Family, Holiday traditions, and Literacy fun!

Literacy:

We enjoy making learning fun! The Pre-K children have a great time learning through games and challenging activities. This week we practiced completing each other’s names using a chart and bananagrams. It was so much fun searching for letters and the best part of all is how well Pre-K support each other. We enjoyed watching the children get competitive but also how well they displayed empathy towards each other when the game got a little frustrated. In the end, the game became about everyone completing their chart together and how fun and good it feels to help a friend.

Shared snack: Letter Cookies!

Katerina and Christina shared a fun literacy snack that related to the children so much, especially this week. Thank you for making shared snack so fun!

Holiday Traditions:

The children shared the many special ways they like to enjoy and celebrate the upcoming holidays with their families. Pre-K worked together to take part in some of the holidays celebrated among the children in the class. It was a team effort and we learned so much about how we each celebrate holidays with our families. 

Happy Birthday Ellis! Thank you baby Adam and the Ahmed family for sharing this special moment with us all!

Holidays and Traditions

The Pre-K is celebrating holidays all around the world during the month of December. This week we shared all about the holidays we are familiar with. We also shared holidays celebrated at home and the many different ways they are celebrated. Inclusivity is a very important aspect of our classroom environment and it is important for each child to feel celebrated.

A conversation about Special Holidays:

Holidays are special days. -Geneva

You don’t go to school on holidays. -Ellis

You can roast marshmallows on holidays. -Malina

You can get candy on holidays (Halloween). -Katerina

What Special Holidays do you celebrate?

Ellis: Columbus Day, New Years, and Thanksgiving and President’s Day.

Charlotte: Birthday Parties

Mercer: Hannukah

William: Christmas

How do you celebrate?

Geneva: Dress up

Ellis: You can call someone and say “ Happy New Year!”

William: You get a Christmas tree.

Katerina: You put things on the tree.

Malina: I go back home.

Charlotte: I like to celebrate and have parties.

This week...

Literacy/Art: Inventive writing

Pre-K children know that their writing has a purpose and that print is meaningful, it communicates ideas, stories, and facts. For example, this week Ellis created a sign for his baby brother who should be arriving very soon! He wants to make him feel welcome and part of the family. Mercer wrote funny letters because she wants to make people laugh. Adela wrote letters for her parents because she missed them, and Malina drew herself in movement because she wanted to capture it herself as a ballerina.

Happy Friendsgiving!

Homefun: Please share your family photos from this week with us all!

Breakfast Curriculum

Our Community Project 

We first learned of this interest during our walks to the park. The children are always sharing about their homes during these walks, they are eager to share their neighborhoods and buildings with their friends and teachers. In addition to their homes, they also like to share about their favorite buildings, local shops, and playgrounds they like to visit. One of our most visited places in the neighborhood is Morgan’s Market. We typically enjoy picking up our fresh fruit and vegetables. We recently learned that one of our friends lives in close proximity to the market! We wonder what their homes look like… 

Environmental Walk and Work together

Environment and observing the seasonal changes

This week we took a walk to our local playground to look at all of the changing leaves. We also collected leaves from the ground and other interesting nature materials for a fun class project. The children enjoyed looking for “interesting looking leaves”. They also shared fun facts about plants and leaves.

Work together!

We challenged the kids by asking them to collaboratively build a bridge out of clay alongside their partners. The challenge was that they had to build the bridge standing up and they each needed to have a job. Some of the children needed a little more support following the directions of the activity and it was great to see their partners guiding them patiently and kindly throughout the entire activity. We look forward to revisiting this project next week and see how things go the second time around.

H is for Honey

Thank you Adela for our delicious shared snack today! We learned about honey and enjoyed it with pancakes and fresh fruit!

BMS Parade 2019

Happy Halloween

Our annual Halloween parade was a success! After all their hard work the children finally showcased their costume creation with pride and confidence. We are so grateful for our wonderful community that helped make this all possible. Pre-K had a great time with their families and friends back at school to celebrate this fun and exciting day.

Our Vampire Unicorn costumes are coming along!

Costume Creations

This week we had a very special visitor, Kathryn! Ellis’ mom came to our class to help us design our wings for our costumes. The children are really excited to wear their amazing creations on Halloween day. Thank you Pre-K parents for all of your support and donations to make this all possible.

Pumpkin Carving

This week we carved our pumpkins! The children discussed their hypothesis about what they think the pumpkins look like on the inside. We also sketched them and designed a spooky face!

F is for Fig!

Pumpkin Picking: White Post Farm

The children were so excited to go pumpkin picking and create wonderful memories together. It was the BEST DAY EVER!

Problem solving, Working together, and Halloween discussions!

This week Pre-K visited the neighborhood market (Morgan’s market) to pick up a pumpkin for our classroom. The children have so many ideas for the pumpkin and they are mostly excited to cut it open and investigate the inside next week!

Our first visit to the market this week Pre-K ran into a little problem. We wanted a big, interesting looking pumpkin but we only had $5! We had to figure out how much more money we would need in order to pay $14 for the big, interesting lookin pumpkin. We went back to school, gathered our thoughts, and worked out the problem during our morning meeting the next day. Once we solved the problem we headed back to Morgan’s market and picked up our interesting looking pumpkin with the right amount of money!

Partner Week

This week it was Partner Week in the Pre-K! We worked on slime making, story telling, map creations, and game designing. It was a very successful partner week which we will continue next week!

