3's--> Letter Toss

     This week we worked on letter recognition.  We have not taught all of our letters yet, but I wanted to see how many we recognized.  Most of our kids know the letters in their name, even though we haven't taught them yet.  And they recognize the "easy" letters- o, s, a, z.  To check these, we played a bean bag game.  The kids took turns tossing the bean bag on to a letter.   They then had to tell us the name of the letter.  If they didn't know it, we'd see if anyone else in the class recognized the letter.  I then repeated the name of the letter and the sound that it made.  Some of the kids were aiming for letters in their name and had fun trying to find the letter on the board.

4's--> Candy Corn Trees

     We made a fun little fall tree using candy corn for our leaves.  The kids had to work hard since we didn't use glue sticks.  They're learning just how much to squeeze the glue so that we don't get a messy tree!

4's--> Turtle Time

     As you know, we have a NEW classmate- Franklin the Turtle.  It ties in perfectly with our current reading series book "La Tortuga" (turtle in Spanish).  To go along with our new friend and turtle story, our fours have been learning about turtles.  We've been playing turtle math games and reading LOTS of non-fiction books.  We've been working on our poster "Turtle Can.... Turtles Have...."  You can see our poster in the hallway- the kids have learned so much already.  This week, we made turtles to help decorate our turtle poster.
     We worked on coloring in the lines and cutting.  This was hard for many of us and we had to do some surgery on our turtles.  Usually it was just one leg that got cut off, but a few of us lost a head too!

3's--> Halloween Party

On Thursday, we had our Halloween Party!  We kicked it off by visiting our neighbors at the high rise apartments.  They LOVED hearing us sing our "Five Little Pumpkins" song and seeing our costumes. They were even nice enough to let us trick-or-treat their tables!  After wards, the fun really began when our mommies, daddies, and grandmas came to visit us.  We had several mommies bring crafts and games and even goodie bags.  Plus we had a delicious Frankenstein snack and juice boxes.

    Thank you so much for all of our wonderful volunteers.  We had so many parents and grandparents who came to our party.  Your help with the crafts and games was amazing.  I didn't have to worry about any of our kids having a hard time assembling their ghosts because of YOU!  Thank you for helping our little ones enjoy their FIRST school holiday party.

3's--> Squishing Colors

     The threes have been learning about fall, pumpkins and the leaves changing colors.  We made a cute little pumpkin painting without using a paint brush!  We used two colors (red and yellow) and made a multi-colored pumpkin.  We were so excited when we realized that red and yellow could make ORANGE!  We placed our pumpkin paper and colors inside a baggie and used our fingers to mix the colors.  It was so neat to move the colors all around the pumpkins and make the pumpkin change.

4's--> Tic Tac Toe

     We've been learning about Daniel and the Lions' Den over the past two weeks.  We've learned that God NEVER leaves us and is always there.  We talked about how Daniel loved God and always prayed and talked to God and that God rewarded him for his prayers.  We finished off our lesson with a friendly game of Tic Tac Toe.  We had to learn what three in a row means!  Many of us that that we could have our "three in a row" in different places!  We also really learned about taking turns with our friends and being friendly winners and gracious losers.  Life lessons that we need long after preschool!

3's--> Leaf Man

     On Thursday, we read Leaf Man by Lois Ehlert.  The kids were really engaged and loved seeing the different creations that the leaves could make.  The favorite page was the leaf cows!  We talked about how leaves change colors and fall to the ground during the season of fall.  This happens because it is too cold for the tree to be able to take care of the leaves.  Then when it starts to warm back up in spring, new leaves grow.

     After recess, we went on a nature walk to make our own leaf creations!  We gathered different color leaves, grass, flower petals- anything that had already fallen off of the plant.  Then we got to work.  We laid out our findings on our paper to make our leaf creations.  Next came the glue....some of us went a little glue crazy!  

     When the leaf creations come home, be sure to ask your child about their creation.  One little boy really wanted his leaf man to wear underwear!  Another child has a pancake on the leaf man.  One leaf man has bumps on the head that make perfect eyes and nose!  They're creation and imagination were definitely working during this story and craft!

4's--> Turtle Roll

This week, we started a new story in our reading series, La Tortuga.  It's a Mexican story about a turtle who plays the flute.  The kids seem to love the music that goes along with the story!  Yesterday we worked on our number recognition and counting by playing Turtle Roll.  We rolled super BIG dice and counted the dots.  Then we had to find the matching number on our turtle.  It was a friendly competition between us and a partner to see who filled up the number dots first.  We had a blast!

3's-->Triangles

     We finished off our triangle unit by making triangle hats!  The kids loved cutting out their triangle pictures- pizza slice, sandwich, and pie!  We've been learning that a triangle has 3 sides and 3 points or corners.