In preschool we have been busy learning about different life cycles! We have learned about the life cycle of a butterfly and the life cycle of a frog. I LOVE how engaged all of the students were with both of these!
Beginning this week, we will be focusing on zoo animals. Everyday leading up to our field trip to the zoo, we will be discussing a different zoo animal. I let each student pick a couple different animals they would want to learn about and we have a GREAT list! This week we are talking about: Elephants, Giraffes, Lions, Hippos, and Koalas!
It is so hard to believe that in one month, it will be our last day of school! It has been such an honor to be your child’s teacher!
It was so wonderful seeing all of the students back this week! I hope everyone had a great Spring Break and I also hope you were able to enjoy the solar eclipse this past Monday.
Just a recap, we have begun our unit on Humans Depend on Living Things. This week our focus was on plants and flowers – what do they need in order to grow? We also discussed the different parts of a plant (example: roots, stem, leaves, petals, seeds) and their purpose.
The students were also finally able to meet our baby chicks (and wow, how they have grown already)! The students couldn’t believe that those baby chicks actually came out of our classroom eggs. It has been interesting watching how each chick has their own personality. It was a good way to wrap up our lesson on chicken development and come full circle. The chicks will go to their forever home sometime this next week!
Speaking of animals, we had a surprise visitor! A veterinarian, Dr. Jordan, from Phillips Animal Hospital came and spoke to our class. He let the students do a quick physical exam on his sweet dog as well. They were able to look into the dogs ears and listen to her heartbeat. We determined she was a very healthy pup! 😉 We appreciate Dr. Jordan for taking time to come speak to us!
Next week, we will begin discussing the life cycle of a butterfly!
I want to give a huge THANK YOU to all of our Mystery Readers so far! The students have loved having you all come in and read to them!
We finished up our unit on Communities/Communities Helpers last week and we had a visit from the Mansfield Police Department! This was super exciting! We got to talk with the police officers, ask them questions, and see and sit inside of their police vehicles!
We have begun our new unit – People Depend on Living Things. We have been focusing a lot this week on living vs. nonliving things. The students have done so well with this and have a great understanding of what a living thing needs/doesn’t need to survive.
Another new addition to our classroom are some soon-to-be baby chicks! We have 7 chicken eggs that we are hoping to see hatch before Spring Break! (fingers crossed!)
After a class vote, our Pretend Center has also turned into a Dinosaur Dig site! This will be so fun!
All of these fun things on top of the usual playing, reading, crafting, building, dancing, show-and-tell and Mystery Readers!
Thank you all so much for your support at home! We couldn’t do it without you! 🙂
This week we celebrated Read Across America week! This was a great way for the students to read and explore some new books. We even had some Mystery Readers from our school come read to us! We were all very excited! 🙂
We were also SO HAPPY to be back out in the woods this week! I have had many students asking when we are going to head back out, and with the beautiful weather we had earlier in the week, I couldn’t resist! Students were excited to discover deer tracks, nuts from trees, and HUGE leaves!
This next week will be our last week on our current unit. We will begin our new unit on March 18th. The new unit will be about how people depend on living things. In this unit we will look into needs living things have, changes living things go through during their life cycles, and products they provide for us.
We have had a lot going on this week with our Valentine’s Day parties, guest speakers and vistors!
The community helpers we discussed this week were Doctors and Nurses! The students really enjoyed this and liked discussing what happens when they go to the doctor! We had a special visitor come and speak to us about her job as an STNA as well. Students were very interested on the different kinds of tools she uses at her job, such as a Hoyer lift and walkers and they had lots of questions!
On another note, we had a community helper visit that we have not yet talked about – a trash collector! Everyone was very excited to see how a garbage truck works and hear more about a trash collectors job.
Next week, the community helper we will be discussing are Firefighters.
Thank you to all of our special guests! We appreciate you helping our students grow!
At our Valentine’s Day parties this week, students received lots of goodies, ate a yummy snack, passed out their cards and watched a Valentines movie. We had loads of fun! 🙂 Thank you to everyone who donated to our parties and helped make them a success!
