Celebrating Kwanzaa

Today was such a fantastic day! We were missing quite a few kids today, which is a major bummer. (I certainly hope all of those kiddos who weren't feeling well are starting to get better!) Having fewer kiddos, though, was a blessing. Being able to spread out and not have to share as much was a nice break for them. I was very impressed by the things they were doing too.

For example, one of my friends was working in the art area. She decided she was going to make a kite. Nichole and I thought she was just going to draw a picture of a kite,  but we were pleasantly surprised when she got out the ribbon and actually made a kite. After it was finished, she started to run around the room trying to get it to fly. Here she is:

When the other kiddos saw her doing this, they all decided to make kites as well. Before too long, they ran out of room to run around, so I opened the door and allowed them to use the hallway. They ran up and down the hallway with their kites flying behind them. This was a super, spontaneous lesson in aerodynamics. As they ran, they discovered that if they ran slowly their kites wouldn't leave the ground. The faster they ran the higher their kites went. It was the neatest thing to be a part of!

We've been learning about Kwanzaa this week. We read books about Kwanzaa, made some Kwanzaa decorations for our celebration next week, and watched a short video from Sesame Street about the holiday.

 Making Kwanzaa chains to decorate the classroom.

  Making Kwanzaa hats to wear during our celebration.

My favorite part of this week has been learning about African music. I had a meeting with Pastor Denise a couple of weeks ago, and while I was visiting with her, I noticed she had some African instruments. (She even had the exact instrument from the book we read!) I asked her if we could borrow them to help us learn more about African music, and she was more than happy to share. The kiddos had so much fun exploring these new instruments. Check out this guy explore the drum:

We'll be learning about Mexican Christmas traditions tomorrow and Thursday. I'm really excited about how this study has been going, and I'm looking forward to our big celebrations next week!

See you tomorrow!

Holiday Traditions Around the World

I need to apologize. I have been the worst at keeping up with this blog this year. This is both a good thing and a bad thing. It means I have been putting more and more time into plans and activities for the kiddos, which is a good thing. Unfortunately, it means I haven't been in touch with you, parents and family members, nearly as much as I should be. I'm very sorry about that.

I have much to say to you today though!

First of all, thank you so much for making sure your children were at Salem to sing last Sunday! I was so excited to see such a large group (27 kiddos!!!!) this year! They did so well too. To be totally honest with you, while I was smiling huge smiles (The kiddos tend to imitate the faces I make. I was hoping they would smile too.), I was also fighting back tears. I think about the children where they were when I met them, and I can already see huge growth in them. It makes me happy to see how mature they are becoming. Thank you for all of your help in this as well!

I also need to thank all of the parents and family members who helped with the fundraiser on Sunday afternoon. We had many, many tasty baked goods and more wrapping paper than we knew what to do with. We also had a group of fantastic parents who donated their time to help wrap present and sell the baked goods. Thanks you so much! We made around $500 to help with our playground, which will (hopefully!) be finished this spring.

Last week, we started to answer some of the questions the kiddos came up with after looking through books about holiday traditions throughout the world. We started with their questions on Hanukkah. We read a book, watched a segment of Elmo's World about Hanukkah, played the dreidel game, made a poster about Hanukkah, and wrote a book about Hanukkah.

This week, we'll be learning about Kwanzaa and Mexican Christmas traditions. All of this is in preparation for our holiday tradition celebration. The week before Christmas break (the week of December 17) we will be celebrating one holiday tradition each day. Here's what the schedule looks like:

December 17: Hanukkah - Playing dreidel game (this time with real dreidels!), making and trying latkes, exploring a menorah, and dancing to Hanukkah music
December 18: Kwanzaa - Making and trying cornbread, creating our own rain sticks, and playing Mancala
December 19: Mexican Christmas - Making and trying bunuelos, creating poinsettias, and breaking a pinata
December 20: American Christmas - Pajama Party! - Making Christmas cookies, decorating a tree, and watching The Polar Express (I'll send home more information about this at the end of next week.)

