Hello Pre-K families,
While I do have many, one of my favourite children’s authors is Laura Numeroff. You may recognize her name as she is the author that wrote If You Give A Mouse A Cookie. Well, she has written another series of delightful, mirrored, picture books about families. In our Pre-K classroom, I like to call these books magic. At the start of the week, we read one of Numeroff’s books called What Mommies Do Best. We read about a variety of animal moms and their children riding bikes, making snowmen, playing at the park, and watching the sunset. The magic happens half-way through the book, when on one side the pictures and text appear upside down. When the reader flips the book, they are able to read the book again but this time it’s a second story with the same, repetitive language for What Daddies Do Best. As a teacher, the magic for me happens as I watch children’s eyes get wide and light up as they engage, experience, and participate in reading these books together.
To end the week, we read If You’ll Be My Valentine by Cynthia Rylant. It’s a rhyming and sing-song story that shows a little boy making valentines for those he loves — from his pets, to those in his family, and even the world of trees. On each page, we stopped and asked, “Who is he making a valentine for?” When we pause in our school day to read stories at the carpet, children are learning to listen as part of a group, understand spoken language, and then add their ideas to the conversation. After reading the story, Pre-K children used stickers to decorate a bag to hold their special valentine notes next week.
In preparation for Valentine’s Day, our classes also created sun-catcher hearts to spread love from all the littles in Pre-K to all those who walk in the doors of our school! These are made with two materials: contact paper from Dollarama and squares of tissue paper. Children used their pincer fingers (their thumb and pointer finger) to stick on a square, or two, or three of paper, as they walked by the whiteboard easel. It’s a simple art project that helped strengthen children’s fine motor muscles and that they could contribute to as they played in different parts of our classroom.
This month, we also have a new pretend play centre in our classroom: the car wash! In Pre-K, our learning happens through play. So as children try on the different roles they see in their world, their language is growing and expanding too as they wash the windows, pump the tires, and fill the car up with gas. And we only have one car, so we’ve also had to really work hard and take some deep breaths at taking turns, using kind words to talk to our friends, and working together with cooperation.
A couple friendly reminders as we wrap up the week:
- Please check Remind for a letter about our plans for sharing Valentine notes on Monday & Tuesday.
- This month goes by quickly! There is no school the week of February 21st as we celebrate Family Day weekend and as teachers take part in professional development, including Teacher’s Convention on February 24th & 25th.
I hope you all have a lovely weekend. My crew and I are hoping to spend a lot of it outside!
Take good care,
Ms. Kristin
mrsdeandrade.wordpress.com 