"F" is for Friends, Feelings, and Family! What an adorable week for the letter "F!" We practiced writing, recognizing, and the sound of the letter "f," for both lower and uppercase. We made these CUTE and sweet "family and friends" puppets for dramatic and pretend play with "f"eathers, lots of glue, and googly eyes! Some of my littles got VERY creative and made monster friends too! We discussed our feelings of happy, sad, angry, excited, joyful, scared, and surprised while making our little puppet friends. As they dried (and it took a LONG while for that as my babes are generous with glue and since Creative Arts and the process are the real goals, I just let them squeeze, and smush till their little hearts are content) we made our "F" is for Faces site word and Emergent Reader take home book. **Families, please read these with your littles this weekend and point out the sounds and letter "f" to help bring the learning home!**  One can NEVER have enough googly eyes! We used our left-overs from our Friends and Family puppets to make our Emergent Reader books EXTRA fun!!!  We LOVE googly eyes!!! HA!!! We had a "f"un week of learning and play making our "f"oxes, our "f"riends and "f"amily puppets, "F"aces Emergent Readers, and our "I'm a Special Person" "f"eelings trees. We introduced a new book this week in addition to our weekly favorites. The children LOVED it! A Big Problem! by Carter Oosterhouse
As a teacher, I LOVED how the children came together at the end to solve the problem and how the book ended with the picture above of "Solving a Problem!" This goes RIGHT with our Feelings and Friends theme and incorporates the logical/critical thinking skills to help TEACH us HOW to recognize, approach, and ultimately solve a problem! This will come in handy as a new approach to our social/emotional skill building as we work together to solve problems with our friends! Needless to say, "A Big Problem," was a BIG hit with our preschool family! www.experienceearlylearning.com "F" is for our "F"UN Enrichment Classes This Week! Not a week goes by that we don't host guests in our classroom. This week we made a new friend from Zoo Encounters! Ms. Emily brought us some "f"urry, and "f"eathered pals to meet, discuss, and touch with our Zoo Encounter class! Pictured here is Cashew the Chinchilla! He was SO SOFT! All our children did an amazing job of following directions! We also got to meet and experience Orville the Pigeon! Ms. Emily asked us to use only two fingers to gently pet the animals, wait our turn, and be very quiet as to not scare the animals. I have the BEST children! They all did super!! Even our bittiest babes followed directions. Look at this pic, those two fingers are ready and waiting!!! SOOOOO FUN!!! Ms. Emily wasn't the only new friend we made this week. We also hosted Ms. Angela from the Greene County Health Department for a hand washing class! We sang songs while we washed, received stickers of accomplishment, and had some squishy, soapy fun learning the proper methods for hand washing! Thank you Ms. Emily and Ms. Angela!! But that's not all! We had some math "f"un too! How are letter puzzles math related you ask??? Well, let me explain!!! Puzzles play helps develop several areas of the brain for young children by giving them the ability to place object in order, spatial relations, recognize geometrical boundaries, and something being a part of a whole. These are VERY IMPORTANT skills to possess for building on the blocks of math learning through play. But don't take my word for it!! "The ability to mentally transform shapes is an important predictor of STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) course-taking, degrees and careers in older children. Activities such as early puzzle play may lay the groundwork for the development of this ability, the study found." This is why you will always see puzzles as a place of prominence at Woolsey Academy for Young Learners. It may look like play, but it is vital to a child's early development and a great way for us to observe their level of skill and readiness for furthering education. 
We practiced counting, recognizing, writing, and adding the numbers 1 and 2 in our More Math Enrichment Books from Mother Goose Time! We also, as we do daily participated in counting our days of the week and recognizing the sequence of numbers and days on the calendar. We discussed the proper order for the numbers and days as we sang our Days of the Week and Months of the Year songs each day. We also played a fun new game that helped us get to know ourselves and our friends even better. This game, provided by Mother Goose Time, is a turn based game that included moving our pieces up a color coded playing surface to the finish. With each turn of the spinner we stated one thing we liked about ourselves and one thing we liked about our friend before it became the turn of another child. Our babes LOVED this game! I am laminating it and adding to our centers as a great addition to our daily social/emotional plus math play! WOW! What a week of learning and fun!!!What an amazing week! We learned, we played, we had SO MUCH "F"UN!!! I can't wait to see what's in store for next week!!! I can give you a hint....we will be placing a great importance on our grandparents and families with upcoming Grandparents Day! We will be making something extra special to send home with our littles for the special grandparents in their lives! That's a wrap!!!
2 Comments
9/8/2015 07:50:58 am
I love this. Children NEED to have FUN experiences with others. 9/10/2015 08:34:32 pm
Leah! Thank you very much for taking the time to read and comment. I agree! FUN should be the main focus of each day in pre-k!! Leave a Reply. |
Life is made of moments..."There isn't anything more full of hope, joy and peace than a child's smile... It captures the mundane and makes it extraordinary." - LaDonna Woolsey I am a Mother Goose Time Blogger. I decided to become one after trying their products because I they are comprehensive and serve my mixed age group well. I do receive products to review from Mother Goose Time and do so with my own honest and thorough opinions. For more information, please contact me at Ladonna@woolseyacademy.com
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