Welcome to Mrs. Douglas Full Day Preschool Class at Zion Lutheran School!

Welcome back to school!  I am excited to introduce another new aide in our class!  Mrs. Jenny Buchholz! 

                                      

Mrs. Buchholz has two daughters, a 9th grader at Lutheran High St. Charles and a 7th grader here at Zion.  She and her family just moved back to St. Louis this fall after two years in Baltimore where her husband Kurt worked for Lutheran World Relief.  Now he works for Lutheran Hour Ministries.  Kurt and Jenny met at Concordia Irvine, and married after they
graduated in 1992.  The next year, they went to Taiwan with a short-term
mission program; later they became career missionaries with LCMS World
Mission.  They worked primarily at a middle school there and then with an
elementary school/kindergarten, teaching English using Bible stories.

 In 2001, they returned to the States, where Kurt worked at the World Mission offices.  Jenny stayed at home with their young daughters, and later worked as a preschool aide at CCLS where the girls went to school.  Jenny was a missionary kid herself (from Taiwan), but moved to Minnesota when she was nine.  Her passion is reading, especially children's literature.  She enjoys hiking, camping, and sewing.  She is currently working on a blog, typing up letters my grandmother wrote her parents from China where they were missionaries in the 40's and 50's.

We are thankful for Mrs. Buchholz!  Please be sure to welcome her to our Full Day class when you get the chance.     

We checked in this morning using the estimation jars.  The children refined their comparing skills as they predicted which jar had more bears.  They then wrote their name and prediction.  At good-bye time we counted to see if our predictions were correct!  This activity not only helps comparing and counting skills, but it also helps practice writing and recognizing numbers!  This is the new way we will check in each day!

We enjoyed measuring ourselves next to the penguin to see who is taller!  

We enjoyed playing office in our new dramatic play area.  Dramatic play provides an opportunity for language development as well as social/emotional development.

Bryson used the phone to practice recognizing letters on the texting pad.

During small group time played a rhyming game on the SMARTboard.  Rhyming is a skill that lays a strong foundation for future reading.

We explored snow!  We used our senses to explore and describe how the snow feels, smells, tastes, looks, and sounds.  This activity is not only a great sensory exploration, but it also encourages expressive language development.

We sorted mittens by letter or number.  This activity provides an opportunity to practice recognizing letters and numbers as well as begin to notice some differences between the two. 

We also webbed what we know about weather.  This weeks begins our weather project.  We will use the project approach throughout our investigation of weather just like we used the project approach during our car project.  If you want to learn more about the project approach, click HERE.

We used chalk and blue paper to express creativity through our artwork.

During small group time, we worked with Mrs. Buchholz making patterns.  We made the patterns with beads that we put on raw spaghetti noodles in play dough.  (This is another way to refine fine motor strength as well!)

We enjoyed some indoor recess time with Mrs. Mudd's class! 

     During Jesus time we learned more about when Jesus was a boy.  We learned that his parents lost Him for a few days while on a trip!  It turns out that Jesus was teaching in the temple!  We learned that God protected Jesus while He was apart from His parents.  We learned that God gives us the greatest protection-the protection from sin, death, and the power of the devil through His death and resurrection on the cross! 

     One of our friends said, “Jesus at my church is still dead.  He is dead on the cross hanging in my church.”  We discussed how that cross is like a picture taken when Jesus died, but He isn’t dead now.  We talked about how if we make a sad face for a picture, that doesn’t mean we are sad all the time.  We then checked our bible to see the picture of Jesus when He died and the picture of when He rose again.  His resurrection is the most important part of our salvation!