Little Busy Bodies Preschool

Newsletter

October 31^st

Dear Preschool Parents,

            What a way to end the month of October! I loved seeing the kids all dressed up today making fun childhood memories! We had a whirlwind of a preschool day, fitting in numerous games and activities as well as two picture books.

            The first story we read was “Room on the Broom,” by Julia Donaldson. This is a fun, rhythmical story. There's always room for one more on this friendly witch's broomstick... or is there? A witch and her happily purring cat fly through the wind on their broomstick, without a care in the world, until the witch's black hat blows away. In the process of retrieving it, they pick up another passenger, a polite and helpful dog. All goes well until the witch's hair bow flies off…And then her wand…And then real disaster strikes--in the shape of a big red dragon, a broken broom, and a surprise ending. After reading this story, we played a game of Pin the Wart on the Witch.

            The second Halloween story we read was “Ghosts in the House,” by Kazuno Kohara. The story is sweet and simple. A little witch moves into a haunted house, and, fortunately for her, she knows exactly what to do with a house full of ghosts. First she traps them, then she washes them in the washing machine, and finally she repurposes them as useful items, such as curtains, table linens, and bedding. The story ends happily, with smiling ghosts performing new jobs all over her house. This story makes the kids laugh and snicker. There’s no other Halloween story quite like it. After reading this story, I told the children that our preschool class was also haunted. They looked around and saw several ghosts all over the room. So we went on a ghost hunt, pretending to be Ghostbusters and the kids ran around collecting them all. We then played a matching game, where we had to match the facial expressions of the ghosts into pairs. We had two ghosts that were very sneaky and sent us on quite the wild ghost chase, but Reese finally found the last one so we’re good. The kids may now safely return to our preschool class on Wednesday ;)

            HAPPY HALLOWEEN!

                                                                

REMINDER

*KING/ QUEEN OF THE WEEK SEPT. 2^nd & 4^th: Rome…Don’t forget snack!!

MARK YOUR CALENDAR

*NOV 4-Preschool Make-up Day…THIS FRIDAY!!!!

*NOV 18-Preschool Make-up Day

*NOV 21 & 23-NO SCHOOL THANKSGIVING WEEK

                             

HALLOWEEN CANDY WRAPPERS MAKE GREAT WORD WALL CONTRIBUTIONS!!

See you on Wednesday! Sincerely,

Amber

Little Busy Bodies Preschool

Newsletter

October 24 & 26, 2011

Dear Preschool Parents,

Halloween is upon us and the children are SO excited! I can remember how magical holidays seemed as a small child. In an attempt to bring that same magic and joy to the fall season, we read two festive stories this week.

The first story we read was "The Little Old Lady Who Was Not Afraid of Anything," by Linda Williams. It’s a great Halloween story although it doesn't have the word Halloween anywhere in the texts. An old lady sets out to gather herbs and spices, nuts and seeds. On her way back, she encounters two shoes, but she tells them “Get out of my way, you two big shoes! I’m not afraid of you,” and she keeps on walking. She also comes across a pair of pants, a shirt, two gloves and a hat. For each consecutive article of clothing she encounters, the little old lady responds in the same way, which allows for lots of repetition and action. The children LOVE to join in the storytelling of this book! Each article of clothing makes a sound as they try to scare the old lady: “…Two shoes go CLOMP, CLOMP…the  pair of pants go WIGGLE, WIGGLE…the shirt goes SHAKE, SHAKE…the two gloves go CLAP, CLAP…the hat goes NOD, NOD…and finally a scary pumpkin head goes BOO! BOO!” After a while, the old lady begins to walk faster and she becomes more afraid. She takes off running for home. Once at home, she overcomes her fear and finds a happy solution. The items that have tried to scare her become a scarecrow in the little old lady's garden. The children used actual articles of clothing as well as poster pieces to help retell this story. This activity is always a winner with the children.

The second story we read this week was “The Teeny Tiny Ghost,” by Lynn Munsinger. This was a new read for me this year and a keeper for sure! Meet the teeny, tiny ghost and his two teeny tiny black cats. He attends ghost school where he is trying, unsuccessfully, to learn the ropes of haunting. He howls and he yeowls, boos and whoos but he consistently succeeds only in scaring himself silly. One night, he hears some suspicious knocks and noises at his door and sees some spooky lights and shadows. He wants to hide, but when the teeny tiny black cats get scared, he rises to the challenge, faces his own fears and lets loose with his best, bone-chilling BOOO!!! to scare away the spooks. A wonderful revelation results! After reading this story, we did a listening craft activity where each child made their own ghost. I usually try to stay away from the adult directed projects where everything is pre-cut and basically done by the adult. However, these were too cute! Plus, I felt that this activity was quite beneficial in teaching a few things: listening, following step-by-step directions, using a glue stick (it’s more difficult than you’d think), and discussing shapes, sizing and colors.

REMINDER

*KING/ QUEEN OF THE WEEK SEPT. 2^nd & 4^th: Rome…Don’t forget snack!! I will take care of snack on Monday, October 31^st due to our Halloween party.

MARK YOUR CALENDAR

*NOV 4-Preschool Make-up Day

*NOV 18-Preschool Make-up Day

*NOV 21 & 23-NO SCHOOL THANKSGIVING WEEK

                             

THINGS TO COME

*OCT 31-HALLOWEEN PARTY…Come in costume!!!

