Sunday, November 21, 2010

Finishing Grocery Store and Thanksgiving Song

This week we finished up our Grocery Store unit and also talked a lot about Thanksgiving. We know that all families celebrate differently with their own customs, but we also talked about traditional Thanksgiving foods.

On Friday, some of the PM kids volunteered to work in the Grocery Store to turn it back into a house. We broke down the boxes and put them in recycling. We put the food back where it belongs. And now we have a house again! We are going to have a few days of house again before we turn it into our next project...a bakery!

Home/School Connection
Talk with your child about your family's Thanksgiving traditions (from large family gatherings to a normal day at home). Have your child tell you 5-10 sentences about what your family does on Thanksgiving and write them together. Then have your child draw a picture of those traditions. Please send them back when we get back on November 29th.

On Friday we sang our Thanksgiving song together and here are the videos!

On Thanksgiving-AM Class





On Thanksgiving-PM Class



Pictures from this week:

Friday, November 19, 2010

Royal Wedding Preschool Style


Last Friday was the Royal Wedding in England and we celebrated it Preschool Style at Independence!

Here are some photos of hats that guests to the wedding wore:



Staff at school were invited to dress up and wear our own hats! In class, we let the kids decorate their own fancy hats to "wear" to the wedding! It also made for interesting discussion about where England is. WHAT England is. And that there are real life princes and princesses!



Sunday, November 14, 2010

Scarecrow Song and Leaf Hunt

We have continued to run a grocery store from our classroom this week. Everyone is getting very skilled at checking out the groceries and also putting them back. I am amazed everyday by how the kids realize yogurt goes in the refrigerated section and hamburger buns go in the bread section.

I hope you have been able to spend some time with your child at the store pointing out the different sections and discussing what items belong in which section.

We also took advantage of the beautiful weather this week in the afternoon class to go on a Leaf Hunt with Miss Kate as part of our speech group. We partnered up and walked around the neighborhood to look for specific leaf colors. We had to coordinate looking at our checklist, finding the leaves, putting them in our bags, crossing them off the list and keeping track of what we still needed to find! We all found all of the colors!

Here are videos of us singing our fall-Scarecrow song!

AM Class

PM Class

Home/School Connection
This week I want you to pick out 4 items out of your cabinet/refrigerator at home (with your child), and have your child tell you the name, and what section it belongs in at the store and how they know. Please write down their answers and send them in to us at school. This is a good opportunity to get your child thinking and explaining his/her reasoning.

Check out our slideshow of pictures below!


Sunday, November 7, 2010

At The Grocery Store

We had a great week setting up and learning how to play in our Grocery Store!

We have turned our Pretend Palace into a Grocery Store. When we play in the Pretend Palace, we take turns being the cashier, bagger, and shoppers! We have a cart and some baskets and we walk around the store looking at all of the different sections. Then we put our items on the conveyor belt. Then the cashier rings us up on the cash register and tells us how much to pay. They groceries get bagged and we are sent on our merry way!

But that is not all. Then we have to go back and practice our categorizing skills by putting all of the groceries back in the right section.

Sections we have so far:
fruits
vegetables
meat
bread
breakfast
snack foods
meals
cereal
drinks
bakery (cookies, cake, muffins, sweets)
refrigerated section (cheese, butter, eggs, yogurt)
frozen section (ice cream)

We are getting really good at sorting the food!

Tips:
-While you are at the store this week with your child, point out the different sections of the store to help him/her make the connections between real life and what we are doing at school.
-Grocery Shopping is prime time for language development with your child. While you are at the store, make sure you are talking to your child the whole time. Point out the foods you see and talk about why you are picking certain items and not others. Talk about the options and the parts of the store. Point out the people working in the store. Ask your child questions about what he/she sees and thinks about what he/she sees.

Home/School Connection
On Friday your child came home with an ad from the newspaper. Just like we did at school this week, your homework is to go on a number hunt with your child. Cut out the number cards (0-9) and take turns picking them. Find all the numbers in the ad that match that number! Find the big ones and see if you can even find the teeny tiny ones! Make sure to send it in to school!

Here is a video of a lady teaching some grocery store signs. Some of the signs are a little different from what we do (such as cereal) but they are a great starting point.




American Sign Language: Grocery Shopping -- powered by eHow.com

Enjoy the pictures from this week: