A Week of Exploration, Growth, and Hands-On Learning in Early Pre-K!

Zelamem and Danait
Dec 5, 2025
4 min read

Dear parents,

We hope you had a wonderful week. In our Early Pre-K classroom, the children continued to learn, explore, and build important skills through engaging, play-based activities. Each lesson this week was carefully planned to strengthen their language development, early math understanding, fine motor growth, and curiosity about the world around them. We are excited to share a recap of our joyful and productive week!

Large Group

Our large group sessions this week were filled with rich conversation, active participation, and meaningful extension of previously learned concepts. We expanded our number work from 1–10 to 1–20, giving the children an opportunity to broaden their counting skills and strengthen number recognition. As a group, we practiced counting aloud, using our fingers, the number pictures on the board, and classroom objects. The children showed wonderful focus as they repeated the numbers with confidence, rhythm, and enthusiasm.

On Monday, the children also enjoyed sharing about their weekend experiences. Each child had the chance to speak, listen, and connect with their classmates, helping build their communication skills and comfort during group discussions. Their stories were warm, expressive, and filled with excitement a beautiful way to start the week.

We also explored 3D shapes, focusing especially on the cube. The children examined the cube’s features, counted its sides, and compared it with objects around the classroom. Using real materials, pictures, and hands-on exploration, they observed how cubes appear in everyday life. This activity supported their spatial awareness, analytical thinking, and vocabulary development. Their curiosity was evident as they eagerly searched for cube-shaped items around the room!

Literacy

During literacy time, our young learners worked on their personal journals, a treasured routine that nurtures imagination and early writing habits. The children were free to draw anything they wanted a powerful way to support emotional expression and creativity.

Many students chose to illustrate scenes inspired by their daily experiences: families, animals, playground moments, and colorful designs. Others experimented with shapes, lines, and patterns, demonstrating increasing control and coordination. As they drew, they practiced gripping crayons correctly, naming their colors, and adding more details than before.

Journal time also offered opportunities for storytelling. Children proudly shared the stories behind their drawings, building expressive language, confidence, and early narrative skills. Their independence and excitement during literacy time continue to grow each week, and it is truly heartwarming to watch their ideas come alive on paper.

Science

Science was full of excitement as we explored farm animals and the sounds they make. This hands-on, interactive lesson encouraged the children to listen carefully, think critically, and connect sound to visual information. Using animal toys, real-life pictures, and recorded audio clips, we created a rich, multi-sensory experience.

The children listened to each sound from cows mooing to sheep bleating, chickens clucking, and horses neighing and happily guessed which animal it belonged to. Their reactions were full of laughter, surprise, and curiosity. They also matched the animals to their pictures, discussed where they live, and shared what they already knew about life on the farm.

This lesson strengthened listening comprehension, reasoning skills, vocabulary, and background knowledge. The children were so engaged that many continued acting out animal movements long after the activity ended, making science one of the week’s most memorable highlights!

Art

Our art session this week was messy, colorful, and full of sensory joy! The children created their own slime-like mixture using cornstarch, water, and food coloring a classic sensory activity often called oobleck. They were fascinated as they watched the ingredients transform into a textured, gooey material.

The children experimented with mixing colors, observing how different shades blended together. Their fine motor skills were actively engaged as they scooped, stirred, pressed, and squeezed the mixture. This activity encouraged creativity, exploration, and scientific thinking as they made predictions, described what they felt, and compared textures.

Most importantly, the children had so much fun. Their giggles, excitement, and eagerness to explore made this art activity a wonderful opportunity for sensory play, independence, and hands-on learning.

Maths

In math, the children explored the concept of big and small using a variety of familiar classroom objects. They compared water bottles, pencil crayons, toys, and other everyday materials to observe size differences in a clear and meaningful way. By placing items side by side, holding them up, and sorting them into groups, the children developed a stronger understanding of how objects can differ in size. They eagerly pointed out which items were big and which were small, using language they practiced throughout the activity.

This hands-on experience directly supported their early measurement skills by helping them recognize size relationships through real objects rather than pictures alone. It also strengthened their vocabulary as they repeated descriptive words and explained their choices to peers. Working together encouraged teamwork, communication, and confidence as each child shared their ideas with the group. The engaging, interactive nature of the activity made math both enjoyable and memorable, allowing the children to explore foundational concepts through meaningful play.