I am incredibly excited about these celebrations. Nichole and I spent almost an hour on Friday planning them, and I am sure they are going to be a blast for the kiddos! I especially love this idea because it opens the children's eyes to cultures and traditions they may not be familiar with.

We have continued to work on our goals this week as well. We sorted M&Ms to practice counting and number recognition, sorted shapes to practice shape recognition, learned a new alphabet song for letter recognition, and wrote in our journals.

Have a fantastic Sunday! See you tomorrow or Tuesday!

Our Halloween Party!

Goodness gracious! Time has certainly gotten away from me! I had such a great time talking with all of you at conferences last week (that time was way more beneficial than blogging anyway, in my opinion)! Thank you so much for being fantastic parents!

I wanted to share pictures of our Halloween party (before I forget to do that...), so this post will be dedicated to our Halloween fun!

We started the party by reading the story, The Little Old Lady Who Was Not Afraid of Anything. The kiddos loved it! They have asked me countless times since then to read it to them again. I love when that happens!

After our story, we had a special snack of Halloween cookies and Spooky Juice (green Hawaiian Punch and Sprite).

We went on our costume parade after snack. In the morning, we visited Helen in the office and Darla in the hallway. In the afternoon, we added Pastor Jordan to our list of stops.

When we got back into the classroom, we split into three groups to rotate through our Halloween stations. At one station, the kiddos listened to another Halloween story, I Know An Old Lady Who Swallowed A Bat.

The second station was the art station. The kiddos made "stained glass" pumpkins with contact paper and tissue paper. These are hanging in the classroom now, so feel free to stop by and check them out if you get the chance.

The last station was the cooking station. We made spider cookies with Oreos, licorice, and mini M&Ms.

By the time the day was over, I think we were all happy, full, and exhausted! It really was a great day!

Thank you to the parents (Jennifer and Robin) who spent some time with us during our party! I really appreciate your help! 

A Trip to the Library

Goodness gracious! It has been far too long since I've posted. I apologize for that. Take it as a sign of how busy we have been these last couple of weeks!

Our book study is underway, although, I have a feeling it won't get into full swing until I get conferences under control. We did take our field trip to the library this week. The kiddos had so much fun. The morning class walked to the library. It was very lightly misting, so I contacted as many adults as I could and gathered umbrellas. I think this was the kiddos favorite part of the whole day. It also worked as a great way to keep the kids with their walking partners. No one wanted to leave the safety of their umbrellas (even though they would have been completely okay if they had)! The afternoon class got the thrill of riding in cars to the library. They were so excited about this - riding in the car with their school friends = a total blast!

When we got to the library, we took a tour of the entire building. We noticed many different things about the library. It is completely decked out in Halloween decor, and this was the first thing everyone noticed. As we walked around, though, we started to notice many different kinds of books and reading materials. We noticed everything from kids books and adult books to magazines and newspapers to books on tape and movies.

After we finished our tour, Toni, the amazing librarian, came over and answered some of the kiddos questions. We found out where the books come from, how they get to the library, how they are loaded onto the trucks, and what Toni's favorite books are.

When we were done talking to Toni, we split into small groups and read books together. The library was featuring Halloween books, so they made up the majority of what we read. I know my groups loved reading about goblins, witches, and ghosts.

Taking this trip to the library was a great opportunity for the kiddos! I want to take the time to thank Judy Boeckholt, Linda Kane, and Shannyn Bectel for helping out on this trip. I couldn't have given the kiddos this opportunity without you! You are greatly appreciated!

