For the end of the year we got in a cozy mood, decorated and enjoyed our classroom with winter theme ideas such as hot coco and PJs by the “fire place.” We also explored crystallization with our snowflake experiment with Borax and pipe cleaners. A fun and easy project to try at home if you are curious as a family J. Finally we have worked on our math skills by introducing clocks, time, dates, and numbers into our day by talking about the New Year coming up. It has been a wonderful 2016 and we are looking forward for the New Year with our balloon countdown! Pop one every day we get closer to December 31st!

Thank you all for contributing to a wonderful year.

At North Routt Preschool we encourage a community of learners. Our students often enjoy building, creating and solving puzzles as a team in order to reach a greater goal. The light table has been recently used a lot with translucent plastic pieces that can be used to build “spaceships”, “animals” and “trucks.”

Some of the Colorado Early Learning and Development Guidelines being worked on include:

• Symbolic Representation: The use of symbols or objects to represent something else.
• Social Relationships: The healthy relationships and interactions with adults and peers.
• Fine Motor Skills: The control of small muscles for such purposes as using utensils, self-care, and exploring.
  

Our Hahn’s Peak exploration has taken our students to explore the world of caves, mining, excavating and even archeology! We have designed our own mining cave and it is located next to the outside door if you would like to check it out!  There are even architectural blue prints the students came up with (right next to the cave.) Now students can use the mining cave as a quiet place to read a book.  Additionally, The Pioneer Museum from Steamboat Springs provided us with their Archeology Kit; were we got to explore what it would be like to be an archeologist. Looking forward to see where this project can take us!

Some of the Colorado Early Learning and Development Guidelines (ages 3-5) that were worked on throughout this activity include:

1. Book Appreciation and Knowladge: The interest in books and their characteristics, and the ability to understand, and get meaning from stories and informaation from books and other texts.

2. Early writting: the familiarity with writing implements, conventions, and emerging skills to communicate through written representation, symbols and letters.

3. Reasoning and problem solving; the ability to recognize, understand, and analyuze a problem and draw knowladge or experience to seek solutions to a problem.

Finally some snow! At NRP we value the changing season and the different activities we can learn in the process. This season many of our students are practicing their skiing skills, pulling and pushing sleds in the snow and getting a lot of play time out in the fresh powder. Representative of a Colorado resident, we get to play in the snow a couple times a day, if weather permits. And if temperatures are too low outside…we keep our bodies moving inside! Check out the picture of our indoor obstacle course.

Some of the Colorado Early Learning and Development Guidelines (ages 3-5) that were worked on throughout this activity include:

1. Gross Motor Skills: The control of large muscles for movement, navigation, and balance.
2. Physical Health Status: The maintenance of healthy and age-appropriate physical well-being.