Happy Saturday! Sorry about the delay. The Giraffes finished our Apple unit this week. We practiced using descriptive language as we talked about the apples. Some of the words we chose to describe apples were juicy, smooth, wet, and hard. Our letter of the week was E. The "Eh" sound is tricky and can be easily confused with "Ah" for A.

This week look for opportunities to find things with sounds from letters A - E. This can be one way to make grocery shopping more engaging.
"What do ah-ah-apples start with?"
"Can you find any b-b-broccoli?"
"I spot some c-c-corn!"
"I wish I could have a d-d-donut..."
"How many e-e-eggs do you see?"

We don't want to confuse kids by emphasizing beginning sounds of words all of the time, but it can be very effective when we are training their ears to hear specific sounds. This is a prime time in their life to start these activities. As the year goes on, you will need to emphasize the sounds less as the students begin to do it more independently.


Scroll through our pictures to see some of our fun learning activities!

Students enjoy playing interactive learning games on the computer. The alphabet train

 is one of their favorites! The computer also give them a chance to practice 

taking turns and talking to each other with a clear communication goal.

The children really enjoy playing on our race track. They are

using a lot of imaginative play as they pretend to give each other gas for their 

cars and talk about different scenarios for each car. Even though it was not really about

apples - this was a great new free play activity that we started this week.

The students love going on picture hunts around the room!

This is great for their vocabulary development.

Letter Match-up Apple Picking!

The students were challenged to pick an apple

with a letter on it and find its basket. 

We used this game to work on letter identification and 

letter sounds for A - E. 

We have been talking about how apples can be red, green, or yellow. 

Students were given these colors to paint their own apples for a 

class apple tree.

Students were give the letter E this week to turn into elephants!

We love the fall weather!

The students enjoy playing matching games.

It's a nice quiet game for sleepy mornings.

At the end of Jesus time, Ms. Cari likes to ask the students 

if they had anything special they wanted to talk about. 

Some students showed her their boo-boos, 

while others wanted to show a silly face. 

God loves us, whether we are silly, happy, mad, or confused. 

This week we have been talking about how Jesus prayed too - 

just like us! God loves to talk to us! This week the students

thought about what they would like to tell God, and we practiced 

telling him how we feel.

Check us out again next week!

Happy Friday!It has been a fun week in the Giraffe class as we started learning about apples! We learned that apples start as little seeds that we have to plant in the ground and cover with dirt. We learned that the seeds need water and sunshine to grow into big, strong apple trees. The kids had fun enacting the life of the seed as it grew into an apple tree. We also learned about the letter D this week as we identified things that start with the sound "duh."

Scroll through our pictures to see some of our fun learning activities!

This week we practiced matching the letters of our name by gluing apples on a tree. The students were responsible for matching the letter on the apple with the letter on the tree and coloring the apples. They did an excellent job!

 

 

This week we explored the smell, feel, and color of apples.

One way that we did this was by using apples (cut in half) as stamps.

The students had red, yellow, and green paint to remind them of the

most common colors of apples.

 

 Naptime is from 12:30pm - 3pm. Students are allowed to sit in the library

quietly to look at books after 2pm if they wake up on their own.

It's great to see how much they enjoy looking at the stories. Some students are

starting to imitate reading using the pictures as a guide - which is awesome!

 

 

We did not let rain get us down this week! We explored the indoor recess toys in the Gym. The kids loved running and jumping on the mats.

 

 

Free paint can be a creative way to focus energy on something calming.

We were impressed with how much time the students spent on their artwork.

 

 

Q-Tip painting the letter D. The students are starting to get the hang of this activity.

 

 

We love to shake our sillies out!

 

 

Painting is such a fun way to work on pre-writing skills!

Students painted the letter D.

Oh no! Ms. Tremmel hid letters around the room!

The students had to help find them and say their name.

 

This week we have continued to talk about prayer.

 In the bible, God answered Hannah's prayer to have a baby.

We learned how Hannah was so happy for her blessing that she

had her baby, Samuel, grow up in the church as a sign of her gratitude.

We thank God for our many blessings that he has given us each day.

We are thankful for all of our preschool families, and pray that God

continues to shine his blessings upon you.

 

See you next week!

 

 

 

 

 

Happy Friday! Can you believe it's September? This week the class theme was "Friends Through Faith" again. This is such an important topic that we wanted to spend extra time on it! We talked about kind ways to play with each other and help each other. The students enjoyed playing group games that required them to share and take turns. This week our focus letter was C. We found pictures of things that start with C and make the "Cuh" sound. We focused on numbers 0 - 5, looking for ways that we can build the numbers, count them, and trace them.

Check out this week's pictures!

Did someone say recess?!

 

 

 Snack time!

 

 

 

C is for Cat! Meow!

Ms. Tremmel helped them with the glue this time and the students counted out how many ears, eyes and noses they needed. They were also responsible for placing each feature on the glue to turn the C into a cat.

 

Mat Man! Building Mat Man together helps us gain a better sense of body awareness. As we develop more control of our fine motor skills, we will work on drawing Mat Man. 

 

 

We love working on puzzles!

 

 

The students enjoyed sorting beads and making bracelets this week.

 

 

On Wednesday we enjoyed the outdoors for centers. We traced the students and let them turn their outlines in clowns (another c word!). They added a big smile, a silly nose, eyes, and lots of poofy hair. We practiced on Tuesday by making clowns on paper using crayons, pom-poms, and yarn.

 

 

 

We are starting to see improvement on our sticker tracing sheets! Some friends still need guidance to help them trace the numbers and letters, but that will come with time.

 

 

 

This week we read the story Rainbow Fish which talks about friends sharing with each other. To remind us of the story we made fish with our names on them and colored in the letters to give the fish rainbow scales. The students were responsible for matching the letters on the scales to the letters on the fish.

 

 

 

We had a lot of dance parties this week! It's a great way to get the wiggles out before naptime!

 

 

 Painting time!

We enjoyed mixing colors and

being creative as we painted

the number 5 and letter C to end our week on Friday!

 

 Have a good Labor Day weekend! See you Tuesday :)