By Miss Kerri Ann
Miss Kathy came by today with some Thansgiving day activities.  After a little dancing, Miss Kathy invited the children to invent their own games using acorns, pine cones, seed pods and popcicle sticks.  It was great to see what they came up with!  Afterwards, we went on a turkey hunt in the trees near the Preschool and used our imaginations to build a fire, roast the turkeys and enjoy a Thanksgiving feast.  It was so much fun!
Now that Miss Kathy is back, we will resume our weekly PE with the 5th and 6th graders at the Charter School.  This year we will roatate Tuesdays and Wednesdays for this programs so that all of the children get an oppertunity to paricipate.  The first session will be next Wednesday.

By: Miss Christa
Today is a vacation day here at the preschool, which means that I had the opportunity to spend the day with they young two year old preschoolers in the toddler room, what a blast!! we spent some time playing in the kitchen, everyone was pretending to eat grapes... even the dinosaur puppet and the baby doll were hungry. Then when we went outside they all took turns with the snowshoes and cross country skis, it is amazing how well they do with them, we will have some professionals by the end of the winter.

By Kerri Ann
We had a very active morning.  We cut doors in our cardboard boxes and took turns hiding in them.  Daniel, Georgia and Joseph pretended to be a policeman and two "worker men" while they worked in the block area.  I caught this cute video of our preschoolers singing "row, row, row your boat" right before we headed to the Charter School for Story Time.  I love to incorporate movement in our music activities; this activity is designed to encourage rythym and teamwork.

By Miss Kerri Ann
We have been experimenting with different materials in the block area.  You may have seen an earlier post of tubes and balls; now, thanks to recyled cardboard from the wreath fund-raiser,  we have more tubes and triangle cardboard to work with.  Yesterday, Delia, Daniel, Peter and Grayson colored the cardboard with chalk and built rocket ships.  Today, the group worked on building a ship.
I love this video of Peter taking charge and directing his crew (Daniel and Georgia).  It's so fun to watch 3-4 year olds experiment with leadership as working collaborateively in groups of more than 2-3 can be a challenge for many preschoolers.  This building activity was a great way to practice team building skills.  Enjoy! 

By: Miss Christa
yesterday and today we have been working on decorating rolls of paper with stamps, hands and even feet! The paper will be used to wrap presents during our present wrapping fundraiser.

By: Miss Christa
Mother nature was kind to the preschool this weekend and laid a light blanket of snow for the children to shovel today. We all had a lot of fun removing snow from the sidewalk.

By Miss Kerri Ann
We had a lot of fun playing with modeling sand this morning.  We built a farm, made some animals and of course, sung "Old McDonald".  Joseph was very engaged and insisted we find a tractor for our farm.  Later, I caught Joseph putting his block person in a bulldozer.  He said, "I take me for a ride".
If you haven't noticed our felt board in the entryway, please take a look.  Christa has found a creative way to encourage community helpers at school. 

Georgia, Violet and Jayla decided to pitch in around the school today by raking leaves!  We love to get the kids involved in caring for their school whenever possible!
We played outside for 1 1/2 hours today so that we could take advantage of the fall weather.  We raked, biked and "colored" our play house with chalk.
Earlier in the day we made rice crispie treats in honor of Daniel's birthday.  He turned 4 today!

By: Miss Christa
Today during open play time Daniel, Delia, Peter, Jada, and Jayla we having a hard time sharing the three play telephones we have in the dramatic play area, their solution was to find items that they could pretend to be phones. Daniel is using a wooden mixing spoon, and Jayla has a plastic crescent. They all tried to have conversations with each other from across the room.     

By: Miss Christa 
We did a lot of exploring this morning, we introduced large and small tubes into our block area, small balls as well. We talked about how we can use them and this is what they came up with. 

After playing in the block area we decided to go for a walk to our hideout in the trees. While there we explored the fields in the field we found moss on the ground, a few of the children took turns telling me wither they thought it was soft or hard. What comes out of trees enlightens imaginations, a stick was quickly turned into a horse. Around and around they galloped. 

This Video is of Violet and Jayla as they pretended to ride their stick horses.