Rosh Hashanah is coming

It has been a very busy two weeks in Pre-K!  We continued to explore our centers and our classroom all while becoming more engaged in our surrounding environment.

We also began doing ‘Letter of the Week.’ Each we week we will learn a new letter, with extra focus on the letter’s sound and how to write the letter. Letter sounds and writing are a major hallmark of Pre-K.

Over the last two weeks we learned the letter ‘L’ and ‘F’. Stayed tuned for next weeks letter!

 

We met a new friend this week as well – Simon the Sorting Sloth – he helped us to sort all different types of items. Some we sorted by shape, others by color and even a few by texture. It was a lot of fun learning how to group and sort!

 

We also began our exploration into Rosh Hashanah. We learned that it is a special Yom Tov  holiday and it is the Jewish New Year. We eat special sweet foods in honor of this holiday, because we would like to have a sweet new year, just like the food we are eating.

We also blow a special horn called a shofar. It is made from the horn of a ram and it is blown in shul by the rabbi on Rosh Hashanah. We spent time exploring different shofars in their various states of completion.

It was also picture day this week! It was so much fun getting dressed in our very best!

 

Welcome to and welcome back to school

We’ve been busy in Pre-K and it has been a great beginning to an exciting year.  We’ve been exploring our new classroom, practicing new routines and skills, getting to know new friends and reconnecting with old ones.  Here are some highlights from our week.

The Writing center is always bustling with students creating, art, writing, and other masterpieces.

Our Classroom is full of interesting things.  We’re having a great time exploring everything, figuring out what things are for and how to use them.

 

Circle Time is fun and interactive. We met a few class mascots who help us to gain new skills, practice old ones and teach us life and social skills.

We are learning how to write our names! with lowercase letters!  We started to practice this skill by tracing our names with dry-erase markers every morning.

We ended the week by celebrating Shabbat and baking Challah. School is so much fun!

M is for….

We continued to work on out rhyming book, but we also introduced a new letter. We learned that M is the first letter in four of our friends names and it begins some of our favorite words.

We also go to spend part of our week outside, exploring the snow, river and surrounding area. It was great to see how our environment changed when experiencing various types of weather.

 

Overall we spent the our week rhyming, practicing our reading, writing and math skills. We have also been building, tall and dynamic structures in block center , all while our imaginative play is becoming more and more intentional and exploratory.

Rhymes with….

What a wacky week! We had no school on Monday and shortened day on Wednesday, but even with our short week we learned a lot!

This week we began our authors unit in earnest. We are creating a rhyming book, each student is creating their own rhyming story (poem). We are  also focusing on our growing fine motor skills, by coloring very detailed pictures and writing the rhyming words of our story.

We began by looking at which words rhyme and we learned that rhyming words are about which words sound the same – it is not about spelling! Once we got the hang of matching rhyming words together, Morah and our kindergarten friends started to read rhyming books to us. We then got to pick out the words that rhymed in the story.

 

The dentist also came this week and showed us all the proper way to take care of our teeth. It is hard work, but it well worth it to see our bright smiles.

Morah added material to our block center and soon we were creating structures that weren’t able to build before!

We had a smattering of snow on Friday, so we took the opportunity to explore how the playground was effected by the cold weather.

 

Can’t wait to see everyone next week!

Art is everywhere

We continued to work on our self- portraits, tracing, coloring and cutting our background items.

We learned that to become a well-known artist it takes a lot of time and practice, so we began to recreate our faces with different mediums. Different kinds of loose parts, watercolor and pens/pencils.

We also looked in the mirror and tried to draw our face shape. Faces come in all different shapes and sizes. There are round, square, oval and even heart-shaped faces.

The letter B greeted us this and begins some of our favorite words such as bead, ball, bean and blue!

 

We also explored the wintery outdoors and found the small puddles had frozen over. It was very slippery and some of the ice was thin, while others were thick.

A start to art

This week be began painting our canvas and adding dimension to it. We also spent time looking closely at our features and characteristics.

 

We also spoke determined what we would like people to know about us from our self-portraits. We picked out a few items and traced those images  – they are the last step for the backgrounds of our self-portraits.

 

As the weather continues to turn cold, we went outside for some wintery exploration. It was interesting to see how winter was changing the landscape around us. It also snowed a bit this week, so we spent some time playing in the freshly fallen snow.

 

This week we learned all about the P. I wonder what letter awaits us next week.

Intro To Art

We had a great week back at Pre-K! We introduced the letter D continued working on our art unit.

 

Last week we talked all about different types of art (sculpture, painting, drawing, collage, mosaic, and coloring) and found various art types within our classroom. Then we discussed what portraits are and from there we learned about self portraits. A portrait if when an artist paints a picture of someone else, usually only their face, neck and shoulders. A self portrait is when an artist paints a picture of themself.

On Monday we met four different artists and graphed out which one was our favorite. From those four Frida Kahlo was chosen by our class to learn about! We spent all week discovering her work and her life.

 

On Wednesday we looked very closely at the backgrounds of her self portraits and tried to determine the message and feelings of the artist. The backgrounds of art can help to learn about the personality and or traits of the artist.

We had a great time getting reacquainted with our centers as well! Can’t wait for next week!

 

 

What is art?

Our first day was the beginning of our art unit, which began with the question of what is art?

The students gave a myriad of answers, Art is something we do in school, its a project, it is fun and it is an activity.  We then discussed the different modalities that can be used to create art.

This week we spent time getting back into our routines and playing with friends that we haven’t seen all week. It is so great to be back in school.

 

We met the letter J this week as well. I wonder what letter we’ll meet next week?

Animals in Winter

We’ve been learning about how nature changes in the wintertime, but animals also make changes to help them during this season. Some animals migrate, others hibernate and adapt.

Each student made a painting of an animal in their winter habitat. This process helped the students focus on detail and small fine motor skills. It also gave a hands on experience as to the process of painting.

First they had to pick their animal.

Secondly they to find a real life picture of their animal

Thirdly they had to paint the background based of the picture of their winter animal.

Fourth once their background was dry they painted the body of the animal.

Lastly the added details in sharpie.

We added the letter S to our list of letters that we can read and write.

We got to celebrate a few birthdays this week. One was with our friend Ari and the other was with Bodhi in Morah Monica’s class. Happy birthday and thank you for celebrating with us!

 

Have a wonderful winter break everyone!

Wintertime is here

Even though the first day of winter isn’t until December 21st, winter weather is here. We had a chance to spend some time outside exploring how nature has changed in the last few weeks. Almost all the trees are bare and the ground is frozen. The air is cold and in the early morning you can sometimes see your breath. We  spent time exploring all of the fun activities we can do when it gets cold close to winter.

We got to celebrate a birthday this week! Happy Birthday Maddie and thank you for sharing such a special story with us! We hope you had a wonderful birthday!

Our Chanukah spirit continues to grow, as we learn more and more about this wonderful holiday.

 

 

The letter G has joined the ranks of the letters that we know. We met a new friend, Greta Gorilla and found many items in our classroom that begin with G.