Pre-Preschooler's Day of Music

Hi Everyone!

Well this week has had more music than any other week here at CHA!  This week we not only made tambourines and egg shakers, but the dancing alone could have caused a reading on a seismograph!  Luckily for us, we have two more days of music madness :)

This morning Ms. Katie (Mr. Tim’s) came to visit us again in the morning, and stayed throughout the day!  It sure is nice having some extra hands for activities :)  We started out using our stampers with colorful inkpads.  We used bunny stamps, butterfly stamps, monument stamps, and many more :)  We read a few big stories as well, as a warm up to our own reading and play.  Ms. Kelsey arrived as we were finishing up our free play with dolls, letters, fake food, buckles and colored blocks and waffle blocks. 

We sat down for curriculum, singing the hello everybody song in our big circle.  We had to sing over the “Hello everybody” part, as we have ten kiddos! :)  We danced with egg shakers and “shakers with handles”, as we danced to our favorite dancing songs; then toned it down a bit with our Lullaby Collection.  Kiddos freely ran to grab their blankets and pillows to “sleep and relax” while laying down :)

Finally, it was time to head outside!  We strapped on our shoes, lined up, counted to 10, and marched outside for some extreme sand play (while children were walking in line, they danced and sang to various songs they recently heard)!

Also, please mark the school closure dates on your calendar.  Teacher In-Service days will be August 29^th, 2012 through September 3^rd, 2012.  We will be preparing our class for the upcoming school year, and looking over our VORTS to help us plan for curriculum :)

Mr. Tim will be taking his vacation tomorrow, at 12 (noon), and will return next week on Monday.  A short staycation at home :)

Have a cool afternoon,

Tim and Kelsey

Pre-Preschools Journal "Dancing = Fun"!!!

Happy Tuesday Everyone!

It’s been a fun Tuesday morning!  We have done a lot in such a short amount of time!

In the morning, we had our early morning art, using colored pencils and our choice of paper.  We made a lot of designs and markings that look like specific letters of the alphabet!  (so the kiddos say :)  Yet, some of the marks look just like letter of the alphabet!  Then we danced, jumped and exercised our loud voices!  We are sure to remind our kiddos that loud screams are for outside, while talking quiet is for inside.   During free play, children chose to use waffle blocks to create long: trains, roads, walking places, etc :)  Dinosaurs were another favorite choice, as were scarves and ribbons for dancing!

After taking our boys and girls potty, we continued our dancing marathon!!!  They must have known, because they came ready for dancing today!  We used tambourines (not the ones we made, as they are still drying), bells, shakers and our bodies to make noise and dance with :)  After a good 20 minutes of dancing our feet tired, we thought a god reward would be a… Buggy Ride!  We only have a couple more weeks of buggy ride time before it starts getting to cold to go all the time :(.  However, once our winter clothes are here, we will be ready to go on them once and awhile still (preferably when the sun is shining:).

On our buggy ride we passed a large stone sculpture of a worm, a basketball court, a soccer practice, and a radar checker (check pictures).  We were apparently going 7mph past the sign :) 

Buggy Remarks/Daily Memories-

Clara- "But I WANT to stand up in the stroller!" Yes, we know :)

Erin- When asked what she wanted to do when our buggy ride was over- "More buggy ride please".

Evie- "My baby rides in my buggy?" 

Grace- "Whoa! That was a fast birdie bird!"

Hailey- "I can push the buggy now. I can practice" (We wouldn't have minded some help with those heavy strollers today! :)

Jackson- "Hi Kelsey, Hi Tim, Hi Buggy ride"

Jane- "Faster, faster. No, FASTER!"

Kyler- "That's my car" pointing to car driving past.

Heading back into class, we chose to use more dancing items (and dancing feet:), fruit and vegetables and books to read for our activity while other went potty and got their beds ready!

We hope you all had a great day!

