Enough With the Hurricanes Already!

Well, Ike came through and left his mark. We were blessed to have no real damage beyond a really big mess. We cleaned up and spent a few days in the dark, but all is well. I continue to pray for those less fortunate including our own little guy, J. We got power back on Tuesday so decided to have school on Wednesday. We all needed something normal back in our lives and we had a good day. We read If You Take a Mouse to School, by Laura Numeroff and A Mama for Owen, by Marion Dane Bauer. The girls water colored a picture from this beautifully illustrated true story about a tortoise, Mzee, who becomes the adopted mother to a baby hippo, Owen. Check out Feist's song "1,2,3,4" on Sesamestreet.org. We had a great time with this one. We miss you, J, and hope to see you soon!

Families and Counting

We are continuing our study of families. Today we read Max Cleans Up, by Rosemary Wells and Alligator Baby, by Robert Munsch. The latter is a funny little story of a set of parents who keep coming home with the wrong animal baby. The big sister is the one who gets it all straightened out. The kids really liked this book. During centers the children were given the opportunity to feed, dress, etc. baby dolls. They all made very good parents. We also made a big floor graph showing how many students in our class are boys/girls, have sisters or brothers, and which cities we live in. In math this month we are working on counting and recognizing the numbers one to ten. We sang lots of counting songs (The Ants Go Marching One by One, One Two Buckle My Shoe, and Five Little Monkeys) and we used fun foam counters.

We practiced our cutting and gluing skills while classifying "parents" and "children."

We finally got to play with Play Dough today!

Back after Gustav

We didn't have class on Tuesday due to Gustav. It turned out to be a beautiful day and we missed our classmates, but we all had a break after a slightly stressful weekend. Thursday - back to business and having fun! Many of the pictures you will see on the blog will be of independent play activities because these are the times that the kids need less help and I'm free to pick up the camera. These activities are very important to the development of personal and social skills along with language and verbal expression. However, I do want you to know that we participate daily in more traditional learning activities including ABCs and 123s!


Recognizing the letters of our name and putting them in order. J's so proud! All of the students made progress on this activity since the last time we met!


Using fall colors to trace our name. We also glued tiny fall leaves to our papers.


I love watching the kiddos work hard.


Working on correct pencil grip. That's a tough one!




The kids had a blast in the "home center" today. After pretend cooking we did some REAL cooking! We made Mud Pie - using a bowl with holes to make the milk "rain" down on the pudding (dirt). We added gummy worms and crushed Oreos for added drama :). While the pudding set in the ice box we read Bunny Cakes, by Rosemary Wells. In this story, both Max and Ruby make a birthday cake for their grandma. Ours resembled Max's "earthworm cake." Sorry, no pictures of our yummy treat!


We also read Little Miss Spider, Sunny Patch School, by David Kirk. Through this story we recognized differences in our talents, but one thing we can all do is be friendly. We also discussed our phyiscal differences (hair color, skin tone) and similarities (eye color) and made puppets of ourselves. The handles say "child's name is special!"








Mrs. Mandy's PreK class is special (and adorable)!


A shared the family tree that she made at home. The others noticed similarities in their family.


The students each have a job at school. The responsibilities will rotate with each class day. Today, A was the "Gardener."


J was the "Pet Keeper."


And J was the "Super Helper," which meant he was the leader and the one that helped the teacher with special chores. He prized himself on being "super fast" :).


Facing fears and having loads of fun.


Just monkeying around!