Why investigate bread?

Bread is everywhere! Nearly every culture in the world eats some type of bread. Few foods experiences are as universal as bread. Children in my class explore bread in many ways; rolling play "dough" into pizzas and bread, in our "bakery" dramatic play they make sandwiches and other fun food items, and flour in the sensory bin.

N is for NOODLE!

Huge THANK YOU to Mrs. Jennifer(Ellie's mom) and Mrs. Kelsey (Hudson's mom) for making noodles with both pre k classes! The children were able to make their own dough, roll it out, and run it through the noodle attachment. After that they had the opportunity taste test the noodles with marinara and fettuccine sauce. The kids LOVED it and several went back for seconds! Ask your child about the noodle making fun we had!

Flour Sensory Bin

Halloween

One of my favorite St. James activities is the Pumpkin Patch with middle school. How neat is it for our children to see how pumpkins are grown (planted and taken care of by middle school), then have a special book written and illustrated just for them by our very own middle school students. It is then read to them after they pick a pumpkin out of the patch! The middle schoolers work so hard to create a fun and memorable experience for our little people in PreK, and I think they did an outstanding job!

Torn Paper MONSTERS

We made terrifying torn paper Monsters to help go along with our focus letter M. I made one myself and had it out for an example and each child tried to recreate it with their own unique style. I think they turned out so cute, I mean terrifying! :) Plus, it helped us work on our grip and rip.

Count and Graph

Counting helps children develop their cognitive skills, including memory attention, and spacial awareness. As they count objects, they have to remember the numbers they have already counted, pay attention to the objects they are counting, and spatially arranged objects to count them accurately. This week children had to count and graph spiders, bats, and witches hats by touching and counting each individual picture. Then they had to remember that number and color in that same amount of boxes next to the picture.

Table Fun!

We did center rotations with table manipulatives this morning.

roll, count, build: roll the dice, count the dots, find the number, and build a block tower with # of cubes

sorting and patterns: sort the marbles and follow the patterns

bead threading and counting: thread the right # of beads on the pipe cleaner to match the number on the pumpkin

pumpkin counting and number recognition: count the pumpkins and clip the pin on the right #

BEEP BEEP.. Road Work ahead! We have started our ROAD STUDY!

Police Officer, Pilot & Plane, torn paper PUMPKINS, & Picnic!

It was a successful week focusing on the letter P!

Thank you Trooper Phifer for visiting with PreK!

Big thank you to Mr. Claybrook for our AWESOME field trip to the Airport!

International Fair

We got to visit the 5th and 6th grade International Fair, and while we were there we could taste test different foods from around the world. It was extra special because my oldest, Sander, presented Argentina to the class. They loved trying chocolates from Switzerland, bread from Iceland, cake from Germany, empanadas from Argentina, plus so much more! It was a fun morning full of food and learning!

Rubber Egg Experiment

We used a glass jar, an egg, and some vinegar to make a rubber egg!! This was a fun science experiment to go along with our letter E and we were able to make predictions on if it would bounce and if so, how high? We found out not very high. The children loved this activity- don't forget to ask them about it!

Ryhming

Phonological awareness is an important skill in learning to read. One way we encourage the development of this is through rhyming. Recognizing rhyming words is a basic level of phonemic awareness and requires that children listen closely for sounds within words.This helps children learn how language works and that words are made up of seperate parts.

This week we played a rhyming game and I had each child pick a puzzle piece with a picture on it and then find it's rhyming match. They had to say what the picture was out loud then went piece by piece until they found a picture that rhymed. The kids loved it!

D if for…

Doctor, Donuts, & Dads!

HandwritingWithoutTears

Part of Pre-Ks curriculum is Handwriting Without Tears and we started working in our Kick Start Kindergarten workbook. We teach in the following developmental order: vertical and horizontal, magic C, big and little curves, and diagonals. We begin with capital letters as a group, seperate from lowercase. Instead of teaching 52 letter symbols with different sizes, positions and confusing starting places, we divide and conquer and start with 26. This week we started with F. The reason we start with F is because of the simplicity with lines and the amount of steps it takes to make the letter.

