Thursday, March 28th school will dismiss at 12:00.  Please pack your child a sack lunch on this day as there is no school lunch program, but we will still eat lunch before the end of the day.

There is no school March 29th-April 5th for Easter Break. (Happy Easter!) We will return to school on Monday, April 8th. 

Spring Conferences are coming up on April 22nd and 23rd.  Although Spring conferences are optional, they are a great time to discuss your child's individual growth throughout the year.  Please check your e-mail for more information about Spring conferences.  Thank you! 

We had yet another great day in school!  

Check out what we did today!

We started the day walking to chapel.  We learned all about Easter and how Jesus not only died, but he rose again to save us!  He loves us so much!  We practiced telling others about His love!

We played Tricky Mouse this morning.  The students LOVE this game!  As we play the game, the children are working on recognizing letters and the sounds that go with the letters.  Learning the letters and their corresponding sounds is a pre-reading skill! 

We matched upper and lower case letter eggs today.  This activity helps the children to recognize the correlation between upper and lower case.  

We practiced number recognition, counting, and one to one correspondence as we recognized the number written on the Easter egg, and counted the same amount of jewels to place in the egg. Counting, number recognition, and one to one correspondence are all valuable foundational math skills!

We continued to work on our city.  The children have great ideas of how to decorate and run the city!  As they play in the city, the children are learning valuable social skills!  They are also practicing number recognition as they read how many students can go in each building.  As you can imagine, there are times when more children are in a building than our rules allow.  Helping the children to resolve these issues by posing questions that allow them to find their own resolution will foster problem solving skills as well as valuable conflict resolution skills.  They practiced problem solving skills as they worked to resolve conflicts in the city in a positive way.  

We also worked in the writing center today.  Even if the children are not writing, they are strengthening their fine motor skills through coloring, removing stickers, cutting, and gluing.  Strong fine motor skills are necessary for the children to be successful writers.

We worked cooperatively in the block center creating various structures too! 

I also worked individually with the children on assessments.  Assessments are a valuable tool that allow us to see areas of strength and areas for growth! 

Happy First Day of Spring!  It doesn't feel much like Spring outside, but we had a great day in school nonetheless! 

Thursday, March 28th school will dismiss at 12:00.  Please pack your child a sack lunch on this day as there is no school lunch program, but we will still eat lunch before the end of the day.

There is no school March 29th-April 5th for Easter Break. We will return to school on Monday, April 8th. 

 Check out what we did!

The children continued to explore letters and their sounds independently in the writing center!  Exploring letters and taking an interest in them is a valuable pre-reading skill! 

We practiced recognizing letters again as we played the Tricky Mouse game.  This game helps the children recognize letters and continues to work on letter to sound matching. The children love this game!

We went to chapel and learned more about Palm Sunday!  We went for a Hosanna parade around the church!! 

When we came back to the classroom, I played my guitar and sang some songs with the children.  

Mr. Debrick, our school Principal, came to inspect the city we built. We have discussed as we worked on the city that the buildings aren't safe for us unless they pass an inspection.  Mr. Debrick was so kind as to come and be our city inspector!  

 We told him all about the different buildings in our city.  

We thought it was so funny when Mr. Debrick went inside the house to check and be sure it is safe! We are blessed at Zion with a great Principal! 

Praise God!  Our city passed inspection!!  We can now safely play in our city.

We all love Mr. Debrick, so we lined up to give him hugs before he left our room! The children are building relationships with adults which is a valuable social skill!

Now that our city passed inspection, we discussed how many people should be allowed in each building.  The children tested it out by going in each building in small groups and providing ideas of how many people in each.

"I think only one person should go in Chick-Fil-A, look how small it is!"

"We can fit four in the house because there are three of us in there right now, but there is room for one more.  Just one more." 

"Preschool tower can probably only fit two.  If there was more than two, it might get too crazy." 

As the children brainstorm how many people will fit in each building, they are practicing self-regulation.   They are also practicing counting and logical thinking as they determine how many people will fit in each building.  

We then made signs for the various buildings.  As we made the signs, we practiced writing and sounding out words! 

We then began to decorate the buildings!  

Children learn through experiences.  Bella was having difficulty getting the fabric to stay on the house.  I asked her what she thinks could make it stay.

"Probably tape." 

We tried tape, but sadly found out that the tape did not stick very well.

I said to Bella, "We could try the stapler or we could try the super sticky tape."   

"Well, maybe we need that super sticky tape."  

I did could not find any more super sticky tape, so tomorrow we are going to try and see if that works better.  Offering children possible solutions without solving the issue for them allows children to develop problem solving skills, confidence, and positive learning experiences!

We stamped with jelly rings today!  What fun! This activity helps the children to not only express themselves with creative artwork, but also provides an opportunity to refine those fine motor skills!

We practiced writing in the writing center.  The children are developing as writers! 

 We continued to practice counting and number recognition in the block center.  I placed various papers with numbers on the papers.  The children worked together to recognize the number and make a tower containing that many blocks! The children worked collaboratively to ensure that they counted correctly.  They are also learning valuable social skills!