Faith Lutheran Preschool eNews: Newsletter 1/22/14

Important Dates to Remember:
February 7 - School Art Fair; 6:30PM
February 15 - Preschool Open House for the community; 10AM-1PM

THIS WEEK’S LITERACY EXPERIENCES
Morning Books
"Panda Bear, Panda Bear, What Do You See?" by Bill Martin Jr.
"Whistle For Willie" by Ezra Jack Keats
"The Ugly Duckling" by Rachel Isadora

Afternoon Books
"Skip To My Lou" by Nadine Bernard Westcott

PLANNING & RECALL
To tie in our work with balls in Movement time, we use balls this week for planning time. Planning does not have to be an extravagant ordeal. Sometimes using simple methods like rolling a ball to a child when it is their turn, helps them focus more on sharing their plan than being distracted by the planning tool.

BIBLE LESSON
Joseph became a very important ruler in Egypt, the man in charge of gathering and storing enough food for the years of famine in the land. Joseph's family lived in a land where there was little food to eat during these years. One day they traveled to Egypt to buy some food. Joseph immediately recognized these men as his brothers, but instead of revealing his identity, he wanted to see if they had changed. He gave them some grain but made them promise to return with their youngest brother Benjamin if they ever wanted to buy more grain. Before long, their first supply of grain ran out. They returned to Egypt with Benjamin to buy some more. This time when he sent them away with more grain, Joseph planted one of his silver cups in one of the brother's sacks of grain. He sent his servant after the brothers to get the silver cup. The brothers denied having the cup and vowed that if it was found, the brother in whose sack it was found, would die and the rest of the brothers would become Joseph's slaves. Sure enough, the cup was found in Benjamin's sack. The brother's threw themselves on the ground before Joseph, willing to work for him the rest of their lives. They realized their wickedness in selling their brother Joseph many years ago. When Joseph realized that his brothers were truly sorry for what they had done, he could no longer keep his identity a secret. He told his brothers who he was. After overcoming their fear of him, the brothers realized that it really was him and were overjoyed to be reunited. They returned home to get their father Jacob and bring him back to Egypt so that he too could be reunited with his son Joseph.

MUSIC
Music time provides not only an opportunity to learn new songs, but it also touches on a Key Developmental Indicator within the Creative Arts section: Music. Young children begin to develop ideas about rhythmic and tonal patterns, beat, and tempo. They also begin to explore music's emotional component and spontaneously use and create music during their free play. According to music educators Cherie Stallacio and Marie McCarthy, "Early childhood years are critical to the development of the child's potential for comprehending and producing music." This weeks' songs include "Did You Ever See A Turtle?" - which focuses on tempo, "Johnny Works With One Hammer" - which focuses on beat, and "If All the Raindrops Were Lemondrops and Gumdrops".

MOVEMENT
This week during Movement time we introduce balls to the movement activities. This week as we begin playing with balls, we spend a lot of time in exploration of the balls, and guidelines for playing safely with them. Once we become more familiar with the balls, we include some challenges such as balancing them on various parts of our body and holding them between our elbows or knees as we walk in a variety of ways around the carpet. We open Movement time with a warm up song called "Letter Movements", and close with a song called, "It Is Monday".

SMALL GROUP TIME
This week during small group time, we’re focusing on two Key Developmental Indicators (KDI): Writing and Book Knowledge. Children enjoy reading stories, and the more they read the more they begin to identify parts of a book. As they read with others, or look at books on their own, children see how books are made. They notice the front and back, covers, title pages, story pages, end papers, and spines. This week we focus on book knowledge by first illustrating a familiar story - one of our Story time stories. On Tuesday and Wednesday we work on creating our own books using different drawing mediums, magazine pictures and letters, tape, scissors, and glue. On Friday we focus more on writing by creating different letters in a container of sand.

AFTERNOON EXPERIENCES
In the afternoons this week, we touch on a Science KDI: Predicting. Before we conduct certain experiments, we predict what might happen. This process touches on cause and effect thinking. Some of the experiments we do this week include rolling marbles and small balls down cardboard tubes and predicting which ones may go the longest distance, predicting which items may sink or float in a bucket of water, predicting what colors we might make as we mix finger paints, and predicting what will happen when we fill a bottle with water and then mix in dish soap and food coloring.