Sunday, October 26, 2014

PreK's Neighborhood Post Office

Last week we learned all about What Families Need.  One of the most important things we need is shelter which is provided by our cozy homes.  After looking at different types of homes around the world we made our own PreK B Neighborhood with each house being just as unique as each student!

Next we talked about things we need that go inside of our homes.  Necessities such as food and clothing and comfort items like toys and books.  The kids did a great job sorting all of the items by room during our smart sort activity!

We also discussed another thing about where we live that makes us unique, our street address!  We discussed many different reasons why it is important to know our street address: so friends and family can come and visit, so Santa knows where to deliver our presents at Christmas (my favorite answer, so cute!), and so we can receive packages and mail!

After watching a fun video that taught us exactly how mail gets from one place to another then we made postcards with picture of our homes or families to send to our address.

We added stamps to pay the postman.

Then after our Mount Saint Mary helper Samantha added our street address and return address we put our post cards in the mailbox! 
 I hope everyone's postcard made it to their mailbox safe and sound!

To end the week of learning about the letter F we celebrated Fancy Day!  While I was extremely sad to have missed all the fun, Mrs. Straessle took some awesome pictures.

Handsome fellas! 

Lovely little ladies!

A big thank you to all of the kids and Mrs.Straessle for my good luck sign, it was a great encouragement to see before my first half marathon!   Our Hoots are the best, hands down!



Our Creepy Crawly Visitor

We were so excited to start our Museum of Discovery visits with Mrs.Susan this past week!  Once a month, for five months, Mrs.Susan will visit PreK and will bring with her an animal.  

Mrs. Susan taught us all about the differences in vertebrates and invertebrates.  We learned that insects and bugs are invertebrates and have exoskeletons, meaning their bones are on the outside of their bodies.  Due to the weight of their exoskeleton, which is very heavy, most invertebrates remain very small.  In order to grow larger, animals with exoskeletons must shed their current skin and grow a new one, even spiders!  

The first animal Mrs.Susan brought was a great example of an invertebrate with an exoskeleton...a tarantula!  Talk about creepy crawly!

I was so impressed with how brave all of the students were!  Mrs.Susan allowed the kids to get up-close and personal with the tarantula and not a one of them even flinched, which is something I can't say for myself.

After Mrs.Susan left, we made our own spiders to hang from the ceiling to add to all of our Halloween decorations!

We started by making blue, green, or blue/green bodies complete with cute faces and and bow ties and hair bows.

We then learned how to accordion fold strips of paper to make our spiders' 8 creepy crawly legs.  The kids did a great job with this fine motor task!

Our finished products were much more adorable than the real thing, which I am very happy about!  :)

I somehow missed Miss Ava's picture with her spider!  I will take that tomorrow and get that uploaded ASAP!