Happy Friday!

Blogging our day a little early today since I am leaving at noon to head south to speak at a conference. Today we wrapped up our unit on feelings and emotions. We've talked about how to control OUR emotions a little better but today we talked about what to do when people around us have strong emotions. Interesting conversations... and funny . :)

Today is FRIDAY FLICKS!

DANCE PARTY ! ( Um..... please excuse that nice little cord laying on the floor that is SCREAMING safety hazard. gah... )

I am sure the kids have told you about our calm down song. I encourage you to use this one at home !

Happy Friday everyone. See you on Monday!

feelings mural

Today we practiced our scissor cutting skills . I placed magazines on the table and scissors and asked them to cut out faces that showed emotions. As I sat and cut with them ( modeling is always a great way to teach children ) I noticed how almost ALL expressions in magazines are happy. Anyway, we cut them out. I reminded the kids that their thumb goes on top and to point the scissors away from their body. We also discussed other rules like - we don't just walk around with scissors and scissors are only for cutting paper.

After cutting out our " faces " we glued them on a large sheet of paper.

If you want to work with your child at home on how to use scissors - here is a great short video for you.

Some of our other fun during the day. The kids are really getting into the chalk board. I love their drawings !

Kayla helping clean up the sand .

It was a great day. This afternoon we will be making our own snacks and carry them outside to eat. TRAIL MIX ~

Whoa is me Wednesday !

JUST KIDDING! We have had a great day!

We continued to talk about feelings and emotions today. We read the book again called " When Sophie gets angry, really really angry." We read many of our books over and over again. Sometimes it takes a second or third read to see everything in the book that we need to see. For instance, in this book when Sophie gets angry she runs and run to a tree and climbs it to be by herself. One of the children today said " That is like our loft ! When you want to be by yourself you can go there. " It is a wonderful feeling when you see the children starting to comprehend our books on a different level and comparing it to things in their every day environment. Above this paragraph you see a graph. I tell the children " a graph is used to compare things." We compared three areas in our play space that make us happy. After asking each child and writing their name we talked about most and least. We counted and talked about numbers. Then, we finished by writing a sentence to summarize what we found out on the graph. For instance on the group pictured above - More children are happy in the block center. Writing things like this with the children helps them understand that written words have meaning.

We all enjoy reading !

Did I ever tell you I got the certificate in being recognized as a three star facility ? The state of Arkansas is using an evaluation and rating system much like hotels do . There are MANY steps and much more paperwork and certain scores have to be made on certain things. If you would like more info on the Better Beginnings program you can look HERE. Since we were already quality approved we come in at a three star and have one year for verification. I have already went through most of that process. It is VERY indepth. If anyone knows a newspaper editor - this would make a wonderful article depicting preschool in Siloam Springs. :) ( Maybe during Arkansas Children's Week in April. )

I love listening to the kids play pretend.

Our fall trees we made drying on the wall.

Today you will see in your cubby a manuscript page. I mainly did this to get a better understanding of where each child is in the writing process. Some aren't yet to the stage of holding their marker right ( tripod grip ). If they are fisting it and they are one year out from kindergarten - it's time to help me at home and start practicing some writing. If they are three - no worries. Also, when practicing at home, please use an uppercase letter for the first letter and lower case for the rest of the name. In the old days we taught children using all upper case or BIG letters. Not anymore ! :)

Enjoying making our fall trees with our fingertips.

I had planned to put out sign up sheets for parent teacher conferences next Monday - Wednesday. As I wrote it on the journal this morning I changed my mind. Since the remodel ( or forever ) we had ended up with TONS of JUNK.... we have planned a yard sale for October 2nd across from Gates and need that time to get ready. I will plan to have our conferences the first week in October. ( And.... plan to come buy our JUNK. )