FYI- Mr. Tim will be taking a short vacation starting  this Thursday @ 12 (noon) through Friday (all day) (AUG 23-24).

Have a great day!

Kelsey and Tim

India and Tigers!

In Kindergarten, this morning’s focus was an introduction to India!  We talked about how India has the second largest population, at over 1 billion people!  We found India on the map in Asia, jutting out into the Indian Ocean.  Then we chose our favorite color and colored a map of India!  When I told the students that the capital is New Delhi, they all laughed at the silly name! 

India’s flag is a deep orange, white, and a dark green, with a blue wheel in the middle.  All of my friends thought the wheel looked like a flower!  As in other flags, each color means something.  In India’s flag the orange means courage, the white peace, and the green faith.  The blue means sky or water, and the wheel represents continued progress or growth.  We really enjoy learning about the flags of each country, and what they mean!  We did our best job coloring our own flags of India! 

This afternoon our focus was on tigers.  The tiger is one of the most well known animals in India.  We looked at pictures of many different tigers on the Internet, while going over some interesting tiger facts!  We also had a tiger drawing lesson!  We drew our own tigers following step-by-step directions and a model on the board.  We thought that this was a little tough, but we all did a great job!  All of our tigers turned out to be wonderfully made!  Here are a few samples of our great work!  

Pre-Preschool's Journey to the Fire Station!!!

Hi Everyone!

We had a creative start to our Monday. After a delicious breakfast of yogurt and granola, we moved into the classroom to sit with “Mr. Tim’s Katie” and sculpt with playdough. Some kiddo’s sculpted their homes, their mommies or daddies and there were even a few “doggies”. After all the playdough and tools were put away the kiddos moved on to some free play. Mr. Tim brought out some blocks and tools from the manipulatives section of our classroom and dolls and kitchen supplies from the dramatic play area. All of the kiddos were getting very excited for our field trip to the Lake Oswego Fire Station so we turned on some music and danced too get our all the wiggles and giggles out.

After a brief dance session we moved on to today’s curriculum. Ms. Kelsey had all the students sit at the table with smocks on to paint paper plates that will later be transformed into homemade tambourines. We used orange, green and blue paint to decorate them. After we put our paint and paint brushes away we moved the carpeted area to build with blocks and play with our stuffed animals until it was time to leave for field trip.

At 9:50 am we put on our shoes and socks and prepared for our walk to the Jean Road Fire Station. All of the children were extra careful on our short walk to the fire station, special thanks to Mrs. Anna, Jackson’s mom, Mrs. Claire, Erin’s mom and Mrs. Cheryl, Evie’s mom who helped us by holding the hands of kiddos who were not using our class’s yellow rope on our walk. Upon arrival at our destination we met our gracious hosts the firemen! We got to learn about the fire trucks and learned that there is a difference between a fire “truck” and a fire “engine”. A few brave kiddo’s sat in the driver’s seat of the fire truck and had their picture taken. Then, the firemen talked about their uniforms, which they told the kiddos may appear scary, but they are just so the firefighters don’t get hurt.  They put on their hats, masks, oxygen tanks, suits and boots to show the kiddos just what they wear!  Overall, it was a blast!  We said goodbye to our firefighters and the fire station, got a few group pictures, and then headed back for lunch!

After snack, we may be able to go outside!  It will be a treat for the kiddos, since last week we had to stay inside to avoid the dreadful heat!

Have a great day!

Katie, Kelsey and Tim

Making Schultuten in Kindergarten

This week in Kindergarten we learned about Germany!  One very special German tradition is the Schultute or "school sack".  This is not really a sack, as much as it is a decorative cone, typically made of cardboard and tissue paper!  The tradition is that students get some special goodies in their schultute from their teacher on the first day of school.  This makes going back to school even more exciting!  This week we worked on making our own schultute.  When they were finished, I secretly slipped in a few pieces of candy for each child to take home!  These were beautiful, and everyone was so excited to take them home and share about the tradition with their parents!