Utopia Preschool

The children had a make-up P.E. class today! They had lots of fun using the beanbags to catch, jump over and put on various body parts. When class was almost over, they cooled down with some stretching!

At the sensory table this week, the children have been mixing cornstarch with a little bit of water. This creates oobleck, which creates a cool substance that can be both a liquid and a solid. The children noticed it was hard when they poked it with their fingers, but when the mixture was on their hands, it would drip and melt off. The children also used pipettes and watercolor to dye the oobleck. Blaise made a very light greenish grayish color which he said, “Look! I made fog.” Alanna said, “I made pink fog!” Samuel liked to watch it drip off his hands. This activity supports cognitive development, physical development, social development and language development through sensory play.

This week we are experimenting what it feels like to write and draw with different sizes of markers! We stacked and taped the markers together to create Big, Medium, and Small markers. We also moved aside the table and put big paper on the floor. The children noticed they could reach the paper on the floor as they stood up to write! Hudson and a Violet also stacked the markers to find out that they were nine and 10 markers tall!

This morning some friends collaborated and built a home together In the block area! They used mini carpets for the floor, tiles to create tables and a flat screen TV, and blocks to add windows, a skate ramp, and a swimming pool! It can be hard for children to share and work with others, so it was so important to highlight the different ideas that emerge from working together!

The children had so much fun today running to support our school! They had lots of fans cheering them on and marking off their shirts after each lap. The preschool has nearly raised $10,000 and is leading the school in donations!!! Thank you for all of your support!

This afternoon a group of children had fun playing a game of “Red light, green light” while riding bikes! The children practiced stopping when the teacher said “Red light!” and going when she said “Green light!” At one point Daryn’s bike got stuck in the mud. Hudson was quick to help out and used his “Tow truck” to pull him out!

This week, we added paper wrapped blocks to the block area to encourage writing and drawing. We placed some example blocks out that looked like roads and buildings to help prompt the children. Once they saw some ideas, they began to draw their own roads and buildings. They also worked on signs and started to draw railroad tracks too! It stared to look like a little city! This activity supports visual art, emergent writing and fine motor skills.

At the end of every PE session, Teacher Sharon teaches us new ways to stretch our muscles. Today we stretched our hamstrings by touching our noses to our patellas! We did a butterfly stretch and V-shaped stretch. 

Today we played “Little Mouse, Little Mouse.” In this game one person is in charge of hiding the mouse behind one of the six houses. The guessers must figure out where the mouse is hiding by saying “Little Mouse, Little Mouse, are you in the [color] house?” This game helps support turn-taking, cognitive development through observing and guessing, and verbal communication.  After group time, some children played the game together and each child took turns hiding the mouse and guessing!

Today Teacher Linette took a small group of children on a walking field trip to the front of the school to collect leaves. The children enjoyed looking around, gathering and comparing all the different sizes and colored leaves. During small group time, Teacher Cassie did Yoga breathing exercises with the children. Some of their favorite poses and breaths were Lion’s breath, Dolphin Breath, Ninja breath and Mountain breath.

There are many advantages to children working together. They learn to communicate, listen, problem solve and accomplish a common goal. Today the children built towers with pyramid toys, put out fires in the House Area, fixed the playhouse outside with tools and shared their ideas to guess what Teacher Cassie was tapping behind the flat board at group time. “ Teamwork makes the dream work.”- Alanna

At Group Time, Teacher Linette showed the children the difference between a loud sound and a soft sound. Then she had them pick either a shaker egg or a bell. The children practiced making loud and soft sounds with their chosen instrument. This supports an interest in music and encourages children to understand opposites.