We have continued to read favorite books this week as well. It's amazing to me how quickly the children are picking up on the early reading concepts. Check out these videos of some of the kiddos "reading" books during Learning Centers:

We have been spending a considerable amount of time preparing for conferences the last two weeks as well. I am so looking forward to meeting with everyone to talk about your fabulous children! I have so much to share, and I can't wait to get your feedback and work with you to help set goals for your kiddos! If you haven't signed up yet, please do so as soon as you can. The spots are filling up quickly, so the sooner you sign up the more likely it will be to get a spot that fits your schedule. Remember that I have time on Friday, November 9 as well, if a day time works better for you.

Our Halloween party is on Wednesday, October 31. I sent home information about the party on Wednesday and Thursday. Please check your child's bag for this information. We will be having a costume party, so feel free to send your child's costume with him/her that day. This is one of my favorite days in preschool!

Have a fantastic weekend.

Celebrating Our Rock Knowledge

We have been having a fantastic week so far! Our days have been jam-packed full of learning, and I'm so pleased with all of the growth I am seeing in the children!

We are wrapping up our rock study this week. On Monday, the children voted on how they would like to celebrate their knowledge. I presented two choices to the children: writing a book or creating a rock museum. The children in both classes voted to create a rock museum.

Today, they got busy creating their rocks for the museum. They have been using all kinds of things (everything from pom-poms to yarn to fur and fabric) to make their rocks look cool and unique. We'll continue working on our rocks tomorrow and Thursday.

Our museum will be open on Monday and Tuesday. I plan to set the museum up in the hallway outside our classroom. Please check it out when you drop-off/pick-up your child! The kiddos are so proud of the work they've been doing on their rocks, and I know they will be pleased as punch to share their work with you!

Today, we also spent some time learning about fire safety. The Lake Mills firefighters visited us during both sessions. Experience has taught me that this can be a scary time for preschoolers. Seeing the firefighters in their full uniforms (including mask and helmet) is a new experience for most of them. This was definitely true today. While we talked about the firefighters coming, how they would look, and what they would sound like, a handful of children were scared. We fought through it though, and most of the children had an enjoyable time!

After talking a bit about fire safety (calling 9-1-1, stop, drop, and roll, and having a meeting place), we got to meet the fire pup! One of the funnier moments of the day came when one of the students caught on that the fire pup was really a person wearing a costume and asked, "Can we see your face?" We also got to go out and see the fire truck. We heard the sirens and the horn and got to see the lights.

Overall, I'd say the firefighter's visit was successful and got many of the kiddos thinking about fire safety.

Just a heads up for Thursday: I will not be at school on Thursday. I will be attending a conference in Des Moines. Rebecca May will be my substitute.

(I apologize for the lack of pictures from the morning class. I used two cameras today - one for the morning and one for the afternoon. I left the one I used this morning at school. I'll try to edit this post and add pictures tomorrow.)

Our Week in Pictures

Here's a look at what we've been up to!

We....

 started polishing some rocks in our rock tumbler,

 practiced writing the word, "Rock,"

 painted rocks,

 listened to Lisa Ralls as she explained her rock and fossil collection,

 examined rocks and fossils with magnifying glasses,

 wrote questions for Lisa (each student had his/her own question), asked the questions, and wrote the answers,

and enjoyed our first field trip to Oakwood Park! (I didn't get any pictures of our actual rock activities during this field trip, which is a major bummer. We made a map of our route to the park and as we found rocks and added them to our bucket we marked the location on the map. When we arrived at the park, we talked about how those rocks got where they were. This helped us answer our question, "How do rocks get everywhere?")

I want to send out a huge thank you to Robin Charlson and Carrie Peterson for coming with us on our field trip yesterday! It helps so much to have a few extra adults while we are out of the classroom. 

We'll be continuing with our rock study next week. The kiddos seem to have learned so much with this study already, and I'm excited to see how much more they can learn. 

Have a fantastic weekend!

Diving Into Rocks!

Goodness! It has been way too long since I blogged. I'm sorry about that. I'm hoping to do better with this week.

