When we return to school, we will begin our next unit.

When we return to school, we will begin our next unit.

Unit 3 SNOW weeks 1 & 2

After vacation week we will begin our unit on SNOW. Whenever possible we will play in the snow.

Here are the theme concepts for this unit:

• When it is very cold, sometimes it snows instead of raining
• Snow comes from the clouds
• Every snowflake is different
• Animals and people need protection from the cold and the snow
• Some animals hibernate during the winter  months
• Tools and machines keep us safe when it snows such as shovels and snowplows
• There are many ways to enjoy the snow
• When the temperature gets warmer, the snow melts
• 
  

Questions for the unit:

• What is snow?
• When does it snow?
• Where does the snow come from?
• What do you wear when it snows?
• After the snow falls, what happens to it?
• What can you do in the snow?

Week of January 2 & 6

Books for the week:

Goodnight Baby Bear by Frank Asch

The Mitten by Jan Brett

Small Groups:

Thursday - Sorting by size

January 6-110
1. Making a pair of matching mittens

2. Color animals from the story the Mitten

3. Lace the mitten and use the animals from the story to retell the story

Let's Find out About It - The states of water, hibernation, and winter clothing

Choice Time

Art Table: Cutting Snowflakes

Work Table - Sorting by shapes and colors

Easel: Snowflake pictures with stencils and glitter paint

Block Area: Marble Mazes

Library Area: Snow themed books

Sensory Table: Sand

Writing Table: writing/tracing winter words and playing with winter stamps

Dramatic Play: Making pairs with mittens and shoes

Ipads - making a snowman

Family Party is December 18th at 10:15

We have started our Gingerbread Unit.

During this unit we will be reading a variety of stories by different authors that will tell the tale of the Gingerbread Man, boy and girl.  We will make comparisons between the books to look for similarities and differences.

Activities Include:

Cooperative Gingerbread Boy and Girl

Decorating individual gingerbread 

Decorating our classroom door

Making our names with gingerbread 

Playing memory (matching pictures or by matching rhyming pictures)

Gingerbread Mazes

Choice Time

Painting Gingerbread Houses at the easel

Sweet Shop - Making Gingerbread with playdough

Math - counting gingerbread and buttons on gingerbread

Sand table 

Building with blocks

Light Table with blocks, shapes and letters

Snow Gear

Please send in snow gear on Thursday 12/5/19.  Including boots, snow pants, hats and snow mittens.   With our newly fallen snow this is a great opportunity to explore and play.  As long as the ‘real feel’ is above 25 at our playground time we will be going outside. Occasionally, we change our playground time until the end of the day.  On those days, children will be sent home in their snow gear.

Next week, Wednesday, November 27, 2019, the preschool will be dismissing at 10:40.   There is no school on Thursday, November 28th (Thanksgiving) and Friday, November 29, 2019.

We have been asked to post this by the School Nurse.

Just a friendly reminder that it is the time of year that you should be checking your child’s head for lice.  It is not uncommon to see lice at this time of year, and parental head checks are strongly encouraged. Our District’s Lice Procedures/Protocol is attached Here and please refer to the bottom of the policy for plenty of education on lice. If you have any questions, concerns, or need support, please feel free to contact the Nurse’s Office.

Family Traditions - November

Family Traditions - November

Family Project:

Please complete the sheet about traditions and return it to school along with 3-5 pictures of your family.  Thank you.

Save the Date: December 18th - Family Party - more information to follow

This month we will begin our next unit, Family Traditions.

Theme concepts for this unit are:

-A family is a group of children and adults who care for each other.

-A family tradition is a special way of doing things

-Family traditions may be connected to ethnicity

-Traditions are observed with different frequencies

-Traditions can take many forms: food, activities, and clothing

-Traditions have common themes

During this unit, we will be discussing traditions in general.  We will also be discussing how children celebrate special traditions with their families.  Some of the traditions we will include are: Diwali, Halloween, Las Ofrendas, Thanksgiving, Christmas, Easter, Ramadan, and Greek Orthodox Easter.  This list was compiled based on the information shared via our family tradition sheet.  Our focus is on how the children in the Lucky Duck Classroom celebrate those special days, (even though some are not for a few months).  When possible coloring pages related to these days will be provided for any child who is interested.

Nov. 11th (No School - Veteran's Day)

Nov 12th (No School - Professional Development)

November 13th (No School - Conferences)

November 28th and 29th (No School - Thanksgiving Break)

Books for the Month:

Bunny Cakes by Rosemary Wells

Thanksgiving by Miriam Nerlove

Full Full Full of Love by Trish Cooke

Night Tree - by Eve Bunting

Feast for 10 by Cathryn Falwell

Small Groups:

Shape Matching

Matching letters in our names

Decorating cupcakes

Fall File Folder Games working on visual discrimination, letter and numeral matching

Choice Time:

Easel: Painting pictures of birthday cakes, turkeys

Writing: chalkboards, making a grocery list

Library: Thanksgiving and November Books

Sensory Table: water - filling and emptying cups

Dramatic Play Area: setting up a grocery store

Rug Toy: Click Roads

Blocks - Tinkertoys

Oct 21

Stories 
Click, Clack, Moo Cows that Type by Doreen Cronin 

Farmer Brown has a problem. His cows like to type. -- All day long he hears: Click, clack, moo  But Farmer Brown’s problems REALLY begin when his cows start leaving him notes! 

Federick by Leo Lionni  
While the other mice are gathering food for the winter, Frederick seems to daydream the summer away.

Pumpkins by Melvin and Gilda Berger  
Fall is pumpkin time!   Simplistic non-fiction text with photographs and fun facts.