Remember, no school on Monday, February 19th! See everyone next week!
Shew! What a busy week! This was our first full week back since the middle of December. I think by the time we got to Friday, everyone was a little worn out – me included! 😉
This week the community helper we focused on was Mail Carriers! We discussed what mail carriers do, what they drive, how mailboxes come in different shapes and sizes, and we even met a real mail carrier on Tuesday! They were so excited “Mr. Steve” came to talk to us and PreK about being a UPS Driver! Everyone had lots of questions, and comments, for him! If you would like to come speak to our class about being a community helper, or what you do for the community, please let me know!
Each student was also able to pick a teacher from our school to write a letter to this week. Ms. Callen and I helped them write their letters, they signed their name, decorated the letter and the stamp. We talked about where the stamps go on the envelopes. Then, on Thursday and Friday, we were able to walk around the school and deliver the letters they wrote – just like REAL mail carriers! They were also excited when I showed them where the teachers mailboxes are in the school and we were able to put a couple letters in there as well!
This next week, the community helper we will be focusing on is Farmers!
We also spent a couple days doing some fun science experiments, we had Spanish with Mrs. Nugent on Monday, music with Teacher Q on Friday, we were able to get outside this week, and we talked a little bit about Groundhogs Day!
The students have been loving the grocery store we have in our classroom as well! If you have any empty grocery/food boxes you would like to send in, we would love to have them for our grocery store!
I hope everyone is enjoying their weekend! I can’t wait to see you all next week!
-Mrs. Heminger
P.S: There are some GREAT pictures from this week! It was so hard to choose one for the heading of this blog post. I hope you enjoy them!
This week our Community Helper we focused on was dentists! We were so excited to have a real dentist come in and talk to the class about oral hygiene and he showed us the proper way to brush our teeth. Thank you Dr. Callen!
This week I also began assessments on each student. These are what I will show you at conferences. It shows me where each students strengths are and also lets me know the things we need to spend a little more time focusing on. So far, I am very pleased on the growth I have seen! 🙂 These will continue for the next few weeks in between our other activities.
Before you know it, the school year will be over and your child will either be going into their second year of Preschool or going to PreK! Time sure does fly! Until then, I am going to enjoy every minute of this school year with this great group of students!
With the winter weather coming in at full force, it was a short week with only 2 days of school. Still, everyone was happy to see each other and we had a great couple of days! 🙂
Last week, we wrapped up discussing communities and maps by making a map of our classroom. Each student was able to pick a large item in our classroom (such as a table, window, door, chair, shelf, rug, smart board, dry erase board, cupboards, etc.) to put on the map. We discussed where it went, what it was beside, etc. We also learned how to read a Map Key to help us find certain objects or places on maps. They did great with this!
Now we are moving onto discussing Community Helpers. With our short week this week, we spent our 2 days talking about Police Officers. We talked about what their job was, how they help our community and how they keep us safe. They were also excited to find out that Police Officers don’t just ride in police cars – they also can ride on bikes, motorcycles, or even horses! Each student colored a picture that reads “Thank You For Helping Our Community!” to give to our schools Resource Officers as well! On Monday, we will finish up discussing Police Officers and move onto our next community helper!
Another big event this week was Tater and Tot moved into a larger cage! This has been very fascinating for everyone! 🙂
I hope you all enjoy another 3 day weekend! Stay safe and warm!
What a busy week we have had with our first snow day and a 2 hour delay! Please make sure you are signed up for Remind so you can get messages from myself and Discovery School about closings and delays.
We continued on with our new unit this week. We focused on communities and discussed maps! During one of our closing meetings, we were able to explore on Google Earth! We looked at the world, then shrunk it down to North America, then the United States, then Ohio, then Mansfield. We even got to see our school! Some were very excited to see their own houses and communities on there as well! The final request was to explore Disney World – how could we resist?! 😉 The students were amazed how many things you could see on a map, such as houses, communities, mountains, deserts, oceans, lakes, etc. We are going to begin making a map of our classroom in the upcoming days!
