Little Busy Bodies Preschool
Newsletter
November 7th & 9th, 2011
Dear Preschool Parents,
Yeah for cooler weather! I was so excited when the temperature read 54 degrees! I ran and put my Uggs on.
This week we continued on with our plant theme, focusing more on how plants help us. Before reading our first book, I showed the children several items: a piece of wood, cotton t-shirt, pineapple, bell pepper, Aloe Vera, and a book. I asked the children what all of these items had in common. Of course they didn’t know, but came up with some interesting answers! I explained that we get all of these things from plants. I tied this idea into our first story of the week, “The Giving Tree,” by Shel Silverstein. In this story, a tree and a boy befriend each other. In the beginning the tree is everything to the little boy, a leafy playground, a partner with which to play hide-n-seek, a shady place to nap. The tree is happy because the boy is happy. In time, the boy wants more. He asks for money, the tree tells him to sell her apples. When he asks for a house, she offers her branches for lumber. When the boy is old, too old and sad to play in the tree, he asks the tree for a boat. She proposes that he cut her down to a stump so he can craft a boat out of her trunk. He does so and only a stump remains, yet the tree was happy…but not really…and so the story goes. The story is a classic and the moral is wonderful, but we focused on the idea of what the tree was able to provide the boy. The children were very surprised to find that plants and trees provide us with so many things that we use every day.
The second story we read this week was, “Lunch,” by Denise Fleming. This book is incredibly simple, but a wonderful book that the children love. I introduced this book by showing the children a wide variety of real fruits and vegetables. We named them all and took polls on who liked which ones. I then told them that we were going to read about a mouse who loves all of these vegetables. Mouse is incredibly hungry. He's so hungry that once he starts eating, he can't stop. He begins with a turnip. Fleming allows the viewer to see only the top of the white vegetable. The text on this page reads, "He ate a crisp white--". The reader is able to guess what Mouse is going to eat by using the two adjectives that Fleming gives and the part of the vegetable made visible on the page. Excited, the viewer turns the page and on the left discovers that the "crisp white" vegetable is an immense turnip. On the right, the text reads, "Tasty orange--" and there is a hint of the next vegetable that Mouse sees….carrots. The book continues in this fashion as Mouse sinks his teeth into a long list of fruits and vegetables. By the time he’s done, his belly is bulging and he’s covered in messy food remnants. He drags himself to bed, leaving messy footprints as he goes, to take a nap UNTIL….dinner time. We then discussed in more detail how to tell a fruit from a vegetable. SEEDS!!! We cut several food items open and checked for seeds then placed them in the appropriate category.
REMINDER
*KING/ QUEEN OF THE WEEK Nov. 14th & 16th: Reese
MARK YOUR CALENDAR
*NOV 18-Preschool Make-up Day
*NOV 21 & 23-NO SCHOOL THANKSGIVING WEEK
See you on Monday!
Sincerely,
Amber
