Happy Holidays
12/21/2019
It's the holiday season, and what better way to celebrate than holiday play! We used stickers, markers, and paper to create a winter wonderland for our gingerbread friends. Using scissors and glue can be a challenge in preschool, that's way we practice as much as we can! We used marshmallows and toothpicks to create shelter for our toy animals. This STEM activity promotes creative thinking and shows the students there are many ways to complete the same task. One of our favorite books this week was, "The Gingerbread Man". We created a life-size gingerbread man to decorate and bring to life! We talked about team work and communication, because nine friends working on the same project can be difficult. We used shaving cream to practice writing letters in the "snow"! This is a fun way to practice handwriting. We had a fun filled spirit week! Happy Holidays, see you next year!
The Importance of Dramatic Play
12/14/2019
1. Dramatic play teaches self-regulation.
Toddlers and preschoolers are known for acting impulsively, but dramatic play is a positive stepping stone toward self-regulation. NAEYC notes that children tend to be highly motivated to follow rules and stick to the roles of the play. This helps them grow in their ability to inhibit their impulses, coordinate with others and make plans. 2. Dramatic play gives children an emotional outlet. Dramatic play allows kids to act out scenarios they’ve seen or heard in real life, giving them an important emotional outlet. 3. Dramatic play teaches conflict resolution. Both unstructured and structured dramatic play offer teachable moments about conflict resolution. Disagreements between children will crop up naturally during unstructured dramatic play, which offers a chance for kids to work through their differences and arrange a compromise. 4. Dramatic play supports literacy. Dramatic play provides a prime opportunity for kids to see functional print. Kids who are playing grocery store, for example, will be exposed to text in the form of a shopping list, coupons and a checkout receipt. This gives them a chance to gain firsthand experience with the many ways we use text in everyday life. 5. Dramatic play allows you to support your kids and encourage their ideas. Children process their inner thoughts and emotions externally through dramatic play. That means you can learn a lot about what makes your kids happy, scared or frustrated just through observing their pretend play. With the Creative Curriculum, we incorporate dramatic play with other areas of learning such as math, science, and social studies. We can point out patterns in plates used for playing house or pretend we are predator and prey. Learning happens through play! Source:https://www.rasmussen.edu/degrees/education/blog/why-dramatic-play-matters/ Arctic Adventures
12/7/2019
The winter weather is here! It is a perfect time to talk about the Arctic and what lives there! We spent this week talking about animals of the Arctic and hibernation. We used cotton balls and glue to create furry polar bears! The kids had to use their fine motor skills to pull apart their cotton so they had enough to cover their bears. This activity was great practice for following step by step directions. We practiced finding numbers made in different ways! The initial polar bear with a numeral had to be matched with the correct amount of fingers on a hand and a ten frame with the correct amount of dots. We read and colored our own bear books! This book focuses on positional words such as in between, on, in, and so on. The awesome thing about this book is that the kids can practically read it on their own if they understand the picture. The weather outside gives the kids an understanding of what it is like during the Arctic winter. We talked about how a lot of the arctic animals have white fur to camouflage themselves from predators. Emerging from hibernation! We talked about how bears sleep all winter long and wake up in the spring! We practiced letter writing with dry-erase markers.
With this activity, the class was exposed to the alphabet and practiced using correct pencil grip. |
Annalee JohnsonEK Teacher Archives
January 2021
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