Things were sweet in preschool this week. Our theme was Gingerbread! We read about, made and ate this yummy treat.
We studied the elements of a story: Title/ author/ illustrator; Characters: Plot: Setting: Problem & Solution. Our books were: Maisy Makes Gingerbread by Lucy Cousins, The Gingerbread Man, (a classic fairy tale) The Gingerbread Girl by Lisa Campbell Ernst and Gingerbread Baby by Jan Brett. Throughout each story, we discussed each of these elements and used our best comprehension skills to predict what would happen next. It was so fun to read all the stories and find all their differences and similarities- especially on the Gingerbread character stories! The endings of each of the three Gingerbread Character stories were very different, and sometimes our predictions were pretty off :) but we discussed what happened and who was right in what they predicted and then compared the endings to the other stories that we'd read. 
After reading Maisy Makes Gingerbread, we took to the kitchen with aprons on and made our own gingerbread dough, using a recipe. We measured and mixed and it came together beautifully! On the next day, after reading The Gingerbread Man story, we rolled out the dough and used cutters to cut the dough into gingerbread men, which we decorated with raisins. Once they were ready to bake, we warned them that they'd better not run away! Then we put them into the oven and watched them bake. They got all puffy as they baked, and we became anxious that they'd run away when we opened the door. Ms. Marianne cracked it a little and we heard a voice say "Let me out!". We were so surprised! After laughing because each time she'd open the door we'd hear it again, Ms. Marianne helped us to count down from 10 to 0 and then she quickly opened the oven door and pulled the pan of gingerbread men out. She promised us that if she worked fast enough, they'd stay put on the pan to cool. So she moved really fast! After they'd cooled enough, we got to eat our gingerbread men. :) yum yum! We thought it was great fun to say what body part we were going to bite off next. Our favorite seemed to be the top of the gingerbread's head- after which we'd show off its "brains" inside. hahaha!
We also did a great science experiment where we asked "What would happen if the Gingerbread Man had fallen into the water?" We discussed the Scientific Method and went through all the steps to finish our experiment. We created a hypothesis (we thought it would float!); tested our hypothesis & gathered data through the experiment (putting the gingerbread into the water dish and watching what happened) and then analyzed our data to come to a conclusion. Our conclusion was that if the Gingerbread Man had fallen into the water and gotten wet, he would have sunk to the bottom of the water, become soggy and fallen apart! We loved this experiment- especially being able to poke at the poor gingerbread we put into the water dish. :)
Since the stories we read were all about Gingerbread running away and not being caught, we practiced "catching" gingerbread in an activity where we reviewed our letter names and sounds and then focused on segmentation, blending and beginning sounds of words. Ms. Marianne is so pleased with our progress! She was excited at how well we were able to hear the beginning sounds of the CVC (consonant / vowel / consonant) words she segmented with us. We each kept as many as we could properly identify, otherwise they got away and we had to try again. One of us caught 7 gingerbread! Wow!
Our letter of the week was (you guessed it!) Gg. It was a little tricky because the /g/ sound we learned was not the first sound in gingerbread, our weekly theme! We acted out the /g/ sound by being gorillas pounding our chests as we said "/g/, /g/, /g/!" This, of course, was great fun and silliness and caused loads of laughter, every time we practiced it! We each also got a chance to work with Ms. Marianne in tracing the capital G and lowercase g, both of which are trickier letters than most. Worksheets also helped us practice listening for the /g/ sound at the beginning of the names of pictures and also writing the letter itself. We also did an activity sheet where we had 3 letter choices for the beginning sound of a picture's name, and we acted as detectives who had to figure out which letter was at the beginning. Ms. Marianne kept this paper for our portfolios so we could see again and again how well we're doing. It's neat to be in our classroom and hearing everyone saying the names over and over again, emphasizing the beginning sound. It's a little noisy, but so awesome to listen to and realize that we're all really beginning to 'get' it!
This week held our 50th day of preschool. Can you believe we're there already?!? We worked really hard on counting by tens this week in preschool. We are learning to mark the tens on our fingers as we count to 100. It's a little confusing because we think we're counting to ten, not by tens on our fingers, but we're beginning to understand and get it right! Place value is a very important skill to master, and we're working hard on it!
Next week is our last week of school for 2013. We've been singing a new song every day during Calendar Time that helps us learn the names of the Months of the Year. It's going to be interesting to see how we handle the turnover of the new year! We're so set in saying the date ending in "2013" and now we're going to have to learn 2014 :) We've also been using our detective skills to find the letters we've learned in the names of the 12 months. We'll continue with a few more gingerbread activities and incorporate some Christmas themed arts and crafts and stories next week. Our letter will be Ww, because Winter is starting on Saturday, December 21, the first day of our two week Winter Break! Remember to mark our calendar, because school resumes Tuesday, January 7, 2014!
Love,
Your Child
and
Ms. Marianne