Within the next few weeks, we are going to be talking about community helpers. I know there are quite a few parents from our class that are community helpers! If you would be interested in coming to talk to our class about what your job is and what you do for the community, please let me know! We would LOVE to have you! 🙂
Remember, no school on Monday! I hope everyone enjoys their 3 day weekend and stays safe and warm!
We had a fun week in class getting back in the swing of things, while also beginning our new unit – Systems and Communities. I am looking forward to this unit because there are so many fun topics to cover and explore! We will discuss: the different types of communities (where you live, your family, church, sports, our school, our classroom, etc.), maps, the different types of community helpers, and all the different types of transportation.
With that being said, we have many parents and family members who are community helpers! If you would be interested in volunteering to come talk to our class about what you do in our community, please let me know. We would love to have you! 🙂
It is officially Winter Break! We have had a fun, relaxing week here at school.
Last Friday, the students had music class with Teacher Q. This is always one of their favorite times of the week! They were excited to see them after their Winter Music Concert last week!
This Monday and Tuesday has sure been a cold couple of days. We haven’t had time on the playground. Instead, we have been having lots of fun in the gym and staying warm! 🙂 We also enjoyed watching a couple holiday movies, and we had hot chocolate and some cookies. Students even saw one of Santas “reindeer” outside of our classroom window! How magical!
Once we come back from break, we will be starting our new unit! More information to come. 🙂 We will also be hitting the academics harder this second half of the school year. Now that the students are comfortable, confident and have our class routines down pat, we will be getting to business (while still having fun, of course!)
I hope you all have a safe, relaxing Winter Break! See you in a couple weeks!
This week we have spent a lot of time playing some new games to wrap up our unit on Play. We have played a Christmas matching game, Bingo, and Pete the Cats Four Groovy Buttons board game (which is now a class favorite!). Before every game, we discuss how the game is played, what the rules are, and what each of their responsibly is during the game. Overall, it has been an engaging, and fun, week!
We have also been continuing to work hard on our songs for our Winter Concert. The students have done a great job in class and I hope they shine on stage tonight!
The students have all been crafting this week as well! I really think you will enjoy what they made! 🙂
This week we have been talking about Holidays Around the World! We have talked about Las Posadas, Hanukkah, Kwanzaa and Diwali. We have enjoyed learning about some of their traditions, some of the foods they eat during the holidays, games they play, how they celebrate, etc. They have enjoyed doing a few crafts this week as well! We even painted a dreidel using marbles with our Big Buddies!
The students have also enjoyed making Christmas cards and lists for Santa this week. I hope you have enjoyed their creations!
We have continued our unit on Play by playing a few board games, some Bingo and doing some puzzles! Next week, we will do some Christmas Bingo, do a matching game, play dress up, and I will introduce another new board game!
During our Morning Meeting/Circle Time, students have enjoyed using my special pointer to come up to the board and talk to the class about the weather or the days of the week. I have enjoyed watching them become more independent and confident!
We have also been hard at work practicing our songs for our Winter Concert next week! Tomorrow is our first day practicing on the stage – wish us luck! Haha 🙂
I hope everyone is having a great holiday season! If there is ever anything you need, please let me know!
This week we closed out our Thanksgiving activities and discussions, and welcomed December and all the Christmas fun!
We have been continuing with our fine motor work. Some examples of this would be writing, PlayDough, lacing objects, using scissors, etc. I have been pleased with the progress! Many of the students are beginning to write and recognize the letters in their name.
While doing our Morning Meeting, students have been able to help identify the month, the days of the week and what day comes before and after the current day we are on. While doing calendar they have continued learning about patterns, work on counting (some are counting to over 20 now!) and learning number recognition. We also discuss the weather and graph it daily. During this time we also read books and sing our favorite songs! It is such a special, and important, part of our day!
