Utopia Preschool

The children have shown a recent interest in maps! We first noticed the children creating "treasure maps," drawing different locations on paper with an "X" to mark the treasure. We then invited the children to draw maps in the Building Area and read the book Me on the Map by Joan Sweeney to help build their understanding of location and place. The children who participated came up with such interesting and different maps! Some of them created imaginary places, while others drew maps of their homes and other places they have been to. This activity promotes understanding of our local environments and neighborhoods, and gives us information about how the children view their world. It also promotes fine motor development, writing and drawing skills.   Kara's map of our school Emily's Map  "My house" Raegan's Map "My House" Raegan wanted to mention that her brother Liam sometimes sleeps in her room,  and her mom and dad's room.  Kate ...

This week Mateo's mom, Christina, read The Watermelon Seed to our class. We gathered for Circle Time and shared what we knew about watermelon.  "I had watermelon before!" - Lorelai "Sometimes I have watermelon in my lunch." - Jude "When you put the seed in the dirt, it can grow." - Pamela Thank you Mateo and Christina for sharing your favorite book with us! 

This week, Fiona's mom (Valerie) shared with us what it is like to be an Operating Room Nurse! She showed us her uniform which included a surgical gown, a head covering, and gloves. Many of the children have had experience going to the doctor, or even surgery! Other children shared that their family members were also nurses or have had an injury. Afterwards, Valerie read us a book called At The Hospital by Carron Brown. Fiona helped shine a flashlight on each page to reveal a hidden picture!  Thank you Valerie for your important work, and for spending time with us this week.

Today we had a special visitor in our classroom! Melissa read us Donovan's favorite book, The Hungry Caterpillar by Eric Carle. Later on, she spent some time with the Butterfly Group outside! We love having our families visit the classroom! Thank you for spending your morning with us, Melissa.

In lieu of our yearly field trip to the pumpkin patch, we decided to create our own! Thanks to some generous donations from families, we were able to add hay, corn, leaves, and other fall decorations for the children to play with at school! The children pretended to feed animals in a petting zoo, and sold each other pumpkins at their "pumpkin store." We also compared sizes, colors, weight, and textures of each pumpkin, and counted how many we had. Thank you so much to the families who helped make our pumpkin patch a success! 

This week we celebrated reaching our fundraising goal by taking a walking field trip to the park down the street! The short 10 minute walk felt like an adventure! First we talked about how to be safe as we travelled to the park. Then we walked across a tall bridge, stepped on crunchy leaves, walked down the busy sidewalk, and observed cars, motorcycles and buses along the way. When we arrived at the park, the children had plenty of space to climb, run, spin, slide, and explore together. It was great to have a change of scenery and see the children in a different environment! We hope to visit the park again soon.                                          

This week I spent a moment in the Building Area observing a small group of children experimenting with ramps, tunnels and balls. Below are a few of the children's conversations with one another and with me.  Raegan: Look Teacher, I made stairs! Look this is where I roll the ball right here. At the top.  And then I put these blocks right here to stop the ball from rolling away!  Rian: The dinosaur catch the ball. Ball go down, dinosaur catch here. Stop!  Ynez: Watch this guys! My ball is the purple one. Make this higher here to make the ball go down fast!  Kara: Where my ball go? Oh! Arden, that's my ball. Pass the ball to me, please! Thank you!  From these little moments, we can observe that the children have different ways of interacting with the materials. They are learning to communicate with one another by sharing their ideas and asking for what they need. They also must share the materials with each other while being flexible if something isn't going t...

                                                      Writing skills and letter recognition go hand in hand. In the early stages of writing, we usually start with the child's first name, and their environment. The moment the children walk into the classroom, they have their own cubby labeled with their photo and their name. This encourages the children to begin recognizing print and give meaning to each letter. Our classroom shelves are also labeled with photos and words to not only build independence when cleaning up materials, but also serves as a way to build print and letter awareness.     When the children make any sort of art, we encourage them to write their first name on their work when they are finished. We also use our daily sign-in book and various sign-up lists to write their name when they would like a turn with a specific ite...