Faith Lutheran Preschool eNews: Newsletter 11/27/13

Important Dates to Remember:
November 28-29 – No Preschool (Thanksgiving Break)
December 20 – Noon Dismissal; Christmas Service at 6:30PM

THIS WEEK’S LITERACY EXPERIENCES
Morning Books
"Little Blue and Little Yellow" by Leo Lionni
"The Snowy Day" by Ezra Jack Keats
"Bear Says Thanks" by Karma Wilson and Jane Chapman

Afternoon Books
"Chicka, Chicka, Boom, Boom" by Bill Martin Jr. and John Archambault

PLANNING & RECALL
This week during planning and recall time, a bean bag was tossed to each child when it was their turn to share. Planning and recall time has now become part of each child’s daily routine at preschool. They have had practice doing it for a month and it’s easy to see their excitement when it is their turn to share with the other children their plans for work time. During work time, children often refer to their plans with comments like, “I planned to go to the water table first,” or “I’m changing my plan to the kitchen area now.” This intentional thinking will continue to develop as time goes on.

BIBLE LESSON
God gave a very important promise to a man named Abraham. God planned to send his Son Jesus to be the Savior of the world – and he would come from Abraham’s family line. Abraham had no children and wondered how God’s promise would be fulfilled. God took Abraham outside to look at the night sky and promised him, “Count the stars, if you can. That’s how many people I will make come from your family.” And Abraham believed God’s promise. Abraham and his wife Sarah were very old when one day three visitors stopped by their tent. One was the Lord himself, and two were angels. After Abraham washed his guests’ feet and provided food for them, the Lord told Abraham that at this time the next year, his wife Sarah would have a son. Sarah, who had been listening from inside the tent, laughed when she heard this. The Lord responded by saying that nothing is too hard for God and restating his promise that Abraham and Sarah would have a son in a year. When the year was over, God kept his promise and gave Abraham and Sarah the blessing of a son, whom they named Isaac, just as God told them to do. Abraham and Sarah rejoiced in the promise and fulfilled promise of a son, just as they rejoiced in God’s promise to send his Son Jesus. We too rejoice in knowing that nothing is too hard for God, and that God keeps all his promises to us.

MUSIC
Children have been practicing rests in music like you find in the song B-I-N-G-O. Another aspect to rhythm in music besides sound and silence is the duration of notes. Some notes are sung for a longer amount of time than other notes, and some silences are longer than others. This week’s new song is called “White Sand”. This song contains notes that are held longer than others, and to help us realize that, we move our arms to match the longer notes. This week we also started to learn the song we’ll be singing in the Christmas program with grades K-2 called “Come See the Baby”.

MOVEMENT
Instead of ribbons, this week we are using bean bags during movement time. We have enjoyed exploring with our bean bags and finding different spots on our bodies where we can balance them. Some of the places we've tried are our heads, arms, legs, feet, shoulders, and faces. It’s also been a movement challenge as we try to march around to the song “Bean Bag Parade”, while balancing the bean bag on the tops of our heads. The second song we’re doing this week is “We’re Moving Around” where we explore different movements with our legs such as lifting our knees high to march, sliding our feet along the ground, hopping, galloping, kicking, and tip toeing.

SMALL GROUP TIME
The KDI for this week’s small group activities is counting. Children enjoy counting and comparing the number of objects, people, actions, and events in their lives. When they practice counting they begin to construct rules of counting—things like only one number goes with each thing being counted (one-to-one correspondence), counting goes in a fixed order, and the last number they say means how many (the total). At the preschool level, errors in counting order are common. Typically children learn the sequence from one to five but then mix up the numbers that follow. The more they develop and practice, the more children accurately construct the “rules” of counting. This week we place circular manipulatives onto dot cards, counted pom-poms to drop in cups, and explored with dominoes.

AFTERNOON EXPERIENCES
After rest time, the children explore the KDI art. Children have a chance to experiment with different arts mediums and explore their creative side. Some of things we've done with art this week include marble painting, painting with watercolors—on paper and on snow, and using scissors, glue, and markers to create pictures.