Preschool Daily Schedule

Dear Parents,

During April, as we were completing our project on "Dinosaurs," we observed that the children continued to be fascinated with skeletons and bones. This led to many conversations and a comparison of dinosaurs and humans. After much discussion and based on the children's interests, we decided the next project to explore would be "The Human Body." We created a web to document the children's prior knowledge and the questions they wanted to explore. After planning various learning experiences for the children, we were very interested to see that their focus was skeletons and bones.

X-rays of bones were investigated on the light table. The children created drawings of their skeletons and the bones inside their bodies. While reading stories of what's inside our body, they learned about the number of bones found in our hands, and they recreated this by tracing their hands and placing Q-tips inside the skin to represent bones. They made life-size cut-outs of their bodies, and they spent time adding materials to create themselves. They then revisited the drawings they had originally made and drew their bodies again, adding the new information they had gained; more details, such as a brain, bones, heart, etc. They also made a patient that was used during dramatic doctor play.

Furthermore, during the last few weeks of April, the children have shown a lot of interest in the book "The Gingerbread Man." They began pretending they were the different characters in the story. As a class, we began discussing staging a performance and acting out the story. Different parts of the story structure have been explored, such as plot, characters and setting. We started creating props and will continue to re-enact the story throughout the month of May.

The story has evolved into another project, "Theatre/Performing." A shadow-play area has been set up in the classroom, and the children have been engaged in dramatic play. Some children have been dancing, and others have been using different props, such as dinosaurs, puppets and people figurines, to act out a shadow show. They have been enjoying discussing what they would like to perform with their friends, preparing what props they would like to use and then adding them to the performance. We will continue this exploration by having the children create their original story and act it out through shadow-play, puppet theatre, or performing themselves. This month, we will also begin talking about the life cycle of a plant (planting flowers/vegetables and taking care of them).

In Language Arts, the children are continuing to build three-letter words. We will continue reading in the "A Pig Can Jig" SRA series. The children continue to print letters in both upper and lower case. In mathematics, the children continue to explore teen numbers. We have been practising counting by twos and fives. We are exploring three-dimensional shapes and doing simple one-digit addition and subtraction.