the letters that we didn’t deal with their stories yet. We also used three-dimensional letters to stamp on the play dough. We tried to associate the zoo phonics with the shape of our three-dimensional letters, and recall the sound that they make.
Art: exploring more on painting and growing our ideas with it, was our main focus. We associated our gardening idea with our painting. We have represented our school garden in a single canvas. To do that, we went outside, observed our school garden. Pointing towards the plant, Kaleb said, “Orange.” “Look! A bee!” said Windy, pointing towards a bee on a flower. And then, we shared our observations. “I see a lots and lots of pink flowers,” said George. We have observed different colored flowers and leaves. Then we went back to our Art room, talked about what we have observed, and chose different colors of paints to represent our observation. First, we worked with the leaves and the stems using green color, then painted flowers of different colors right on the top of it.
Next Week
Mondays- Music
Tuesdays- Science
Wednesdays- Math
Thursdays- Literacy
Friday – Library
Specials
Thursday – Art
Color Day
We are so happy about the color day that we have started to celebrate. This week was our fifth Friday, on which our group had a chance to choose white color. Talking about white was exciting as the children attempted to find white things. Amilia said, “Cheese.” And Kaleb said, “Cow.” We also talked about what the color white represents. We mentioned as white meant to be clean, pure, light, and peaceful.
The infants and toddlers got a chance to choose a color for next Friday and decided to celebrate Yellow.
New center!
We are happy to announce the creation of our new center called the invention center. Students will have the opportunity to come and convert their ideas into reality.
The center was developed by the students and will ultimately continue to run according to their opinions. We decided to move the cars and trucks center outside by the ramp area and replaced the invention center where the cars and trucks center used to be.
Reminder
We are also happy to remind you that our second family day will be on March 7th from 11:00 am- 2:00 pm. Everyone is excited to spend the day with you all and show you our new centers and share with you what we have been learning! You can bring a snack to share, and we will be providing drinks! Hope to see you all!
Quick Reminders
Please make sure your child wears an old cloth on Thursdays for our Art day.
Please return library folders on Fridays for our Library day.
The season is getting sunnier. Please send sunscreen and a hat for your child.
You can bring a flashcard or memory stick and take a picture of your child at Zoma Park starting from next week.
This time we are building different centers. We encourage our children to use recycled materials to build the centers. So, we kindly request you if you can send recycled tissue boxes, cans, cardboards, and anything which you think is useful. Thank you.
