Dear Pre-2 (PFAE) Parents and Families,
Can you believe we are already cruising into February? January may have flown by, but we have been busy welcoming new friends and making friendships while continuing to learn many new concepts. We kicked off the new year learning about fire safety. Our dramatic play was filled with fire-related props such as a fire truck, walkie talkies, plastic fire hydrants, and fire gear such as boots, gloves, and hoses. We made sure to add visuals of various firefighters working and vocabulary pertaining to fire safety. We also made added the numerals 9-1-1 as a math recognition concept.
Along with fire safety, we discussed concepts such as hot and cold and safe and unsafe. It was interesting to see if the children were familiar with such items as a matchbook, a hot tub, tiki torches, and a grill. Knowing that these items are hot and unsafe, we wanted to encourage the children to think about how to stay safe and which items would be best for adult use only. With snow and ice covering the ground we also touched on vocabulary pertaining to cold, such as, ice cream, glaciers, and snow cone.
Our read alouds have all pertained to cold concepts. We read, “There was a Cold Lady that Swallowed Some Snow.” This story is about a silly lady who swallows various items like coal, snow, a scarf, and sticks. Towards the end of the story, she had a large hiccup and out popped a snowman! The children enjoyed the sequencing and recalling which items came next in the story. This was a great review for our rhyming words. We provided visuals of each item in the story so the children could retell the story during choice time, and they did! In terms of literacy development, we introduced the children to the concept of compound words. All the compound words we initially discussed began with the word snow. For example, we used the words snowman, snow-cone, snow-fort, and snowflake. To encourage word combining visually, we would use each hand for each word and then clap the whole word. This helped the children break up each word and then bring them together. With repeated practice, they caught on to this concept quite quickly.
Moving forward we will begin discussing weather concepts, as we have started at our daily morning meeting. The children have begun to show an interest in weather-related words and weather changes. We graph the weather daily, using a bar graph, and look forward to this part of our day. We encourage families to look outside and discuss changes in the weather, or cold temperatures vs. hot temperatures, during the weekend or on your drive to school. We love to see the children make these connections!
Finally, our incentive board for the month of February is Sammy the Snowman. The children are encouraged to earn snowflakes to fill Sammy to work towards an Olympic day at the end of February. They earn snowflakes by following directions, cleaning when needed, using kind words, and helping their friends. We will begin learning about what the Olympics are and the different sporting events involved. We will create fun games for the children to play on our Olympic day and honor their performance with hand made metals. We look forward to this day, more information will follow.
Just a friendly reminder, as we are still living in the days of COVID to please check your email regularly. Much information shared from administration about classroom closures will be sent to your primary email.
As always, we are available via email if you have any questions regarding your child’s overall growth and development. We are looking forward to making many new memories this semester while learning new concepts that will last a lifetime!
Yours Truly,
Hill and Xen
Enjoy some pics of our children enjoying this wintery weather!