Small Groups
Tuesday - sorting leaves by color

Wednesday - sorting pumpkins by size

Thursday-  coloring a scarecrow by following directions

Choice Time
Kitchen - Fall clean up, Raking leaves and putting them in bags
Blocks - Wooden blocks and Farm animals
Table - Playdough
Math - Shape sorting by placing foam shapes into correspondence barns with the same shape
Sensory - Finding apple pom poms in Rice
Rug - Waffle Blocks
Art-  Making cows and horses

October 14th

Stories
The Three Little Pigs - Retold by Patricia Seibert
Leaves, Leaves, Leaves  by  Melvin and Gilda Berger
Time to Harvest by Melvin and Gilda Berger

Small Groups
Tuesday - We created a farm scene by matching shapes.  This will be shared with you at conferences.

Wednesday - We played, "Where is the barn?"  Students took turns turning over a card with a farm animal to try and find the picture of the barn that was hiding.  We also used star builders to make our creations and some fun shapes.

Thursday- We will be creating ducks for our farm mural.

Choice Time
Kitchen
Blocks - Making homes for our animal friends with yellow blocks
Table - Playdough
Math - Shape sorting by placing foam shapes into correspondence barns with the same shape
Sensory - Rice
Rug - Cars

Week of October 7th

Thank you to everyone who was able to attend our open house, it was great to see so many families.  If you missed our open house and have questions about our class or any time throughout the year, please feel free to ask. 

The stories we will be reading this week include:

Apple Farmer Annie   
"Filled with bright primary colors and pictures of America's favorite fruit, Wellington's enticing story follows Annie, a busy apple farmer. She picks, counts, sorts, bakes tasty treats, and sells her best apples." Penquin Random House


Apples and Pumpkins    "A young girl spends a glorious fall day picking apples and searching for the perfect pumpkin in this refreshed classic." Amazon


The Little Old Lady Who Was Not Afraid of Anything  
"But one autumn night, while walking in the woods, the little old lady heard . . . clomp, clomp, shake, shake, clap, clap. And the little old lady who was not afraid of anything had the scare of her life! ... And the little old lady who was not afraid of anything had the scare of her life!"  Amazon


Throughout this unit, we will be creating a mural of a farm scene - We will post a picture of this scene at the end of the unit.

Small Groups
We will be painting pigs to add to our farm scene - We will be using paint and shaving cream for this activity.

We will decorate fall pictures with stickers - we are working on placing one sticker in one dot to work on one to one correspondence.

We will be painting a large barn and silo together as a group.

Choice Time
Kitchen
Making pens for farm animals with blocks
Playdough Mats - rolling ball to add to  our apple trees
Math - Identifying the numeral and adding that many apples to our apple trees
Sensory - Rice
Table - Decorating acorns

Farm Unit

Reminder: - October 3rd, 2019 at 6:30 Back to School Night for parents/guardians

Farm and Harvest Unit Weeks 1 & 2

We will now begin our first curriculum unit Farm/Harvest. Some of the concepts that we will be covering will be:

• food is grown
• farming involves many different kinds of work
• seasonal changes related to planting and harvesting
• people celebrate harvest

Some key questions that we will be answering will be:

• How does food grow?
• What are everyday jobs on the farm?
• What does the farmer do at harvest time?
• Why do people celebrate the harvest?

Week of September 29

Books for the Week:

Eddie’s Garden by Sarah Garland

Farmer Duck by Martin Waddell

Small Groups:

Memory with Farm pictures

Bingo with sounds from the Farm

Coloring Pages-Handwriting without Tears

Choice Time:

Art Table: Making a farm mural

Blocks - Making farms with blocks and animals

Library Area: Harvest/ Halloween Books

Sensory Table: beans

Dramatic Play: Lemonade Stand

Rug Toy: Apple Picking Game - Roll the dice pick that many apples

Songs, Word Play and Letters:

BANANAS

What Are You Wearing?

ABC Rock

10 Red Apples

Big Pumpkin

Open, Shut Them

9-23-2019

We are off and running!  

This week will continue to reinforce classroom routines and expectations (pretty much all year this happens).  We are welcoming in fall into the Lucky Duck classroom with some wonderful activities such as apple picking.  Many activities/work that your child has completed has not made it home yet, as I am holding on to them for our upcoming Open House in early October.   More information will follow soon.

Small Groups:

Color Matching

Sorting Big/Small ducks

Decorating the first letter of our name.

Stories

Under the Apple Tree - Steve Metzger

Pete the Cat Rocking in My School Shoes - Eric Litwin

David Goes to School - David Shannon

Choice Time

Lemonade Stand

Apple Picking 

Playdough - making apples for our numbered apple trees

Sorting Shapes

Sand Table

Decorating leaves 

Library 

Cars on the rug.

Life Skills- This is the first section of life skills we are working on.  

Instruction Following

1. When I call your name, stop what you are doing, look at me, and say "yes."
2. When I give you an instruction, do it right away.
3. When I give you instructions, do them right away.

We are on to week 2 of getting to know you. We are continuing to learn about routines

and expectations.

Books This Week/next week:

Chicka Chicka Boom Boom – Bill Martin Jr.

DW's Guide to Preschool

Franklin goes to school

Small Groups:
Fingerpainting with brown paint to make a tree (Tuesday)

Ripping colored Paper (Wednesday).

Gluing the colored paper onto leaves (Thursday)

The purpose of these small groups are to work on fine motor skills as a pre-requisite

to writing. By making our fine motor skills stronger we will be more ready for other

tasks such as opening our snack.

Centers
-Dramatic Play- Kitchen

-Sensory Table-Sand and sandcastle shapes

-Art Table- coloring

-Blocks- soft foam blocks

-Library- Books about school

- Star Builders

- Rug - Doll Houses

- Table- Batcave

Songs, Word Play, and Letters
5 Little Ducks
ABCs

Happy and You Know it