Celebration of Learning

Thank you all for coming to our Celebration of Learning last night! It was such a fun way for us to celebrate some of the things we've learned this year and honor our friends who are moving on to Kindergarten. It can be a scary thing to be up on a stage in front of so many people, so I was very proud of all of my students for standing up there to perform. We've been working hard on those songs, so it was great to see them excited about singing for you too!

Thank you for all of your support during the school year.  For those of you who have children moving on from the Early Childhood Center, thank you for letting me be a part of their lives this year. For those whose children will be staying with us, I'm excited to see them grow even more next year.

Mrs. Chaloux

Community Helpers and Dinosaurs Weeks

We've had some fun these past two weeks! During our Community Helper week, we got a chance to hear from Camille Lucito (Cole's mom) about working in a doctor's office. She showed the kids the things that a doctor would do if they were sick and also at a well check, letting them pretend to be the patient and the doctor.  Thank you, Camille, for your visit! We also had a visit from Sparkle Dental to talk about how to keep our teeth healthy and brush them correctly. Then, this week, we got to visit the fire station, Central Jackson County Fire Protection District. The firefighters gave us a tour of their firehouse, so we got to see where they eat, sleep and live while they are at work. Then we got to see their trucks and go through the ambulance. Last, one of the firefighters showed us all the equipment he wears to show us that he's not scary, just the same man in a special suit and mask.

This week we got to do some fun activities with a Dinosaur theme. We practiced a lot of our skills like counting, sorting, and categorizing using dinosaur activities. This was a pretty popular theme! We sorted dinosaurs by color, counted the spikes on a Stegosaurus, stomped and sang a Dinosaur song, and played Dinosaur ABC Bingo.

I'm working on getting some pictures from our Helpers visits and the Fire Station tour, so stay tuned. :)

Eric Carle Week

This week was fun as we read several Eric Carle books and did activities with each.

On Tuesday, we read Brown Bear, Brown Bear (illustrated by Eric Carle) and played a counting game with the animals from the story as well as colored a book to take home. This is a great book for emergent readers because they can easily memorize it and get good clues from the pictures.

On Wednesday, we read The Grouchy Ladybug and made a ladybug craft. This helped the kids practice cutting on a line and following directions to place the pieces on correctly. They also played an Eric Carle Alphabet game where they had to match letters of the alphabet.

On Thursday, we had our rotation day, where the students got to do an activity in several of the other classrooms. We read The Very Hungry Caterpillar, another great emergent reader book because it has lots of repetition. The book also allows some counting practice as we read. The activities they got to participate in included digging through sensory tables to find caterpillars and butterflies and playing in a water table to find the fruits from the story; sorting out healthy and unhealthy foods that the caterpillar ate; listening to a retelling of the story with puppets and story props; and making a caterpillar craft that helped them practice creating an AB pattern and drawing a face.

We're looking forward to another fun week next week for our Community Helpers theme, with visitors and a field trip!  Pictures to follow.

Dr. Seuss Day

Today was a fun day at Early Childhood! The kids got to rotate through all 5 classrooms and do a special Dr. Seuss activity with each teacher.  They did some fun movement games, made crazy blue hair to wear like Thing 1 and Thing 2, mixed blue and yellow paint to make Green Eggs and Ham, and made a special snack that looked like Green Eggs and Ham!

Here are a few pictures of them wearing their blue hair and eating their "green eggs." (It was vanilla yogurt colored with green food coloring and a Vanilla Wafer as the "yolk.")  It was a busy day, but lots of fun!

The ZooMobile!

Today we had a special visit with some animals from the zoo!  The theme was "How Animals Move" and we listened to a book about animals and all the different ways they can move. The kids had such a great time learning about several different animals and getting to see a few up close and personal! They had a chance to touch a sea lion's fur and a cheetah's fur, as well as see an armadillo, a Polish chicken, a tarantula and a snake.  Below are some great pictures from the visit as well as a video of the kids moving like all the different animals from the book.  It was so fun, and we are so thankful to the Kansas City Zoo for offering us this great opportunity.

The Action Alphabet

One piece of our curriculum in Grain Valley is called Animated Literacy. This is something that the elementary schools use to teach letters and sounds, so we introduce parts of this curriculum in Early Childhood. In Animated Literacy, each letter is represented by a character and the sound that letter makes is represented by an action. For example, when we learned about letter A, we met "Actress Annie" who has a pet alligator and likes to add on her abacus.  So when we think about the sound A makes, we cross our arms to make an addition sign and say "A for add...a, a, a."  Each week we learn about a new letter and sound and add it to our "Action Alphabet" song. I wanted you to see the actions for each of the letters we have learned so far in case you see your preschooler doing any of these at home. This way you can help your child practice too.  Plus, it's pretty cute to see them singing. :)

Once we learn all of the letters and sounds, I will post another version so you have the complete song.

January Recap

I apologize to you all for not being as active on this blog during January, and I promise to improve in February!  With settling back into routine after break and illness at my house, this month has been a blur.

We have been learning more letters each week and adding the actions for each sound to our "Action Alphabet" song.  I plan to get a video of the kids singing this song posted here for you soon so you can practice it at home as well.  Watch for that soon!

Our first week back we reviewed some basic skills and we also got to do a couple of the games that we had missed at our Winter parties.  Here are a few pictures of the kids playing "Hungry Snowman."

During our "O" week, we studied opposites and had fun matching up things that are opposites. This can be a fun game as you drive in the car: Say a word like "big" or "hot" and have your preschooler come up with the opposite.

The "P" week was so much fun as we wore our pajamas, made mini pizzas with English muffins, and had a popcorn party!  We also got to play with puzzles and play dough.

This week we are studying the letter Q, so we played a game sorting toys that were "quiet" or "loud."  (I was so proud when one student said, "Those are opposites!")  We are also going to practice patterning by decorating a quilt.

We have been working on spelling and tracing or writing our names and we will continue that into next month.  We have also been working on cutting. At home, you can have your preschooler practice cutting by snipping straws, or cutting play dough, or cutting apart the little magazine inserts that are made of thicker paper.