Alphabet&NumberPunchCards

Using a hole punch is a great way for students to develop their hand strength and hand-eye coordination. Most children love it, too. If the holes fall out onto the table or floor, picking them up allows children to refine their pincer grasp as well! We will do this same activity every Tuesday as I introduce our letter and number of the week.

FlowerColoring

Science content during early childhood focuses on living things (life science), the physical properties of materials and objects (physical science), and Earth's environment and how we care for it (earth science). This week we focused on life science with a flower experiment and the the best way to learn science is to do science through integrated hands-on child-centered inquiry. Young children are natural investigators, they are curious how things work and what will happen next. We did a flower experiment to go along with our letter of the week F. We talked about the parts of the flower and made predictions whether or not the flower would drink the colored water and if it would turn our petals the same color as the water. Each child picked the colored vase they wanted and placed a flower in it.

Students will be doing several activities in their fine motor journals. We will be making various types of lines, letters, numbers, and their names using different techniques. Tactile perception is the brains ability to understand information coming from the skin, particularly the hands being used to register sensory information. We used our fingers and ink pads to stamp inside the letter F.

Let's get rolling into the 2024-2025 school year!

THECHESTERHUNT!

This week was all about Chester the Raccoon and The Kissing Hand! We learned it's ok to be scared and nervous, and no matter what, our mom's & dad's love is always with us! The kids have all enjoyed reading your notes, and we even made "Our Class Kissing Hand Book" which includes your notes and hand prints. Now, throughout the year, they can go to our library center and find their notes from you if they get sad. Finally, we had a CHESTER HUNT with both Pre-K classes! And oh my, did the kids love this! We had a special delivery of clues that led us all around campus and when we returned to our class, Chester had left us a special surprise. Please enjoy the video of our hunt today!

Let'sMeasure!

How many blocks will my shoe be?

In preschool, we introduce units of measurement that children can really wrap their minds around. Usually, those are with regular household objects and toys. In this activity, children delve in deeper to understand the measurement of length with cubes! This was a great activity that involved estimating and measuring. I traced everyone's foot on a piece of paper then asked each child how many cubes they thought it would take to go from the bottom of their shoe to the top and wrote down their answers on the whiteboard. Then we measured and counted our blocks and compared the difference with our predictions.

We are wrapping up the end of the year and the busy month of May! From Muffins for Mom to Step Up to PreK and everything in between! What a fun and memorable year it has been.

Muffins for Mom

Roman Carnival

Step Up to PreK

Our FIRST and LAST Show and Tell

Welcome to our Garden Shop!

Wow! I can not believe we have reached our last study which is the gardening unit. We have transformed our center into our very own garden shop where the kids will have a planting station, pick your own bulb and seed station, and design station. They will be able to take orders, create their own bouquets, and practice their planting/ gardening skills. This is one of my favorite studies and I'm so excited to open up this center for the class. I absolutely love the hand painted back drop. Each child painted their own flower and all of them turned out so precious!

Planting Our Garden

We took our tools, seeds, and watering cans outside to our raised bed and got to work. Everyone had a turn either putting seeds in the hole and covering them up with soil or digging a hole and planting a plant. We planted tomatoes, bell peppers, lettuce, cilantro, and peas. We are excited to take care of our garden and hopefully harvest some yummy vegetables.

HUGE THANK YOU to Milo Lee's dad, Will, for providing the composting soil from our garden.

Easter Party

Field Trip to Little Country Green House

With the help of Bruce at Little Country Green House we were able to answer our focus question of who helps gardens grow? We were able to tour the grounds and see so many beautiful plants as well as some cute chickens! We treated the kids to yummy ice cream while we were there to emphasize our letter of the week "I"! It was such a fun morning!

We read the book Not a Box by Antoinette Portis. The children were given paper with a box on it, and they had to turn it into whatever they wanted. This is one of my favorite activities because it shows each child's creativity.

