Halloween Fun

Preschool is the perfect age to play with. They have vivid imaginations, are full of trust and are easily spooked. They were in for a good time as they used their sense of touch to identify miscellaneous objects.

I presented to the class that I had borrowed some things from a witch that she uses in potions. To make this concept plausible, we had colored potion bottles, sketching spiders, snakes, flowers, and miscellaneous liquids. We had read witch stories like Hoodwinked by Arthur Howard and Room on the Broom by Julia Donaldson, paying close attention to icky stuff in the illustrations. (These are my two favorite Halloween stories for kids.)

And then the fun, the squealing and the laughter began--and the kids had fun too. Placing their hand under the towel, they each took turns touching the eye balls (grapes), the finger bones (peanuts), the finger nails (raisins), the leg bone (celery), the worms (pasta) and the brain (peeled grapefruit.) Some of my students whom I had taken for timid were the most brave and vice-versa.

The funniest reaction was to the "worms". Those hands shot backwards at million miles per hour and were happily wiped off. The kids laughed at their own reactions and at each others.

The laughter got even more boisterous when I revealed each true item to them.

I hope your little ones enjoyed our Halloween Party.

Megan Millington

Parent Letter

Old McDonald Had a Farm . . . . . We have been learning about the differences between farm animals and other animals. The biggest difference we discovered was that farm animals make food for us or help provide clothing for us.

In lieu of wool, we stretched and rolled cotton balls into thin threads and then observed threads in each other’s clothing. We also studied cows and made our own butter!

FYI: I used the term “made” when referencing animals and their food products. Cows “made” hamburgers, pigs “made” bacon, chicken “made” fried chicken. I will leave it up to your discretion as to how to present the killing aspect of how we get food on our tables for when you feel your little one is ready for such a concept.

Our letter focus this week was the letter Dd. Our classes are getting better every day at hearing and then identifying the beginning sounds of words. I can’t believe how far they’ve come in such a short time.

Show and Tell is really becoming such a big hit. I love to see them all wiggling with their item hidden behind their backs. They confidently jump up to share what their item is, why they like it and then some other piece of information. Question Day has lead to some truly fascinating questions, sometimes involving the hows and whys of things and other times we have discussions about fairies and other such creative topics. (I believe in fairies.)

Next week we will continue our lessons on farming, focusing more on crops.

If your child has come home talking about his “peanut butter” hand, please know that I will say this a zillion times to help students identify the letters p, b, q and d. P and b both have bellies on the right side of their sticks. The letters d and q both have bellies on the left side. If student sees a letter with a belly on the right side, it’s either a p or a b. The peanut butter hand!

Thank you for your support!

Megan Millington

Parent Letter

5 Senses, 5 Senses
We have them. We have them.
Seeing, hearing, touching
Tasting and smelling
There are 5. There are 5.

The five senses. What a fantastic, fantastic opportunity to introduce students to the world around them. Here are some of the activities we participated in on this astounding subject.

1. We went on a nature walk. We listened to the sound of windchimes, birds, leaves blowing and even my cat Puck greeting us in the front yard.
2. We also closed eyes and listened to the sound of a bell as it came closer and then drifted farther away.
3. We used our sense of smell, touch and taste in the kitchen.

• A glass of water and a glass of white vinegar looks very much the same. But one of them would not be the best choice if we were thirsty. Sniffing gave that away.
• Salt and sugar feel very much the same, neither has a sound or a smell, but it it very clear which is which using our sense of taste.
• We sampled different snacks while covering our ears. Did you know you can hear INSIDE your head and not just other people chewing?
  

4. We discovered that our sense of smell enhances taste by chewing a piece of bubble gum with our noses pinched. After 20 seconds we released our noses to enjoy a burst of flavor in our mouths.
5. Our sense of touch was used with a huge stack of Usborne touch and feel books. With eyes closed, the textures were enhanced.
6. We also created 5 Senses books with pictures of things each student liked to See, Smell, Touch, Taste and Hear. The students worked very hard on these drawings and sniffed those scratch and sniff stickers several times to determine absolute certainty if it should be placed in the like or dislike columns.

It was such a fun unit to cover these last couple weeks. We will be using our 5 senses during our Halloween Party in a couple weeks!

Parent Letter

Dear Parents,

A brief note on what we’re working on. For the next few classes our focus will be on our five senses: Taste, Touch, Sight, Smell and Hear. We will begin with Hearing. Hearing is a very important skill for readers. As we work on beginning sounds, it’s very important for your student to be able to hear the sounds of the alphabet, to be aware that the words we say are made up of different alphabet letters. We play lots of games where they say a word and identify the beginning sound as “s” or “m”, etc. Or we change the beginning sounds of words to a letter “f” sound. Instead of dinosaur, we’ll say finosaur. It’s a silly game, but it helps preschoolers become more aware of the words we use.

This week we also practiced some common manners beyond please and thank you. We talked about how it makes someone feel bad to hear “I don’t like that” and came up with “No thank you, it’s not my favorite.” We practiced saying “Yes, please” when offered something they would like and also thanking the person for giving the item. We also role played what to do when faced with something at dinnertime. Yes, we take a bite. We also can add “it’s not my favorite—what should I do with it?” No tossing green beans off our plate, no stabbing the roll with our fork to show disapproval. We should leave the item on our plate in a nice way and follow parental instructions.

It was a fun activity to practice setting the table, practice table manners and watch their faces light up when showing courtesy.

I hope they can do so at home!

October is just around the corner. Halloween, fall activities abound for next month.

Thanks,

Megan Millington