A Pre-Kindergarten Academic and Activity Rich Preschool Program

Sunday, February 15, 2015

"Our Body" and Valentines Day Party

Our theme for the month of February is "Our Body." During the first week of the month we focused on our 5 senses: smell, sight, hearing, taste, and touch. We used blindfolds to use our senses to guess a variety of objects. Tuesday we used our sense of smell to guess peanut butter, chocolate chips, goldfish crackers, and bananas. The girls did great with their sense of smell. On Wednesday we used our sense of touch to guess objects, and Thursday we used our sense of hearing (that one was the hardest for them!). 

Smell


Touch

Hearing
 


We have some great worksheets for the "Our Body" theme. We also completed a few fun art projects like our flower necklaces (we like to smell flowers),  texture hands, and paper plate tambourines. 




On our focus wall we have had "R, 11, and pentagon" and the next week, "S, 12 and heart." We are continuing to practice beginning sounds and sounding out words. We have also talked about the different parts of our bodies and colored a few organs in preparation for our big body diagram! This month we are learning a song about our body. It goes like this: (Row, Row, Row your Boat tune)

My body works so well,
It helps me every day!
Five senses to help me learn, 
explore and to play.

Smell, hear, touch and see
Taste will teach me too. 
Nose, ears, hands and eyes,
My mouth helps me chew. 

Inside my body true
They’re working really all the time.
Lungs, heart, stomach, brain,
They keep me living prime. 

Kidneys, liver, intestines,
esophagus and bones. 
Each of them play a part 
My body’s all my own! 
I love how they say "esophagus" :) 




We had a fun Valentines Day party on Thursday. We ate rice krispy treats and passed out Valentines. We made adorable heart hats, they turned out so cute! We had a fun list of games to play, too: ABC matching, paint the number heart, heart race (for this one the girls had to fill a spoon with paper hearts, carefully race across the room to put them in another bowl and go back for more until they had transferred all the hearts in their bowl), pom pom toss, and a caterpillar heart craft. 









Monday, February 2, 2015

Finishing Our Animal Theme

We have had a great time learning about animals this month! 
The last two weeks of January we studied fish and reptiles. We've completed worksheets that helped us learn to classify animals and read lots of books about reptiles, sharks and other ocean creatures. We used animal flashcards to identify mammals, birds, fish and reptiles. We made some fun animal art projects, too. 

During our "week of fish" we learned another verse to our song:
"Fish have fins and are covered in scales. 
They swim in the water and breathe with their gills.
Fish say 'glub glub'
Fish say 'glub glub'
Move like a fish! Move like a fish!
Now dance like a fish! Dance like a fish!

We identified fish during worksheet time and made shark hats and fish bowls for art. 



During reptile week we made paper plate snakes and turtles who retract into their shells. Throughout the month we've been working on our "animal book" and were able to finish it last week while learning about reptiles. 
The reptile verse we learned goes like this:
"Reptiles use their lungs to breathe.
They have claws on their feet and use the sun for heat.
Snakes say 'Ssssss'
Alligators say 'chomp chomp'!
Move like a snake! Move like a snake!
Now dance like a turtle! Dance like a turtle!"






In addition to our fun animal theme we continue to work on letters, numbers, shapes, calendar, etc. I'm impressed with the improvement the girls have made with their handwriting. We are starting to work on sounding out simple words during our morning routine. These girls are getting smart! 

When our focus letter for the week was "P" we ate popcorn during snack time and ate pink pretzels another day!