This past week, we also discussed if we wanted to change our dramatic play center in our classroom. It has been a Pizza Restaurant/Kitchen for some time. Almost all students agreed they were ready for something different. We wrote down some ideas and the one with the most votes was… (*drum roll please*) a post office/card making center! The students are wanting to make their Christmas lists for parents and Santa and also make friends and family Christmas cards! (Be expecting some of their creations to come home 😉 ) We even have a mailbox to put all of Santas letters in! How exciting! This is also great way to sneak in some fine motor work!
With the weather getting colder, we have been spending more time in the gym instead of on the playground. We will, however, continue to go outside unless the weather is 30 degrees or below. Please make sure your child is dressed accordingly and they have an extra change of clothes – just in case! 🙂
That is all for this week! I hope you enjoy the pictures!
This was a field trip the students were super excited about! The Buckeye Imagination Museum field trip helped us focus on our unit of Play – which these guys are quite good at! 😉
We have been keeping super busy here in class gearing up for Thanksgiving. We have been discussing what it means to be thankful, what each student is thankful for, what foods we eat on Thanksgiving and they even made our own recipe on how to cook a turkey! I hope you enjoyed these. The students really loved making them!
Next week we will wrap up talking about Thanksgiving, and on Friday December 1st we will begin our Christmas fun! Speaking of Christmas, all of the students have been working very hard in class, with me and with Teacher Q, practicing their songs for their winter music concert coming up on December 14th!
We had a wonderful time on Monday watching a movie in the gym in our pajamas! The afternoon students were able to watch a movie in the classroom! Each student sat in their own box that we used as a “car” and the movie was the “drive-in”. They all enjoyed eating snack as well while watching their movie. Mrs. Nugent and Mr. Simon also came to the gym and did Spanish class with both the preschool and pre-k classes! They read us ‘The Napping House’ in both English and Spanish. We also had a dance party and learned some new songs in Spanish, while still practicing others we have already learned. It was a very exciting day!
We ended our short week with our field trip to The Buckeye Imagination Museum! I loved seeing all of my students there with their families! I will be posting pictures from our field trip in a separate blog, once I have them all ready to go! 🙂
I hope you all have a great and bountiful Thanksgiving! I am so thankful for all of my students and their families! See you on Monday 🙂
What a great week! We have been loving this beautiful weather and have spent a little extra time outside for recess. We have to enjoy it while it lasts, right?!
We have spent some time this week talking about Play! We have played a few games, played with our friends, made some new friends and even got to play with Tater and Tot! The students have also enjoyed listening to Thanksgiving stories during our morning meeting or during snack time. We have also been continuing to discuss our days of the week, month, counting, patterns, name recognition, name spelling, writing, etc.
On Thursday, we were able to visit the school library for the first time this year! The students really enjoyed going down and looking at all the different books.
Next week will begin discussing Thanksgiving and Being Thankful. This is always one of my favorite weeks of school because they love talking about their families, friends, pets, etc. and how much they love them!
As we discussed in conferences, we have really dove into talking about each of our names and how to spell them. We will continue with this moving forward. We also discussed opposites (hot/cold, up/down, night/day, etc). They did great with this! Moving on this week, we are going to discuss Play. This will involve playing games with simple rules, taking turns, why play is important and why it makes up a part of who we are!
Thank you all again for coming to conferences! I appreciate each of you and truly enjoy having your child in class!
Wow, what a busy but exciting week! We started our week by closing out our unit on Similarities vs. Differences. We have been focusing on this since the first week of school in many different ways. Each student decorated a puzzle piece by just using crayons, markers and stickers. We found out that even when we use the same materials, each puzzle piece still turned out different!
We had a lot of fun at school celebrating Halloween this week! On Wednesday, Discovery School had Trunk-or-Treat. Then, we celebrated with our class parties yesterday and today! The students had a lot of fun parading around the school and making their Halloween Trail Mix – or “witches brew”. We all took turns adding in each ingredient and then stirring it up at the end. While we ate our snack, we watched ‘Its The Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown’. While watching, they kindly reminded me that dogs don’t actually fly on dog houses like Snoopy does! 😉 Thank you to everyone who donated or helped with our parties.
