A very special thanks to our Room Parents! Yesterday, they gathered their resources and their sunscreen and put together an amazing End of Pre-K Carnival and Pizza Party.  We had obstacle courses, duck hunting (in the pool , of course), spin art, basketball, a penny pitch and water-gun ping-pong play.

We asked the children to write about their favorite activities.  Most of them chose the Duck Pond and spin art.  However, one astute little guy remembered that it was the prizes that he loved most.

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Building Our Own Board Games.
This is Star Wars Saves the Princess.

With only a few days of school left, we weren’t sure that we wanted to begin a new unit.  Insects and silkworms are still intriguing, but after many weeks, we’re running out of project ideas.

Enter three students and the Amazing Carnival Ring Toss Game.

One day, following centers, these two scooped up the available bits and pieces and created a brand new game.  Using a piece of yarn to designate a throwing point, one student stands at the line while two others stand a few feet away. The “thrower” tosses an expanded Venn Diagram Circle in an arc to attempt to “ring” another student.  The number of points you score depends on which student you “ring”.

Designing this game required cooperation, leadership, innovation, and ingenuity.  Rules had to be established, agreed upon or changed, and shared.  Design flaws had to be worked out.  They found that tossing these collapsible rings wasn’t the easiest chore.  Structural changes were made. The first throw line was within inches of on of the “goals”.  All of this had to be agreed upon by three players.  No small accomplishment in my mind.

As usual, Mrs. Pless and I were inspired by what we found the children doing on their own.  We were reminded of all of the games we’ve seen children develop both inside and out over the years.  It is amazing that though no one ever actually overtly teaches children how to make a game, they are all familiar with the process. We wanted to take the process even deeper and explore what makes something a game.  How do you make up a game? Are there any rules that need to be the same in every game?  What do you do if you don’t want to play your friend’s game? What do you day if you want to change the game?  This week we’re looking to the children for answers to many of these questions.

Now you know why, when you ask your child, “What did you do today?” she will simply answer, “We played.”

Moving Up Day is on June 1st. The ceremony begins at 8:30 am. Please make sure your child is at school no later than 8:15 am. Parents and family may go directly to the Multipurpose Room to find a seat.

As parking spaces are limited in our school parking lot, you are encouraged to use the Hartwood Acres parking lot near Central Elementary School.

Pre-Kindergarten students should dress in clothing appropriate for a special occasion.

All students will be dismissed with their parents following the ceremony.

This Friday is Field Day. On this exciting day, the entire school will be working together to solve whatever physical challenges Mr. Cooper has designed for us all. The grade levels will be intermingled as we play, exercise, and try ours hands at cooperative, community building outdoor activities.

The fun begins after lunch and continues until 3:00. All Pre-K students are invited to stay until carpool at 3:20. Please make sure your child is dressed for the weather, has on sunscreen, and has sneakers for running in the grass. If you would like to send in sunscreen, the spray type is the easiest for us to apply, but we’ll work with whatever you have. Please be sure to have your sunscreen labeled.

How to get an entire group of 4 and 5-year-olds to close their eyes for a game of Sardines.

In this game, “It” is supposed to hide. After a count-down, the rest of us are supposed to look for “It”. In theory, each person who finds “It” quietly hides with them until the last person has joined the crunched-up bunch.

Reality check. What really happens: when the first Pre-K child finds “It”, he or she screams and everyone runs to the same spot. OR No one was actually covering their eyes and everyone knows where “It” hid.

The rules may change as we play, but the fun is still the most important part of the game.

Several weeks ago, our classroom became the new home to Silkworms, Painted Lady caterpillars, and a mystery egg. Slowly, the caterpillars grew and began to transform, while our mystery egg lay dormant. The students began to wonder what was inside the egg and if it would ever hatch!

Some students guessed a unicorn, caterpillar, or a tiny Evan would emerge from our egg. Mr. Cooper (P.E. teacher extraordinaire) suggested that perhaps it was just an old marshmallow. Several more weeks went by before our mystery guests decided to make an appearance. What was inside, you may ask? Praying Mantises, of course!

What an amazing world!

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So far in our bird unit we have learned about what different birds look like, what they eat, where they live, and the sounds that they make. Last week we extended our affinity for birds by having the students create their own birds and all the details that go along with them.

The students started by rolling up newspaper into different sizes and taping them together to resemble a head, body, beaks, and even a tail. After the base of the body was ready, the students dipped strips of newspaper into a mixture of water and flour and smoothed them onto their bird. Some students loved the feeling of the ooey gooey mixture between their fingers (that eventually crept up their arms) while others were not as enthused. Some students felt they would best serve the project by becoming the recorder, documenting each step of the project through drawings. The projects were then left to dry over several days.

Since then, the students have started to discuss how they would like the birds to look. The group members decide what colors of paint to use and where, what to call the bird, if it is a male or female, where it might live, and what it eats.

Not only are the students working on their cooperation skills, but they are using their imaginations to create a world in which these birds may live. Plus, who could resist the opportunity to get a little messy and learn at the same time?

Grab your clip boards! It’s time to stop talking about birds and go find some!  We spent one afternoon last week hiking along our nature trail in search of common, local birds.  On each board, the children had images of twelve birds they might see.

Now, imagine you are with a group of 15 four and five-year-olds who are honestly trying to creep quietly along the path.  The birds are chirping loudly all around.  Someone yells, “I think I hear a cardinal!”  Pandemonium ensues.

Although we never again  coaxed all 15 into quiet listening again, we did see many of the birds on our lists.  We even had to add the Mourning Dove since it wasn’t on the list originally.  The only unusual sighting was that of a “vulture”.  Though we tend not to have too many vultures here in Western PA, at least three children claimed to have seen one.  Mrs. Pless and I couldn’t verify the sighting, but we decided that at this stage, even birdwatching invisible birds was teaching them lessons in patience, observation, note taking, and natural wonder.

 

Often, parents and grandparents wonder when we’ll start teaching Math in Pre-K.  What they are really wondering is when we’ll begin using traditional equations to represent abstract mathematical data.  To be honest, you won’t find many traditional equations in Pre-K.  Instead, we focus on the underlying concepts needed to understand adding more to, or taking some away from, a set.

For the past week, we’ve been exploring making sets of numbers in more than one way.  With our first experiment, we used two colors of links and asked the children to make a chain of 8.  As the children had not yet been exposed to this type of activity, they naturally fell back on what they knew.  Without any further prompting, every child made a pattern with the two colors of links.  This vividly showed us that, although they had a strong understanding of patterning, they really weren’t sure what we were aiming for with our seemingly vague directions.

So, after a few Morning Meeting discussions and rearrangements of link/chain distribution over two days, the children began to see what we were practicing.  Once they were able to design chains with two colors to make sets of 9 with confidence, we moved on to more complicated directions.

Our most recent attempt opened up the number of colors available.  Each child was free to choose any two colors and create a set of 10.  Their goal was to try to come up with a set that didn’t match any other student’s.  As you can see, at this point, most of them are still focusing on the color differences rather than the quantity differences within the sets.  They are just beginning to realize that some of the number sets look the same even though the color sets differ.  As we continue to practice this way of thinking, the properties of sets will become more solid for them.