Halloween Costumes

After brainstorming ideas for our class Halloween costumes, we have finally made a decision! This year, the Pre-K class will be Vampire Unicorns! We will definitely be needing all of your ideas, suggestions, and assistance with this fun annual project!

Where we live!

Our community project has begun. We first learned of this interest during our walks to the park. The children were very interested in the buildings, the local shops, and the playground. We also began visiting the Green Market in our neighborhood, the children are always so happy to pick organic fruit and veggies, and drop off any compost we may have collected during the week, In order to get the children discussing more about the community outside of school, their own community, we thought it would be fun to collect some photos of the children’s homes. The children were so excited that each of them worked on a large sketch of their home.

A conversation about maps:

William: On a map you can see how big the ocean is.

Katerina: You can see kids on a map, like the kids playing.

Charlotte: I can see my house on a map.

Malina: Maps have houses far away. Like my house in Denmark.

Ellis: I see rivers on maps.

Malina: You can carry a map in your pocket.

Ellis: Actually some maps are big and some maps are small.

Specials this week!

A grand celebration!

We have a very exciting event happening in our class this week. We are celebrating Mercer’s kitty, Kissy’s 3rd birthday! We noticed the sweet relationship that Mercer has with her kitty while at school. It is more than just a lovey relationship, Mercer has given Kissy personality, and she always finds a way to include Kissy in every fun activity that happens in our classroom. this has allowed Mercer to open up more, Kissy makes Mercer feel comfortable. This week Kissy turned 3! and Mercer began to celebrate Kissy’s birthday in our class by making birthday cards and presents for her. As a result, the children have also noticed and began to join in on the fun. In order to make sure that Kissy had the best 3rd birthday celebration we discussed ideas on how to make this all happen. The children made a list and got to work!

PRE-K made invitations and dropped them off at every class in Buckle My Shoe. Everyone was invited, everyone and their lovey!

Pre-L really dedicated their time and energy to make this party all possible. We are sure that this special celebration created a special bond between the children and gave them the opportunity to connect through something that brings them joy and holds a special place in their hearts. Loveys! We are so excited to see what else they come up with next.

Maps and Homes

After a common interest in treasure maps emerged we invited the children to begin thinking about what would their neighborhood maps look like. Where do you live? What places are in your neighborhood? How do you get to your neighborhood? What does your neighborhood look like?

During our walk to the greenmarket this past Wednesday, we stopped by to look at some places we see everyday on our way to school. We will discuss more next week. Please take a look at Home-fun #2! We are so excited to see where the children live and share their pictures on our community wall.

Celebrations, visiting the greenmarket, and a healthy taste test!

This week we continued to work on our environment. Our walls are filled with self-portraits, observational drawings, our birthday graph is almost ready to be displayed! We also went for walks to the playground, and we even visited the green market in Tribeca. The children were very excited to see all of the fresh fruit and vegetables, we even got to sample a variety of apples! In addition to the fresh food we saw, we also got to learn about food composting. Our class will soon start discussing more about composting and how we can participate. The Pre-K classroom was so interested in collecting leaves during our walks to the playground, and so we thought it would be a great idea to start our homefun by collecting leaves over the weekend!

Observational Drawing: This week we dissected a fresh apricot! Here are our predictions!

Will: I think there is no seed in the inside and it will be sweet.

Katerina: I think it  will look like fire inside, very orange. 

Ellis: I think it will look like a blue snail and it’s going to be very sweet. 

Charlotte: I think it will have a seed inside. 

Geneva: I think it might taste like an orange.

Adela: I think it will look like a butterfly and rainbow color inside. 

Mercer: I think it will look like a red grape. 
Malina: I think it’s going to be pink inside.

The Green Market

Our trip to the Green Market was a really fun experience that we got to do as a class. The children were so interested. We got to touch, smell, and even taste some apples! We also visited the compost station, everyone has so many questions about the process of composting.

Shared Snack + Letter fo the week:

This week the letter of the week is A. Ellis and mom, Kathryn shared a variety of APPLES for taste testing . Kathryn also read two books to the class, Apples A-Z, and A is for Activist! Thank you Ellis and Kathryn!

Welcome to Pre-K!

This week in Pre-K the children explored their new classroom and had so much fun getting to know each other. We discussed the importance of keeping each other safe, taking care of our friends and our class materials. We also talked about taking care of your belongings and respecting the belongings of others, especially the work of others. Everyone was so busy this week working on name labels for our morning meeting rug, creating placemats for lunch time, and we also designed our September self-portraits.

Charlotte is showing a lot of interest in our science center. She was very curious about all of our science tools.

Adela worked on her self-portrait. She really enjoys to draw and she spends a lot of her time in the writing center making pictures for her friends.

Malina enjoys dramatic play, she has an incredible imagination and loves to play pretend family.

Katerina’s favorite thing to do is drawing, she especially enjoys using “special” markers to create her wonderful pictures.

Geneva was busy exploring all centers of the classroom. She really enjoyed dramatic play this week. Geneva and Charlottle hosted their first picnic of the year!

Ellis was so proud to share that his mommy has a baby in her belly and that he will soon become a big brother.

William has taken the role of the teacher’s helper. He is also always happy to help a friend. The children know that they can always go to Will for a helping hand.

Mercer loves to make art for her family. This week she drew her mother everyday except on Friday. On Friday she drew her grandmother because she picked her up from school!