As I mentioned in the newsletter last week, we started working on our first study: Rocks! I am so excited for this study. To many adults, I'm sure learning about rocks doesn't really sound all that exciting. In the eyes of a preschooler, though, it has so many opportunities. After exploring rocks for a few days, I had the students tell me what they would like to learn about rocks. Here are some of their questions:

1. Where do rocks come from?
2. How do they get everywhere?
3. How do rocks get smooth?
4. How do rocks get rough?
5. Can we color on rocks?

Starting tomorrow, we'll start investigating the answers to these questions. I have two big events planned to help us. First, I have a guest speaker, Lisa Ralls from Winnebago County Conservation, coming on Wednesday to show the kiddos her rock collection and introduce them to fossils. On Thursday, I'm hoping to take a walking field trip to Oakwood Park to see where we can find rocks. (See the bottom of this post if you would like to come with us!)

We'll also be experimenting with a rock tumbler to see if we can turn rough, dull rocks into smooth, shiny rocks.

For now, I'll leave you with a few pictures from last week. Enjoy!

If you are interested in coming along on our field trip to Oakwood Park on Thursday, please let me know. In order to go, I need at least two extra adults for the morning class and at least one extra adult for the afternoon class. Of course, we would welcome as many adults as we can get! Thank you!

Have You Filled a Bucket Today?

We are elbow-deep into being “bucket-fillers” this week! I’m going to focus this post on what exactly that means.

Here’s the theory (which originated in the book for adults How Full Is Your Bucket? by Tom Rath and has been translated into many, many children books - we read this one):  Everyone has an invisible bucket over their head. When your bucket is full, you feel great. When your bucket is empty, you feel bad. Feeling bad often causes us to treat each other badly. Our goal, with this theory in mind, is to fill each others buckets. When we fill someone else’s bucket, our bucket gets filled up too. We feel better by making other people feel better.

I always, always, always try to emphasize the positive, (If I’m asking the kids to be bucket-fillers, I better be a bucket-filler myself!) so we focus on being bucket-fillers here. On a wall in our south classroom, we have a line of buckets – each one has the name (and, soon, a picture) of a student. Every time I, or someone else, sees a friend filling someone’s bucket, I will say, “_________, you just filled her bucket!” This is the friend’s cue to go put a pom-pom in his/her bucket. 

As we start to fill up buckets, we will get a sticker on our big class bucket for each full individual bucket. When our class bucket is full, we will have a bucket-filler celebration!

My intent in using this theory with the kiddos is to help them learn friendship skills. They’ll be learning how to recognize feelings in themselves and those around them and to realize how their actions can affect those feelings. It provides them with the vocabulary they need to explain how they are feeling. After just two days of using this theory, I had a friend come to me today and say, “Mrs. Hansen! I just gave my friend a kitchen necklace. I filled his bucket!” He knew he made his friend feel good, and he felt good because of it. Now we have a way to talk about it.

As I mentioned in my last post, this is one of my all-time favorite techniques in preschool! I love it and the kids love it! Let me know if you’d like to know more about it or if you have any questions.

I’ll blog again on Friday to let you know what else we have been up to this week!

Manners, Manners, and More Manners (Plus Some Snapping!)

We survived our second week together! We had a truly fantastic time this week, too!

We’re still learning routines and procedures. These things take time, and I’m sure we’ll have plenty of practicing and reviewing ahead of us. The kids have been doing a great job so far though. We focused on circle time manners this week. We watched a super cute video called Can You Teach My Alligator Manners?. (You can find it here, if you are interested in watching it at home.) We stopped as we watched and talked about what the alligator was doing that wasn’t okay and how he could change.

After we finished the video, we played a fun game to practice our circle time manners. I asked a question and rolled a ball around the circle to give each child a turn to answer. The children knew it was their turn to answer the question when the ball was in their hands. While they waited, they practiced their circle time manners; they sat on their X’s, watched the person who was talking, and waited for their turn to talk. They had a blast with this game!

