May Classroom Updates

Hello again, everyone! I wanted to show you all of the fun things we have been doing in Pre-K over the past few weeks. I’m sure many of you have heard all about it, but we have caterpillars in our classroom! These caterpillars have been the source of excitement, discussion and themed our learning since they came to our classroom. Below are the stories we have been reading- we even have puppets to read along with The Very Hungry Caterpillar.

The Very Hungry Caterpillar story

The Amazing Life Cycle of Butterflies Story

Waiting for Wings Story

Thank you for the egg cartons that were brought in, we made our own hungry caterpillars with these. We also made a caterpillar eating a leaf where we practiced cutting, hole punching and gluing.

This week we enjoyed making butterflies out of coffee filters and out of doilies.

With this spring weather, we have been having so much fun outside! Outdoor play is so valuable and we have been taking full advantage of the weather to get outside and play most days.

Reminders:

• No School on Monday, May 23rd and Tuesday, May 24th
• Next week I will send out information for signing up for year end Pre-K Parent Teacher Interviews- watch for that in your email!

Have a wonderful long weekend!

Mrs. Lawrence

Pre-K Classroom Updates

Hello again, everyone! Time has been flying in Pre-K and I can’t believe we are at the end of April! I wanted to share some photos of our classroom activities over the past two weeks. Please also read the important dates at the end of this post.

Last week we read Earth Book by Todd Parr and discussed all of the ways that we can be kind and show love to our Earth. We made our own Earth and used some great fine motor skills to do this. We used eye droppers to paint the blue, which was great practice to develop our pincher grasp and hand strength for writing. We then sponge painted the green and glued on a heart. These beautiful creations are hanging from our classroom ceiling.

The Earth Book

Last week we also had an obstacle course in the gym. This is one of our favourite gym activities and it is so great for developing our gross motor skills such as hopping, jumping, balancing and improving our strength.

This week we read spider books, sang songs about spiders and made a spider craft!

Pete the Cat and the Itsy Bitsy Spider Story

The Very Busy Spider Story

The Itsy Bitsy Spider Song

There’s a Spider on the Floor Song

We also have a new dramatic play center, a Pizza Restaurant, and enjoyed time playing outside this week!

Important Upcoming Dates:

• Wednesday, May 4th and Thursday, May 5th we will do Hats On/Wear Green for Mental Health.
• Tuesday, May 17th and Wednesday, May 18th are Spring & Class Photos days.
• No School on Monday, May 23rd and Tuesday, May 24th.
• Bentley School is offering a great, FREE parenting workshop on Thursday, May 5th at 7:00 pm. Check out the info here! https://bentley.wolfcreek.ab.ca/home/news/post/free-anchored-parenting-workshop

Have a great weekend!

Mrs. Lawrence

Happy Easter!

Happy Easter weekend, Pre-K families! I hope everyone has a restful, enjoyable long weekend. We had fun this week in Pre-K completing bunny and egg activities. This post is mostly just pictures of some of the highlights! Our marshmallow bunnies were such a fun craft and I was so impressed with how everyone took their time to dip and stick all of the marshmallows on. Everyone also did such a fantastic job of drawing on their bunny’s face- our drawing skills have come so far!

We always love when we can incorporate dance songs into our day!

Easter Bunny Dance & Freeze

Boom Chicka Boom Easter

We also had a surprise activity outside this week! We were playing on the playground when we noticed there were cotton balls in a trail. The Easter bunny led us to another playground where there were eggs for us to find! They weren’t decorated yet so we each took one and then brought them back into the classroom to decorate with markers and stickers.

The M/W class visited the library this week, here are some pictures of our library tour with Mrs. McDiarmid!

Reminders:

• No School on Monday, April 18th for Easter.

See you next week!

Mrs. Lawrence

Pre-K Classroom Updates

Hello, everyone! I hope everyone had a wonderful Spring break and has enjoyed being back to school this week. We have been completing all Spring activities and will continue this theme into next week with lots more fun Spring activities including bunnies, chicks and eggs.

As we sign into the classroom each morning, we have a question of the day to answer. This week is was simple- do you like bunnies or chicks more? We have to sign in with our name card to answer the question. At circle time we then count the number of students who liked bunnies and who liked chicks. The question of the day usually has to do with our story and craft for the day. This week we read a silly story called Chicken Little. It has lots of rhyming names so we discussed that as well as it’s a repetitive book so all students could join me in reading. We also read the book Pete the Cat 5 Little Bunnies which was a fun story that students were familiar with as it’s similar to 5 Little Monkeys Jumping on the Bed so we were all able to read this with the actions.

Chicken Little Story

Pete the Cat 5 Little Bunnies Story

We also have some new fun Spring songs that we are learning. These songs are great for movement breaks as well as increasing our early literacy skills including exposure to letters and our early numeracy skills such as counting.

B-U-N-N-Y song

5 Little Bunnies song

The Way the Bunny Hops song

Check out our craft we completed this week! We had so much fun painting with forks and are working on our drawing skills to draw the chicks eyes and legs. They are being displayed on our classroom bulletin board.

We also have a new play center in our classroom- a library! In this play center we can be the librarian, the re-shelver, the story teller, or a reader. We also can write our very own books! The T/Th class also got to visit the school library and meet Mrs. McDiarmid, our librarian, who read us a story and told us all about the school library. The M/W class will get to go to the school library on Monday next week!

Reminders:

• Scholastic book orders were sent home this week. If you are interested in ordering, make sure to use our class code RC138717 Scholastic
• No School on Monday, April 18th for Easter. There is school on Tuesday, April 19th (Pre-K calendars were updated in September to reflect this).

See you next week!

Mrs. Lawrence

Happy Spring Break!

Hello again, everyone! I wanted to provide a classroom update this week to show you all we have been doing in Pre-K this week. As a reminder, there is no school next week due to Spring Break.

This week we read the books Elmer and Elmer and the Rainbow. These books both went with our rainbow learning and also expanded on our learning about kindness and how we are all different and unique!

Elmer story

Elmer and the Rainbow Story

We used our fine motor skills to work on two different rainbow crafts this week. Check out the photos of us below. Our beautiful rainbows are now hanging from our classroom ceiling. Our rainbow letters were also fun and and we got to practice our cutting as well as we used this opportunity to take turns at circle time telling everyone the first letter of our name.

We also played a colour matching game in the gym this week where we had to work as fast as we could to get all of the coloured balls back in their baskets.

We are looking forward to getting outside even more after Spring Break! We enjoyed our time playing in the snow, rocks and water this week. Our imaginations are really at work when we have unstructured play time outside! Please make sure to continue to send outdoor clothing appropriate for the wet, spring weather!

Have a wonderful Spring break next week and I look forward to seeing everyone in April!

Mrs. Lawrence