October 31-November 3 Scholastic Book Fair
THIS WEEK’S LITERACY EXPERIENCES
Morning Books
The Kissing Hand Audrey Penn
Pete the Cat I Love My White Shoes Eric Litwin
What Shall We Do With the Boo-Hoo Baby? Cressida Cowell
Afternoon Books
Froggy Went a-Courtin’ Iza Trapani
PLANNING & RECALL
For only being a few days into the preschool routine, the children are catching on to the planning process quickly. They are becoming familiar with all the interest areas throughout the classroom which include: the sand and water table, the car and train area, the book and music area, the kitchen and home living area, and the block and toy area. By planning consistently every day, children remember plans they made on previous days. They have a chance not only to deliberately plan what they would like to play with based on their interests, but it is also becomes a social opportunity as many of them plan similarly to other children. This week, children will use letter link symbols to take turns pointing to the area in which they would like to work.
BIBLE LESSON
Last week in our Bible lesson we learned that our beautiful world was created by God in six days. Everything he made was perfect, without sin. God rested from everything he had made on the seventh day. This week we’ll look more in depth on the special creatures God created on day six—humans. God created a man, Adam, in the image of God, shaped from the dirt of the ground. The image of God does not mean that Adam resembled God in appearance, since God is a spirit. This divine image means a special knowledge of God as the source of every blessing. It also means that Adam was holy, or without sin, just as God is holy. God put Adam above all the animals he created. As Adam named the animals he noticed that every animal had a mate, but he was without one. God caused Adam to fall into a deep sleep and God created a helper suitable for him—a woman named Eve, whom he formed using a rib from Adam’s side. Adam and Eve became husband and wife and lived in perfection in the wonderful garden of Eden God created.
MUSIC
This week the children will continue to explore how voices can make different sounds. Children have discovered that we can sing, speak, whisper, or shout—changing the volume and tone of the sounds they make. This week we are using the song “Pat-a-Cake” to explore vocal sounds in different ways. Adding movements and gestures to the song also gives children a chance to practice large motor skills.
MOVEMENT
The children enjoy the chance they have to dance and stretch to music. Last week we practiced listening to the words in the music and freezing when the music told us to freeze. It definitely takes practice for the children to learn to control their bodies when the music stops. We will continue to dance to the song “Dance Freeze” this week and add the new song “Song about Slow, Song about Fast.” These new songs add the element of tempo and speed to our dancing.
SMALL GROUP TIME
Each week during Small Group Time, children have the chance to engage in a hands-on learning experience, chosen by the teacher. The teacher chooses experiences based on the children’s interests which also meets one of the Key Developmental Indicators (KDI). The KDI for this week is part-whole relationships. Children combine and separate, compose and decompose quantities of objects. As they create and rearrange sets of things, they discover that a whole can be divided into parts, and that these parts can be recombined again to make a whole. This basic understanding is an important concept in mathematical development, which will lead children to use numbers with ease and flexibility. The materials we are using this week to explore part-whole relationships include unifix cubes, shells, and beans as we create towers, rearrange, sort, combine, and separate.
AFTERNOON EXPERIENCES
After rest time, the children will continue to explore a KDI that we did last week during small group—fine motor skills. Children will use geoboards to stretch rubber bands into patterns, we’ll sort buttons and marbles as we work on fine motor skills as well as the part-whole relationship concept, and on Friday we’ll have a chance to work with scissors as we snip pieces of paper.
