Nursery 2AM Newsletter
November 10, 2011
The past few weeks our focus has been the letters of the Alphabet. Several activities promoting letter sounds as well as letter recognition have been presented in various centers of the classroom.
Our sensory table contained floating letters with water and tongs, while the light table transformed into a magnet board where the children showed excitement as they discovered the letters in their name.
The art center offered wooden letters for painting, letter stamps with inkpads and foam letters for gluing collages. Clay was used for the very first time to shape the beginning letter of each child’s name.
The children worked cooperatively as they put together tabletop alphabet puzzles using upper and lower case letters and an alphabet train floor puzzle.
Giggles were heard throughout the classroom while singing the Name Game song and stretching our bodies to the tune of The Alphabet Stretch. The children showed delight as they scurried around the classroom in search of hidden cards with the beginning letter of their name.
Our book list included:
Alphabet Rescue Alphabet City
Alphabet Mystery Chicka Chicka Boom Boom
Harold’s ABC My First Numbers
Ten Apples Up On Top! Gray Rabbit’s 1,2,3
In addition to the alphabet many number activities have been offered. For example, counting and sorting plastic bears, counting flower petal game, building with wooden number blocks and counting out shapes to match the corresponding number.
Please take a look at our Reflection Book, which points out the specific goal each activity promotes and pertains to.
Please remember we go outside everyday as long as weather permits.
Have a wonderful three-day weekend.
Sue and Betsy
Nursery 2 AM Newsletter
October 28, 2011
The children have enjoyed exploring the Putnam Pumpkin Patch over the past few weeks. Climbing and jumping off haystacks, carting pumpkins using wheelbarrows, scampering through the maze and painting pumpkins were several fun-filled experiences. All of these encourage strengthening large motor coordination, gaining self-confidence and willingness to take risk.
After picking a pumpkin from the patch, we took a vote with two separate groups of children as to which type of Jack-O-Lantern face to carve. The winner was a “happy” face. After examining what was inside, we then cleaned the seeds and roasted them with oil and salt. Many of the children enjoyed eating them by the light of the freshly carved Jack-O-Lantern. Ask your child which face they chose. Did they like the seeds?
By reading to the children on a regular basis, we encourage them to listen and increase attention span, therefore enhancing pre-reading skills. Books we have read to the class:
Big Pumpkin Who Said Boo?
Glad Monster Sad Monster Teeny Witch Goes to School
Huggly’s Halloween Clifford’s Halloween
The Littlest Pumpkin It’s Halloween
We have been focusing on fine motor skills activities by:
Molding with play dough
Painting Pumpkins
Filling small plastic pumpkins with sand
Hammering golf T’s into pumpkins
Goop with markers
Snipping with scissors
Peg activities
Marble Painting
The children were thrilled to have Mr. Wierdsma last week. They heard all about Johnny Appleseed. Some of the children were treated to a visit to the Smokey’s playground.
Thanks to everyone for bringing in the apples. We have done several pre-math activities with them, such as: apple printing, counting and sorting by color, as well as baking Apple Surprise. We also charted which type of apple each child liked best in our apple tasting survey.
Have a good weekend.
Betsy and Sue
Our exploration of colors allowed us to incorporate many activities pertaining to goals. We read books about primary colors as we observed the children attend to a story.
We incorporated several gross motor activities during our investigation of colors by dancing with multicolor scarves and beanbags, then swaying to the tune of Rainbow round Me.
Matching colors to handheld paper “lollipops” after marching around our classroom helped the children become aware of how colorful our room can be. In addition, mixing colors at the easel and stringing beads enhanced eye-hand coordination.
Fine motor skills were encouraged as the children mixed colors using markers, painting with water colors and drawing pictures pertaining to stories read during large and small group gatherings.
Pre-math skills came into effect while building with various shape and color blocks, counting and sorting cube blocks, matching various shaped jewels, as well as categorizing and creatingpatterns using plastic fruits.
**Please update boxes with appropriate clothing for the fall.
Enjoy the beautiful weekend.