I can’t hardly believe that next week is the end of October/beginning of November! Beginning next week, we will be diving into learning about opposites! We will also begin our new unit which is centered around play. We will be looking at different kinds of play, what the students are choosing to play, and how play is an important part of who we are.
Can you believe it is already October 19th?! Time is flying by!
Here at school, we have been gearing up for Halloween! We have been counting down the days until Halloween and until our class parties. The students are so excited to wear their costumes next week on their class party day!
We have also been working on our classroom door! We have almost everyone on it now, with the rest being put on tomorrow before judging time! I hope you have enjoyed your students picture of them wearing the cowboy hat. They have been wonderful models!
This week I really focused on assessing each student. By doing so, it will show what areas we need to focus on in class and it will also show what areas they are excelling in!
One of our focuses this week was reading the book Leaf Man by Lois Ehlert. The Wednesday morning class took a walk in the woods yesterday. During our walk they collected leaves for all the classes to make their very own leaf man! The students were very excited about this and it was a fun project!
I hope everyone had a great Fall Break! All of the students seem nice and refreshed 🙂
We are back into the swing of things here in Preschool. This week, we are learning about Pumpkins! We weighed our classroom pumpkin and found out it weighs a whopping 27 pounds! Then, each student took turns getting weighed. We found out that some weigh more than the pumpkin, and some weigh less. This was a fun math lesson!
We also have been reading the short story/song The Five Little Pumpkins. We have spent the week listening to the different versions of this song and comparing how they are the same and different. This goes great with the same/differences unit we have been working on.
Yesterday, we dove into learning about the different parts of a pumpkin. We talked about the stem, skin, seeds, pulp and strands. After we discussed the different parts, we carved our class pumpkin and were able to look at the parts of a pumpkin up close! I asked the students to tell me what they saw, what it felt like, etc. My favorite responses were, “It looks like slime!”, or “Ew, Mrs. Heminger! IT’S WET INSIDE!” These guys continue to make me smile on a daily basis!
Next week, I am going to continue doing each students assessments. This will help me know where they are academically, and what we need to focus on. I will also be able to discuss their assessments with you at their parent-teacher conference coming up in November.
Just a reminder, it is cold and flu season! The weekends are a great time to wash your child’s coat, book bag, lunchbox, etc. to get rid of all those germs. I am trying to do my part as well in the classroom to keep my friends healthy 🙂 .
We are working on a Door Decorating Contest here throughout the school! We chose a farm theme and started taking pictures of the students with a cowboy hat on to put on our door. We even got a couple hats for our class guinea pigs!. I hope you enjoy the pictures below!
I hope everyone has a great weekend! As always, if you need anything, please reach out and let me know!
We started the week by finding items in Playdough. The students were very excited to see what they could find! This is also a great fine motor activity – it will help strengthen their hand muscles, which will then lead to great handwriting down the road! We also played in shaving cream this week for a good sensory activity. Some enjoyed getting messy, and others were not so sure 😉 . We made some Fall trees using sticks and torn paper. The students have really enjoyed playing in our playground mud kitchen, so I brought our classroom kitchen back in for them too! They have been loving this and it is great to see their imaginations while playing!
We also got a visit from Mrs Mary and her Sugar Glider this week! We enjoyed learning what they eat, where they live, we found out they are nocturnal, etc. As always, the students really love taking turns caring for our class pets, Tater and Tot, too!
Next week, we are diving into all things Pumpkin! We received a big pumpkin for our class from our field trip to Honey Haven Farm. We will be seeing if the pumpkin or them weigh more, we will be scooping out the insides of the pumpkin and looking at all the different parts of a pumpkin. We will discuss where and how pumpkins grow. Lastly, we will be reading the book ‘Pumpkin Jack’ which talks about how pumpkins grow and decompose to grow new pumpkins. We will then make our own Pumpkin Jack to keep in our classroom to watch the stages of decomposition, and to hopefully grow a new pumpkin! Stay tuned 🙂
I hope everyone has a great Fall Break! I will see you on Tuesday!
