So far, 2017 has had some crazy weather! Warm days, cold days, days full of sunshine, and others filled with rain. In PreK we crossed our fingers for one big snow but in case that didn't happen we turned our classroom into an indoor winter wonderland!
We "dressed" in our warmest winter coats and decorated our bulletin board for the month, "Sending you warm winter wishes and eskimo kisses from PreK B!"
We added a snowman garland to our morning meeting board and even found snowflake and snowmen calendar numbers to use this month!
We created portraits of ourselves catching snowflakes.
And Mrs. Milton helped me cut and hang snowflakes from the ceiling.
We made snowmen and women to decorate our cabinets.
We also decorated our windows with "stained glass" mittens.
All of those winter wishes for snow paid off! We had a snow day!!!
We read a wonderful winter book, The Mitten by Jan Brett, about a little boy who loses one of his mittens. His mitten is found by a little mole who snuggled inside and was joined by other woodland animals. The mitten stretched and stretched until a little mouse tickled the bear's nose and one big sneeze blew them all back out. While we know animals really can't fit into a mitten, it sure was a funny thought!
Our journal entry for the week said "My mitten is so big a ____ could fit in it!" We had some very creative answers: balloon, quilt, giraffe, tree etc.!
We had our first lacing lesson of the year and laced our own mittens! We reread the story and added all of the animals inside. Good thing our paper animals didn't get crowded!
This month our curriculum has focused on identifying the different people we encounter in our community. Our first week we learned that there are many people who have jobs that focus on helping others and we were so lucky to have special Community Helpers visit us each day! Our visitors told us all about their job and how they help others in our community, read us a book for story time, and they each brought us a fun souvenir!
On Tuesday we had a visit from Mr. Tyler, a Chef for Heifer International.
On Wednesday we had a visit from Mr. Tom, a Latin Teacher at Catholic High School for Boys.
On Thursday we had a visit from Mr. Marco, a Police Officer.
On Friday we had a visit from Mr. Michael, a Project Manager for Entergy.
After learning what it was like to work as different Community Helpers we made our own flip books to see what we would look like in those professions' uniforms!
Last week our curriculum focused on the tools that each of our Community Helpers use. We learned about big heavy equipment that construction workers use, medical equipment that doctors and nurses use, office supplies that accountants use, and kitchen tools that chefs and bakers use.
We took a vote of which types of tools we wanted to have a special lesson about and we decided that we wanted to be bakers for the day! We learned all about different tools for measuring ingredients and made our very own pretzel dough.
After measuring, mixing, and letting the dough rise we used our hands and rolled out our own pretzels!
A quick 15 minutes in the oven and we had delicious, home-made pretzels for snack! Yum!
I wonder what all fun next week will hold!