*NOV 2 & 4-Colors

THANKS TO THOSE OF YOU WHO HAVE CONTRIBUTED TO OUR WORD WALL!! KEEP THE WORDS COMING! J

Have a good weekend! Sincerely,

Amber

Little Busy Bodies Preschool

Newsletter

October 19 & 21, 2011

Dear Preschool Parents,

           Happy Fall y’all!! I can’t believe we are nearing the end of October already. I realized the other day just how far all of the children have come in just three short months. I hope you have seen some growth as well.

           The first book we read this week was “Ten Apples up on Top,” by Dr. Seuss. This is such a fun counting book. There are three animal characters, a lion, a tiger and a dog that take us through this circus act. The lion starts us off with the balancing of one fallen apple atop his head. He decides, hey, if I can do this I am sure I can do two! Then, along comes dog, sporting his two apples atop his head. Now the contest is on! Look three...then four...but they don't stop there. First comes the jump rope, then tree climbing, all while balancing four apples on their heads. Next comes the tiger and their competitive antics continue from there until all three animals are balancing ten apples up on top. After reading this story, the children made apple prints on long narrow strips of paper (the number of apple prints depended upon how many apple beanbags they could balance on their head). I took a picture of each child and mounted these creations on the wall, and viola, we have cuteness and learning taking place all at once!

             Our second book we read was, “Mouse Count,” by Ellen Stoll Walsh. A sly snake finds ten sleeping mice that he thinks will make a delicious meal. He pops them all into a jar . . . "one, two, three..." The snake is ready to eat them, but in a last attempt to save themselves, the mice trick him! They tell him about a big mouse “over there” and off slithers the greedy snake to catch it. While the snake is gone, the mice rock the jar this way and that, finally getting it to tip over. Then they quickly UN-count themselves! “Ten, nine, eight, seven, six, five, four, three, two, one!” The alleged big mouse that the snake had gone to catch turns out to be nothing more than a rock so the snake winds up with NOTHING! The children love this simple counting story. After reading it through once, I pulled out my snake puppet and jar of rubber mice. I then retold the story using the props. Of course every child needed a chance to be the snake as well so we retold this story five more times!! Then I had each child retell the story to me on their own while I wrote down their account word for word. Finally, they made a picture of a mouse using the same art technique as seen in the story (torn paper). I will type up their stories, attach them to their pictures and send those home on Monday.

REMINDER

*KING/ QUEEN OF THE WEEK OCT. 24/26^TH: Ethan…Don’t forget snack!!

MARK YOUR CALENDAR

*NOV 4-Preschool Make-up Day

*NOV 18-Preschool Make-up Day

*NOV 21 & 23-NO SCHOOL THANKSGIVING WEEK

                             

THINGS TO COME

*OCT 24/26-Halloween stories & fun

*OCT 31-HALLOWEEN PARTY…Come in costume!!!

THANKS TO THOSE OF YOU WHO HAVE CONTRIBUTED TO OUR WORD WALL!! KEEP THE WORDS COMING!

Have a good weekend! Sincerely,

Amber

Little Busy Bodies Preschool

Newsletter

October 3 & 5, 2011

Dear Preschool Parents,

           

This week we were down in numbers… we missed AJ! Hope you’re feeling better soon, buddy, your friends were asking about you, and we had a definite hole when we were sitting on the carpet.

We’ve moved our focus to numbers! We began by reading the book, “Ten Black Dots,” by Donald Crews. “Ten Black Dots” is a story about just that, ten black dots. The author begins his book with one dot that can make a sun and counts all the way up to 10 dots that make balloons stuck in a tree. This book not only provides opportunity to count to ten, but it also allows the children’s creative juices to flow as they think of other things that can be done with 10 black dots. Of course, that’s what we did. I gave each child 10 black dots and they came up with their own pictures from the class brainstorming session. Activities for any book are hit and miss depending upon the class and their abilities. This activity this time around was a bit challenging for them. Although they had no problem coming up with ideas of things that could be made from ten black dots (i.e. watermelon, flies, ladybugs, wheels on cars, eyeballs on people, etc.) it was difficult for them to get their pictures to look like their idea.

Our second book we read was “Look Whooo’s Counting,” by Suse Macdonald. Young Owl takes a sunset-to-dawn census of her habitat one night and learns to count in the process. As she counts "1 prairie dog sitting on a hill," "2 mice in the field," and so on, something magical happens: the animals and insects closely resemble individual numbers, as do her own feathers. When Owl counts "8 spiders in a web," for example, the bodies of the spiders look just like the numeral eight, while Owl's under feathers form the numerals one through eight. After reading this story, we worked together as a class using number cards and coordinating animal cards from the book to count and organize the animals so we could have a visual representation of the story and number pyramid.

           

REMINDER

*KING/ QUEEN OF THE WEEK OCT. 19^th & 21^st: AJ…Feel free to bring in a poster, if you want, and don’t forget snack (I have cups and napkins).

MARK YOUR CALENDAR

*October 10th-12th MUSD Fall Break--NO SCHOOL

*October 17th--NO SCHOOL (My child attends Legacy Traditional and they have no school this day.)

*October 21st--MAKE-UP DAY Please let me know if this does NOT work with your schedule.

Have a wonderful Fall Break!

Amber