Happy Fall!

 Dear Mom,
Happy Fall! It's officially time for apples, pumpkins, chilly breezes and...leaves! Fall is Ms. Marianne's favorite season and we're going to celebrate it in full style these next few weeks. :)

First off, I thought you'd like to see pictures of what we do on a daily basis in preschool. When we first get to the classroom, we have an activity set up on our desks that allows us to practice fine motor skills, like cutting & pasting, handwriting or working with a manipulative like pattern blocks or play dough. This week, we got to practice making our numbers out of fun colors of play dough. We rolled, pulled apart and smashed together the dough as we covered the templates we were given. When we finished one number, we were allowed to trade with a friend to try another one.

Pattern blocks are one of our favorite things to "play" with. We've learned AB, ABB, AAB and ABC patterns so far and are practicing making them with our favorite colors.


We also love to put together color puzzles and read books from our library that are all about what we're studying. It's fun to trade places with Ms. Marianne and read to her, or read to ourselves or our friends. Books are the best!

 Once our activity time is up, we put our materials away and gather on the carpet for circle time. Each of us gets our own rug that give us enough space just for us so that we can all be comfortable. Whoever is called on to be the calendar helper gets to go to the front, hold the flag and lead us in the Pledge of Allegiance. Everyone wants this job! We're getting so good at remembering the words and saying them clearly out loud.

Once we're done saying the Pledge of Allegiance, the calendar helper leads us in singing the Days of the Week song (to the tune of The Addams Family) and we say the full date together a few times. We especially love to yell "2013!". I think it's because it's the only part of the date that never changes! (for now anyway...)We study the calendar and tell which day was yesterday, today and tomorrow. This helps us to recognize the names of the days and also to know the order they go in. To understand place value, we add one more colored stick to our ones bag and count the bundles of ten and then individual ones in each respective bag to see how many days we've been in school. For 26, our most recent day, it's two bundles of ten and six more ones. We practice counting to 25 forward and backwards. When we get back to zero, we get to blast off as a rocket or a firework and zoom around the room. Soon, we'll be going all the way up to 50!

The calendar helper also gets to point out the letters on our "Letter We Know" wall. We say the name of the letter and the sound that it makes as we act out the sound with our bodies- like slithering as a snake for /s/. We also say the names of all the pictures on our "Letter of the Week" wall to help us recognize the beginning sound of those words and how it corresponds to the letter we're learning. For example- this week we learned about the letter Ll. On our Ll wall we had love, ladybug, lizard, etc. For each picture, we'd say "Love starts with /l/, Ll! Ladybug starts with /l/ Ll! Lizard starts with /l/ Ll!" and on and on until we've pointed to each picture. We're also learning sight words now. So far, we have learned 'no', 'like', 'look', 'I' and 'a'. Each week we'll learn one or two more, as well as practicing the number words and color names. These words show up in our sentences that we read each week on our pocket chart. This helps us to understand that we move from left to right with each word we say when reading. It's neat to see the smiles on each others' faces as we practice reading!

Finally, we read the story or other piece of literature that Ms. Marianne has for the day. We practice predicting what comes next, retelling and sequencing the events of the story or poem and talking about what we liked and didn't like. This is a great time for us to practice raising our hands, taking turns and respecting each others' time to share. Some days are better than others with this! :) Our favorite story this week was Leaf Man, by Lois Ehlert. This book is so neat! Each page's illustration is created with various fall leaves. The fun is in figuring out what each picture is and how it relates to the text on the page, which tells us of the possible jouneyings of Leaf Man. Did you see my Leaf Man that I created? I told Ms. Marianne what journey my Leaf Man took and she wrote it and pasted the paper on the back of my art. Telling my own stories is important and allows me to realize that I can be a writer too, just like you!

After calendar time, we wash up to have a snack and a few minutes of socializing time with our friends. After we clean up, it's time for music! We sing a new song each week that corresponds with what theme we're studying or a book that we've read. We also have Music Moments where we listen to a piece of classical music and get to dance around to it. We definitely love music time :) Our special song this week was "The Leaves are Falling One by One" (to the tune of the Ants Go Marching). Ms. Marianne played her piano while we sang and looked at the pictures of the book she had with the song words in it. "And they all go falling down, to the ground, fly-ing in the wind. Fly! Fly! Fly!"

Math and science times come next, which consist of practicing number recognition and correspondence (moving one item for each count) projects like cooking, outdoor games and more songs. This week, we had a science exploration about the season of fall. We closed our eyes while we touched and smelled things that Ms. Marianne brought in that are signs of fall. Then we shared with our friends what was in the bag we were given. There were things like Indian corn, pumpkins, pinecones, Mums (flowers), apples and- of course- leaves. We read some non-fiction books about fall and the changes that come with it like cooler weather, rain, wind, leaf color changes and harvesting of vegetables & fruits.

Finally, we complete any art projects we're working on. These are the pretty things you see come home each week that go along with our theme or letter of the week. This time it was our Welcome Fall signs. We painted coffee filters with the fall colors we learned about on Tuesday- red, yellow, brown (and some touches of green and purple). I got really messy!! But I wore my special art apron that protected my clothes. Sadly, the carpet wasn't so lucky... oh well! :) We left them to dry and Ms. Marianne cut them into leaf shapes that night. We glued them onto our signs the next day so we could have a fun decoration for home. Where did you hang mine?

 

Our next theme is Apples. This week will be all about apples, from the life cycle of an apple to making apple pie! A few things to consider for homework: what types of apples are there? What's my favorite type of apple?

One last thing: the next few weeks after this one will be Pumpkins and Halloween themed. Each of us will need a small (empty) tissue box that we can use for an art project by Tuesday, October 22 and we will be visiting a local pumpkin patch on Thursday, October 24- during our normal preschool hours. I'm so excited!

Love,

Your Child

and

Ms. Marianne