Week of October 13-16, 2014

Week of October 13-16, 2014

Unit: All About Me

Focus Questions: What are my feelings?
Fire Safety

Letter of the Week: F

Dear Families,

Last week we had a special visitor at preschool. Kathy Roderick came to share with us some learning resources from the Natural History Museum. The children got to see and touch a variety of animal pictures, animals pelts and skeletons of animals. They also got to participate in an activity to determine what type of beak is best for picking up different objects. We also want to welcome our new friend Hayden to our morning class.
 
I will display more photos when I am able to download them and transfer them to the blog. 

During this week, the children will identify and talk about feelings that are common to everyone. They will learn words that name feelings, such as happy, sad, serious, and excited. they will also learn that how they feel affects the way they behave. For example, they are likely to smile when they are happy and frown when they are angry or unhappy. Additionally, children will talk about recognizing and responding to the feelings of others. 

Learning Together:

• Ask how your child is feeling when he/she comes home from school. Encourage your child to share reasons for these feelings.
• Look through picture books and have your child try to identify characters' feelings. Ask your child what clues helped him or her determine each character's feelings.
• Tell your child what makes you happy. Talk about things that make you both happy. Play a guessing game with your child. Take turns using facial expressions and other forms of body language to pantomime a feeling for the other to guess.

Some activities this week include:

• Finishing our All About Me books. Thank you everyone for sending in information about your child, if you have not yet set in information please have your child bring the following information to school on Monday: 1-2 pictures of themselves and their families, pictures which can be photographs or cut from a magazine of something that is their favorite color, their favorite toy, their favorite food and something they like to do such as a sport or hobby. If you are unable to find any pictures of the last items please write them down and we will work together in class to find them. 
• We will also be finishing up our address books and the children will be bringing them home this week. 
• We will be reading a book titled, Lots of Feelings, in it we will identify by labeling in a variety of feelings, come up with hypothesis about why that person may feeling that way and then play an emotions identification game on the Smartboard.
• We will also read The Three Little Pigs. We will read this story and interact with it on the Smartboard, we will listen to this story during centers in our listening center and then each child will have the opportunity to help us re-enact it in class.
• We will also be learning our new letter F and listening for differences in F and L words, identifying which words begin with F and which words begin with L.
• We will make a Firetruck for letter the F and for Fire Safety, as well as read our Scholastic Magazine about Fire Safety. 
• We will be identifying which pizza contains a given number of pepperonis by counting the pepperonis. 

Reminders:

• Please send in your child's information for our class All About Me book.
• Picture day is Tuesday, October 14th, forms went home last week.
• Show and Share is on Thursday, October 16th, Letter F.