What did WE do with boxes?

What a fun filled week we've had answering our focus question what can we do with boxes? The children were divided into three groups. Boxes were chosen, ideas were voted on, and the creativity began!

Group 1 Race Car: Emory, Marcelino , Rett

Group 2 House: Easton, Lily, Emilee

Group 3 Airplane: Grace, Milo, Quinn, Georgiana

After two days of constructing they were finally able to play in their own boxes as well as their friends creations.

St. Patrick’s Day Sensory Bin

Special Visitor

We were so lucky to have Mr. Butler from UPS visit with our class and help us follow up with our focus question, "which jobs involve boxes". Mr. Butler talked with the kids about different boxes, what they can hold, how UPS ships packages, safe driving, and much more. The kids absolutely loved it! Thank you, Mr. Butler!

Q is for QUILT!

This week our class made a quilt together and each child got to design and decorate their own square. On Friday during circle time I put all the kids name in jar and Ms. Diane picked one name out that would get to keep the class quilt. Our LUCKY winner was....

Marcelino

Different Boxes

During one of our circle time this week I shared several difference pictures of boxes. We discussed what they were made out of, what they could be used for, and how different their size, shape, and colors were.

Tooth Fairy

We had a special visitor come to St. James this week. The tooth fairy came and talked with our class about taking care of our teeth and she even sprinkled us with a little a fairy dust to help us remember the things she taught us. Thank you Twinkles & Ms. Jordan.

Candy Hearts Sorting and Graphing

We incorporated math with candy hearts graphing! I gave each child a box of candy hearts and they had to sort, count and graph the colored hearts! Fun and yummy learning moment!

Letter Heart Game

It's review week which means we do not have a letter or number of the week. We spent one of mornings playing a game where the students had to identify the lowercase letter then find the upper case match. I used the whole alphabet and I was very pleased to see how many letters they knew that we haven't covered yet.

Let’s Talk Science with Candy Hearts

Valentine’s Day Fun

Wrapping Up our Exercise Study with….

Field Trips and Guacamole, Smoothies, & Energy Balls

This week we discussed what we can do to take care of our bodies and what our bodies need to move and exercise. We talked about how our bodies are like batteries, and we need to keep them "charged" or full of good things to have the energy to play and learn.

We made energy balls, smoothies, and guacamole. I asked them all to at least try one bite of everything, and if they didn't like it, they didn't have to eat it. I was pleasantly surprised by how many of them enjoyed eating everything.

Our exercise study has started and we now have a class gym!

Do you want to build a snowman?

The students had fun building their name snowman! I gave them snowballs with letters of their name in random order. They had to put them in order correctly and glue them to their paper. Knowledge of letters and words is an important component of literacy. The idea that written words are composed of letters that represent sounds is called the alphabetic principle. Children's understanding of the alphabetic principle is a predictor of future reading success.

Patterns

Guiding children to understand patterns is a foundational skill in mathematics. As they learn to label patterns by having one name stand for something else, they are creating an algebraic representation. Patterns help children know what comes next and to make predictions about things they cannot yet observe. This week we worked on patterns and how we can create them anyway we want as long as they repeat. We used colored cubes to practice and then by then end of the week we were able to create our own.

Torn Paper Snowmen

Tearing paper might not seem like a big workout, but it helps children strengthen their hands and fingers, enhances hand-eye coordination, fosters bilateral coordination, and supports pincer grasp development.

Obstacle Course

Navigating through an obstacle course builds strength and improves body movements. Coach Nicole set up an obstacle course during our PE class and the kids loved it! There are several benefits to utilizing an obstacle courses with preschoolers like motor skills, strength and balance, and coordination.

PreK Christmas Program

This time of year it is easy to get caught up in the rush of the Christmas holiday and lose focus on what is the true meaning of Christmas. I am so blessed to be able to teach our students about Jesus’ birth and talk openly about God at St. James. The children have memorized songs, lines, solos, and moving parts which requires a tremendous amount of focus and commitment. It isn’t easy to perform in front of a large audience especially when it is full of your loved ones. I am very proud of this group and all their hard work.