On Thursday, after practicing all week, we made a list of circle time manners. The kiddos came up with everything I had hoped they would think of. Our four big rules are: (1) Wait my turn to talk. (2) Sit on my bottom. (3) Raise my hand. (4) Sit still. We’ll read through these rules every day, and I am sure circle time will be a breeze very, very soon!

Another highlight from this week was our snap paintings on Thursday. I read about this art project on another preschool teacher’s blog and thought it sounded like a blast. I was right! Here’s what we did: 

I stretched rubber bands around a cookie sheet, slid a piece of paper under the rubber bands, covered the rubber bands in paint, and let the kids snap away. This was a great fine motor exercise. The biggest challenge for them was holding on to the pan with one hand and stretching the rubber band with the other hand. It took quite a bit of strength for them to do this. Of course, the fact that they were splattering  themselves (and me) with paint made it all worth it! I'm hoping to get these paintings hung up on our art wall this weekend. Please come take a look at them!

We’ve also started to jump into some more academic areas. We’ve matched letters, sorted shapes, and practiced writing our names. 

Next week, we’ll be focusing on friendship manners. I’m going to introduce my absolute favorite friendship technique – buckets! I’ll share more about this next week. I cannot wait to share this with your children!

The End of a Great First Week

We made it through our first week! I am already falling in love with this new group of students. They make me smile, laugh, and think.

Like the first two days of school, we spent the next two practicing routines and trying to remember our classroom rules. Miss Lansing and I have been making all kinds of observations to see what your children already know and where we should start directing our teaching. We had an excellent meeting on Friday morning to talk about individual student goals, and I am excited to jump in next week to help the children in these new ways. The individual goals range from writing names to following directions to learning how to calm their bodies down.

The children have enjoyed:

• Exploring their names (how many letters, what do they start with, letters they share with each other, etc.).
• Continuing to explore the interest areas.
• Pretending to be spies on the playground. (They even took notes as they spied on their friends!)
• Listening to the story Wemberly Worried by Kevin Henkes
• Acting out the story of Jesus walking on water during Faith Time
• Singing and dancing to Tooty-Ta and the Penguin Dance

I sent home three important papers on Thursday. (I forgot to send them home with the M/W three year-olds, so I will send them home with them next Wednesday.) The first paper explains our star student sharing program. Please make sure you take note of your child's week! The second paper is our snack calendar for the next month. The third paper is a list of the learning objectives for this year. These objectives are yours to hang on to. They are the basis to what we will be teaching your children throughout the year.

Have a super, long weekend! I'll see you all on Tuesday or Wednesday!

It Is Great To Be Back!

Holy buckets! What a great first two days of school we have had! It has been so much fun getting to know your children and getting to see them interact with each other for the first time.

As you can probably imagine, the first couple of weeks will be all about learning routines and classroom rules. We’ll be figuring out what’s okay to do and what’s not okay to do, figuring out how to do things, and learning about what we already know. So far, the children have done so well! Between Interest Areas (center time) and outside time, it’s hard to tell what their favorite time is. They play so hard! Here are some pictures to show you just what we’ve been up to!

They’re still learning about each other, and it has been interesting to see them interact. I’ve heard all kinds of conversations about everything from describing where they live to talking about the tattoos they have (temporary, of course) to talking about what sports they like to play. Some kiddos are quiet and soak everything in, and others are more outgoing and quick to make friends. I have had a few kiddos feel sad about leaving Mom and Dad, which is absolutely normal and something I expect the first couple of weeks. Within a few days, they’ll feel safe and secure coming to school! We are just a great big melting pot of different personalities, and I wouldn’t ask for anything else!

Just to leave you with a smile, here are my favorite lines from the last two days.

From yesterday: During Faith Time, I wanted to get a feel for what the kiddos already know about God and Jesus, so I asked them. They told me what they knew, and I wrote it on a piece of paper. The first thing a little guy in the afternoon class said was, “When it’s raining, you can hear God bowling!” I thought that was about the greatest thing ever!