What a great week, with some beautiful Fall weather! The students and I have loved being outside this week!
One big thing I have introduced the students to this week is rhyming. I ask them to listen to how the words sound: Do the sound the same? Or different? They are doing well with this! We learned a few rhyming words like: Tree/Bee, Cat/Hat, and House/Mouse.
We have been doing a few Fall crafts as well and painted a Fall tree using broccoli to help us make the leaves. They thought this was super fun and silly!
Miss Callen has been doing a few science experiments with them this week as well! They have enjoyed seeing what happens when you mix baking soda and vinegar together, and they enjoy adding some color with food coloring as well! They have also been doing some art work by “painting” nails on paper. We have been filling up empty nail polish jars with washable paint and after tracing their hand on paper, will “paint” their nails on the paper.
This morning we went to Honey Haven Farm for our first field trip of the year! The students had fun starting their morning on the playground. After that, we went to Pumpkin School! Here we learned about the different types of pumpkins, how pumpkins grow, etc. We will also be learning more about this in the upcoming weeks at school. After Pumpkin School, we did a straw maze and saw some animals! The students then got to go on a hayride. Overall, it was a great morning!
Starting next week, we will begin to talk about pumpkins! How they grow, how they are the same/different, etc. We will do this for a few weeks. We will also start focusing on patterns. Remember, next week we only have school Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday. We begin our Fall break on Thursday and will return to school on Tuesday October 10th.
I hope to see all of my students tomorrow at our Early Learning Center’s Fall Festival!
This has been such a busy week! All of the students did so well with pictures and I cannot wait to see how they all turned out! 🙂
Every Friday we have been enjoying music class with Teacher Q, and we were even able to try out some instruments last week.
With it being not so hot outside, we were also able to enjoy our snack outside on our picnic table one day this week. Just a reminder – plan for the weather! We never know if it will be hot or cold this time of year.
We have started learning a new Letter, Color and Shape this week. We are focusing on the letter Ll, the color Orange, and Triangles as our shapes. We have also really dived into working in our Fine Motor Journals this week. Each day, we do a small activity in our journals. These activities are great for strengthening up their hands/fingers, and to a great way to introduce writing.
I can’t believe we have been in school almost a whole month already! The students really have our class routine down and that makes me super proud! All of these kiddos are such joys to have in class and I just know its going to be a great year!
Enjoy the pictures below and have a great week! 🙂
We continued our Apple unit this week. We learned all about the parts of an apple as well. We also continued with our letter, color and shape of the week this week. Our letter was Aa, our color was red and our shape was a circle – just like an apple! We even did some letter Aa writing and they did a great job with this!
Next week our dramatic play center will turn from an Apple Orchard to an Animal Hospital! We are very excited to start this unit! The students have really enjoyed caring for our class pets, Tater and Tot, so we thought it would be fun for them to care for other animals (or stuffed animals 😉 ) as well! There is a lot to explore in the upcoming weeks 🙂
Below are some pictures from this past week. I hope you enjoy them! Have a great week Preschool Wolfpack!
Wow, what a week it has been! We have had a week full of playing, adventures and learning!
This week and next we are talking about apples. We are learning about the shape of an apple, the colors of an apple, where they come from etc. Next week we are going to start talking about the parts of an apple, do some apple taste testing, graphing, see how some apples are similar and different, and see what words we can come up with to describe apples.
Starting this week, we started our Letter, Shape and Color of the Week. Our letter was Aa, our color was red, and our shape was a circle.
We also took our first walk in the woods! We didn’t get to see any animals. However, we did see animal homes, animal tracks, worms, slugs, acorns, etc. The students did a great job and had a lot of fun!
If you haven’t already heard, we have some class pets this year! We have 2 guinea pigs. Their names are Tater and Tot. The students really enjoy watching them throughout their day and helping Miss Callen and I feed them.
I hope you enjoy looking at pictures from our week! This is such a great group of kids and I really enjoy having them in class!
Mrs. Heminger's Preschool Friends 