We were all so excited to share our Me Bags this week! Waiting week, while the Me Bags were in quarantine, felt like forever to many. These Me Bags helped us learn a little more about each other; our families, our interests/hobbies, etc. They also helped with speaking in front of the group, clearly explaining items, answering questions, asking questions, listening for understanding, taking turns, patience, etc.
 
We learned about different family make-ups and what words like adoption and stepsisters/brothers mean. We talked about what makes each of our families special and there were many wonderful responses such as reading together, baking together, lots of hugs, loving each other.
 
We also talked about how many family members each of us has in our household and compared them using words like more/less, most/least. Then the kids used clothespin clips with the family number counting and recognition cards.
 
We also got a head start on next week’s theme surrounding Orange Shirt Day, by talking about what it means to be accepted and loved for who you are. We read some wonderful books on the subject too.
 
Some stand-out books we read this week:
What I Like About Me by Allia Zobel-Nola
You Are Enough by Margaret O’Hair
Families Families Families by Suzanne Lang and Max Lang
A Family Is A Family Is A Family by Sara O’Leary
 
We’ve been working on our caring and kindness a lot this week. Using kind words to tell others how we feel and understanding and accepting that others can feel differently than we do, and that’s okay.
 
This week, many of our activities surrounded colour. 
Colour owl scavenger hunt
Caterpillar colour and sequence game
Favourite colour collage using all sorts of craft supplies.
Learning each other’s eye colour
Searching for Fall colours we see outside. There are such beautifully coloured bits of nature we see on a daily basis. We are so lucky! 
 
Fall is such a great season, as the weather cools a bit and the apples ripen on the trees. I think the kids have consumed more apples than they ever have because we have been able to eat apples right off the trees while we are out and about during the day.
 
We’ve been finding all sorts of feathers, fluffs and leaves while we are out. What a great opportunity for learning and discussion about varying aspects of nature and the season. It is rare to know the job that leaves do for trees, while in preschool, but I can tell you for sure that some of the kids know!
 
The kids have been working on recognizing their names and the names of others all month. Everyone has been matching letters, learning what some letters are called, finding the letters in their names and the children who are ready, have started matching uppercase and lowercase letters of their names.
 
While drawing, whether that be on the whiteboard or on paper, we have been learning about and paying attention to the details of our drawn people. Ie: adding things like ears, hair, feet and fingers. Some of the older kids had their bodies traced and then coloured/cut out their body outline. I love the little added details some add!
 
*A Wonderful Note *
We are such a fortunate group to have such nice neighbours in the community. We received that donation of craft supplies and play dough tools last week.

​This week was all about our feelings. Last week, we watched Inside Out on our Friday Movie Day and that was a bit of a fun starter to our current week’s theme. Emotions are something we work on year ‘round and definitely cannot be summed up in one week. We start the new year off by learning about and re-familiarizing ourselves with varying emotions beyond the basic happy, sad, mad. The kids are great at remembering more complex emotions and throughout the year we try to use these words to explain our feelings.
 
Each day we started our Morning Meeting by talking about how we were feeling and placed an appropriate face sticker on our Feelings Chart, and if someone didn’t have the words to express this then we would brainstorm based on visual clues and how they had seemed within the time before Morning Meeting.
 
We loved using the Happy and You Know It song to help us visualize and remember a few emotions, by adding in the emotions were learning about. We also played Feeling Charades. That was fun! And our shy ones did well!
 
The kids are playing a feelings matching memory game and made play dough faces using play face cards.
 
We did lots of name practice this week by building names with Mega Blocks, stickers and tiny pieces of card stock paper.
 
We had a lot of fun with our reading this week! Our notable books this week include:
-The Book With No Pictures by B.J. Novak (I read this one a few times and the laughter that came out of these guys was hilarious!)
-You Matter by Christian Robinson
-Pout Pout Fish by Deborah Diesen
-The Color Monster by Anna Llenas (We made Colour Monsters ourselves after learning that colours can represent different emotions. They did a great job using circular motion with crayons to make the body!)
-Brown Bear Brown Bear What Do You See? by Bill Martin Jr and Eric Carle
 
Our current chapter book read aloud is the Magic Tree House series book called Tonight on the Titanic. Over the years, the Magic Tree House series has been a great starter into listening to chapter books for the little ones. We have then and now been working on making the pictures in our heads, listening for understanding, making predictions about what may happen next, learning new words and learning the basic parts of a story such as the beginning, middle, end, character, setting, etc.
 