From today: While Pastor Jordon (senior pastor here at Salem) was reading today, he noticed one of our friend’s names is Lilly. He asked her if she knew that a lily was a flower and then told her he has a lily in his office. One of the friends who was sitting closest to me spoke up with, “Can you get one for me?” This might be one of those things that isn’t actually funny unless you were there, but, let me tell you, I nearly died trying to hold in my laughter!

I am so excited for this year!

Aloha! Welcome to Hawaii!

Our last day luau was so much fun! Between our special snack, a chance to play in water, and a decorated room, the children could hardly contain their excitement!

We started the whole thing off by boarding the plane and getting ready for take off. We fastened our seat belts and chewed some gum (so our ears wouldn't pop), and set off for Hawaii. While on the plane, we watched an in-flight movie, Mickey's Hawaiian Holiday.

When we arrived in Hawaii, we got our very own leis! Then we headed off to explore (interest areas). The kiddos made their own grass skirts, relaxed on the beach, made sand castles, and watched a volcano explode.

The next part was my favorite part of the whole day! Judy brought in a sprinkler for the kiddos to play in! They couldn't have been more excited! It was a little chilly (and sprinkling a little in the afternoon) so we weren't out for very long; it was long enough for them to enjoy the experience though!

After the sprinkler, we came back inside and enjoyed a tasty Hawaiian snack. We made kabobs with some traditional Hawaiian foods - pineapple, bananas, cherries, ham and cheese. Not only did this taste fantastic, but trying to get their food on their skewers was a great fine motor experience for them.

After snack, it was time to hop back on the plane and return to Lake Mills. We got some more gum for the flight, and enjoyed another in-flight movie. This one taught us to say the name of the state fish of Hawaii - the humuhumunukunukuapua'a.

We had a fabulous time in Hawaii! It was such a blast to share this with your children. Hopefully, they had as much fun as I did!

The Best Day Ever (Two Days in a Row!)

We had the best week this week! In planning the last week of school, I never imagined how wonderful and fun all of the events would be. It was truly the best way to end a great year!

I'm going to talk about our East Park trip tonight, and I'll share our luau fun tomorrow.

First of all, I figured that the van trip was going to be a super exciting for the kiddos since we had never taken a trip like this before. Their faces were so happy and shiny as we headed out! The kiddos in my van were noticing all kinds of things on their way - everything from cows, to trains, to flowers - and these things kept them talking the whole way!

As soon as we got to the park, we piled out of the vans and had a quick snack.

Then it was off to play! If you have never been to the giant playground at East Park, you absolutely need to go sometime! When I lived in Mason City last year, I used to jog right past this playground and I always thought that it looked cool. Cool doesn't even begin to describe this park. There were so many towers and tunnels and obstacles for the kids to maneuver through that the kids would have been content to play forever, if we had let them.

Initially, the kiddos were mostly interested in the equipment - bouncing, balancing, running, swinging, climbing, etc. After a while though, there was some pretty cool dramatic play happening. I saw kids pretending to be in cages, to have magic powers, and to drive trains. It was also super cool to see the morning kiddos building relationships with the afternoon kiddos. It's amazing how my two groups really became one big group this week - I loved it!

After we played for over an hour, it was time for lunch. Lunch was a bit of a struggle, because of the crazy, crazy winds. We had milk and ranch everywhere from our blown-over cups and baggies. Everyone got their fill, though, and then we quickly reapplied sunscreen and headed back to the playground.

Finally, it was time for us to go home. The kiddos were covered in sweat, dirt, and chocolate milk, but they were still beaming. What a great day! On the trip home, we had a few sleepers, which made me smile. They played so hard!

Throughout the day, I heard a number of kiddos excitedly saying, "This is the best day ever!" That is music to a teacher's ears, let me tell you! Sharing this day with all of the children made my heart so stinkin' happy!