"Teacher, I'm Not allowed to use Nail Polish."

"N the Naughty Newt Painted his Name Numerous times on the Nursery wall with Neon Nail polish!"

We had a BLAST learning about the letter N!

I told them about "N the Naughty Newt" and brought out some nail polish of our own to paint and instantly their faces grew dim. One student says, "Teacher, I'm not allowed to use Nail Polish!" 

Sometimes we get to do things in preschool that are off-limits at home!

  They were all SO CAREFUL not to spill! They were pretty sure they were getting away with MURDER!!

Oh how we love SHOW AND TELL!! The kids get so excited to share their show and tell! At the beginning of the school year, they were quite shy in front of their peers, but now they are displaying a confidence that is SO exciting for me to watch! We have had some pretty clever ideas!

Here's some examples of SHOW AND TELL for Letter N:

 Nickels

 Nail

 Nuts

 National Symbol from New York

 Nose

I recently read an article written by Laurie Patsalides that was titled 

The Case for Classroom Show and Tell

I love her list of benefits of having Show and Tell in the classroom. I couldn't agree more! 

They are:

• Learn to speak and listen
• learn how to be an audience and introduce themselves
• Learn to make connections between student responses
• anticipate and observe
• practice critical reasoning skills 
• Practice storytelling
• Learn same and different
• Use vocabulary
• Use descriptive language
• Increase confidence

Read more: http://www.brighthub.com/education/k-12/articles/16204.aspx#ixzz1cUjoCAc6

Remember FRED?!

 You can imagine our surprise when we saw that our chrysalis had opened up! Look what a beautiful butterfly Fred turned out to be!! 

 After everyone had a good look, we headed outside to set Fred free!

 Oh my goodness!!! Fred had a hard time wanting to leave these fabulous kiddos!!!

We've had some good times...

 Finally, Fred spread his wings and took his first flight! He swirled and swirled around the front yard while the kids chased him in circles!

 He took a break on our tree and stayed there for the rest of class.

 We played 'I Spy the Butterfly' and found him on the tree limb bathing in the sun.

 Fred said his final goodbyes just before our parents came to pick us up!

M is for Mail Carrier!!!

Today we learned about our address!  We wrote a note to ourselves and drew a picture to our moms! We  learned that if we want to see our letter again, we need to have a stamp and an address on our envelope!

Together, we headed out to the mailbox, put our letters in, and put the flag up!  Cross our fingers there is a wonderful community helper out there to help get our letters to our houses!

Speaking of wonderful community helpers, we were SO LUCKY to have "Mr. Doug" (one of our fabulous dads!!) come in and tell us all about what it's like being a Mail Carrier for the United States Postal Service! He helped us understand the importance of knowing our address, and also what happens to our letters once we put them in the mail box! We are so grateful to have such wonderful people like Mr. Doug to help our community rain or shine!

  Thank you Mr. Doug!

 Afterwards, we had fun writing our letter M's on white boards and even creating the letter M out of our preschool snack!

M is for Mail Carrier!!!

Today we learned about our address!  We wrote a note to ourselves and drew a picture to our moms! We  learned that if we want to see our letter again, we need to have a stamp and an address on our envelope!

Together, we headed out to the mailbox, put our letters in, and put the flag up!  Cross our fingers there is a wonderful community helper out there to help get our letters to our houses!

Speaking of wonderful community helpers, we were SO LUCKY to have "Mr. Doug" (one of our fabulous dads!!) come in and tell us all about what it's like being a Mail Carrier for the United States Postal Service! He helped us understand the importance of knowing our address, and also what happens to our letters once we put them in the mail box! We are so grateful to have such wonderful people like Mr. Doug to help our community rain or shine!

  Thank you Mr. Doug!

 Afterwards, we had fun writing our letter M's on white boards and even creating the letter M out of our preschool snack!

Counting Counting Counting

We have been having so much fun learning about our numbers!

Children need many materials to manipulate in order for them to begin to develop number comprehension. Most children coming into preschool can count to 5 or 10 however, they rarely understand that the numbers they are saying refer to an item or a set of items.

Most children use their fingers (and even toes) to help develop the skill of counting. Using objects such as these blocks helps them develop "one-to-one" correspondence. 

Making a set: We learned there are many different ways to make a set of 3. The students learned that when they use 3 blocks, no matter how many different ways they grouped them, it still equaled 3! 

See it, Count it, Make it....

 These have been some of our *question words* during our block exploration time: 

 How many? Larger or Smaller? Bigger? Can you make ___? How did you figure that out? Can you point and count? Do you have more or less? How many more? 

Asking questions like these, help children problem solve and discover new concepts!