We enjoyed our Virtual Story Time with Juliet from the Calgary Public Library.
 
We are so excited to share our Me Bags next week!

Our week was focused around having an awareness of our body and the space we take up. We learned what it means to have personal space and to respect the space of others. Our feet, our hands, our mouth and our eyes are the body parts we were centred around.
 
Our Feet: What can we do with our feet? Everyone loved showing all the things they can do with their feet. How many toes do we have? It was fun to play “This Little Piggy” on friends’ toes!
 
Book: Pete the Cat I Love My White Shoes by Eric Litwin and James Dean
 
The kids took off their socks, rolled up their pant legs, put on some paint shirts and had a blast using their feet to paint with over a larger space. This time was also used to compare foot sizes and to observe colour mixing.
 
Our Hands: What do we use our hands for? So many things! The kids searched for various items to keep the beat to the chant in our storybook. Then we brought out some children’s musical instruments and had a great time learning how to play them to the beat.
 
Book: Hand, Hand, Fingers, Thumb by Al Perkins
 
We did some finger painting with sticky paint (a more viscous version of fingerpaint). The kids helped to make it of course!
 
Our Mouths: What do we use our mouth for? The kids used mirrors to have a look inside their mouths, noticing all that is inside and even asking about what the uvula is. Afterwards, they had pom pom races using their “blowing power”.
 
Book #1: There was an old lady who swallowed some leaves by Lucille Colandro
Book #2: Goldilocks and the Three Bears
 
In the afternoon, we had a taste test for salty, sweet, sour, spicy and bitter. Watching their faces after tasting hot sauce was too funny! There was a half second of silence and then some little squeals and a lot of laughter.
 
Coincidentally our oral storytelling happened on this day as well. We all took turns tell stories, even the shyer ones. J  We had a few stories about unicorns and a spooky story (they are already starting to think about Halloween).
 
Our Eyes: What do we use our eyes for? We played Red Light, Green Light and engaged in a little bit of shadow play. The morning sun shines in the house at such a perfect angle that our shadows appear across the house.
 
Book #1: Brown Bear Brown Bear What Do You See by Bill Martin Jr and Eric Carle
Book #2: Night Light by Nicholas Blechman

We continue to learn each other’s names and what better way than through song! I’m sure parents will be hearing this tune if they haven’t already. Our newcomers have been practicing how to identify their names and the continuing children have been practicing spelling out their names and writing them using capital letters for now. Everyone used letter magnets to spell their names, sequenced the letters in their names and used Bingo dabbers to trace the first letter of their names, Bingo dabbers were also used to find either the first letter of their name or all the letters of their name within a page of letters.
 
We have been very fortunate to have the Calgary Public Library Story Book Truck deliver book boxes to us every 3 weeks and we look forward to our Virtual Story Time with Juliet on Monday!
 
Our Me Bags were sent home this week. I would like to see them brought back early this coming week and look forward to seeing what the children have to share with us on the week of Sept. 20th!

Happy new school year!
 
It has been great to see some new faces added to our little group!
 
We have been spending these first few days getting to know each other and it has been neat to see and hear everyone interact, a few for the first time. 
 
The kids worked on their fine motor skills with some cutting, painting, drawing, tracing, crumpling tissue papers, Bingo dabbing, and the list goes on. They had some fun with free painting and colour exploration as well as some process art with tissue paper. They also used buttons to trace numbers.
 
We talked about what same and different meant and played the mirror game with a partner.
 
The kids did some practice and review work with colours, shapes and sorting.
 
Some worked on name recognition while others worked on the spelling and writing of their names.
 
And we always include a Nose Hill Park adventure into our week. I believe we even had two this week! They sure love playing in the dirt and climbing large rocks! We saw many birds of prey over the past few days; they are always so neat to watch.

I look forward to what this new school year brings!