Santa'sWorkshop

Our Bread Study has come to an end, and we are in full Christmas mode! Santa's Workshop is open and the kids have been cranking out some super cute ornaments to decorate our class tree!

Oh Christmas Tree…

Each child painted their own interpretation of a Christmas tree. I love every one of them, and I can see each personality displayed.

GingerbreadManMath

One of the many reasons I love St. James preschool curriculum is that it allows for children to learn through play. Play is the natural way in which children learn and during play children practice their skills and make sense of new knowledge and experiences. We played this game in the fall with pumpkins so it's only appropriate that we play with gingerbread men now. This is a fun way to practice counting and number recognition. I would have all the children put their heads down and have one child remove a number. They had to then figure out what number was missing and when we did that, we would clap that many times. I was blown away with their sharpness and how quickly they found the missing number. I even tried to trick them by mixing the number line up but they surprised me and figured it out each time.

EgyptianFair

We took a journey back in time and visited an ancient Egyptian Marketplace. The sixth-grade class worked extremely hard in preparation for these presentations, and we so enjoyed learning all about their different lives.

Baking Unit

Our class bakery is up and running! The kids are loving this center!

Taste Testing Bread

I thought it would be fun to taste test different kinds of bread. We tasted brioche, french loaf, italian bread, bagels, focaccia, sour dough, and cinnamon bread. We took a class vote and tallied the results. This was a great teaching moment to help connect quantities with their written number symbols, or numerals. Displaying numerals with representation of their quantities help children associate the amount with the numeral. At the end we found that the italian bread (and butter) won class favorite and bagels least favorite!

MakingButter

As we tasted different breads I decided to let the children make butter to try along the breads I brought. We used a mason jar with some heavy cream and a pinch of salt. Then as we read The Sandwich Swap, we shook till we couldn't shake anymore. TADA, butter was made!

It was a fun learning experience.

Flour Sensory Bin

Sorting and Graphing

Sorting & graphing helps children look at numbers in different ways. Starting graphs when they are young helps them count items quickly, organize, compare, and discuss information. We used skittles on a turkey body to make graphing fun!

TxDOT

With help from Dana Moore and the a few other TxDOT employees we were able to answer our focus question; How are roads made? Who builds and repairs roads?

The students had a fun morning learning about the materials used in making/ repairing roads, the importance of buckling up, creating a route from their house to the school, and so much more! HUGE THANK YOU to TxDOT for an awesome morning of learning and fun!

Transportation Day

R is for Railcar

A very big THANK YOU to Hillary Fowler, owner of Alley Cats Coffee, for having us visit her railcar coffee shop. What a fun morning of delicious treats and learning a little bit about the history of the railcar!

Reading with 7th Grade

What a fun learning opportunity for 7th grade as well as PreK. We are pretty lucky to have such awesome lower and middle school students take the time to come and read to our class once a month.

Friday Fun with Table Manipulatives

I placed several different table learning centers out today. All the options had different objectives from graphing and sorting, fine motor, and counting and number recognition. The kids enjoyed these activities and working together this morning!

Pisfor....

PumpinPie

We baked Pumpkin Pie and it was so much fun! We discussed why bakers wear aprons and hats, the difference between wet and dry ingredients, and why we measure the ingredients before we add them in. Ask your child what ingredient they got to help with it and if it was wet or dry.

PaintedPony

We are so fortunate to have fun parents who take time out of their busy day to help enhance our learning experience. Georgiana brought her precious pony, Prince to visit St. James! We loved getting to feed Prince treats and we even got to adorn his beautiful white coat with colored paint! What a awesome day to be a PreK student at St. James.

Police Officer

Thank you so much, Mark Neal, from the Texarkana Police Department for coming out to visit our PreK students! What a fun morning!

Handwriting Without Tears

Part of Pre-Ks curriculum is Handwriting Without Tears and we started working in our Kick Start Kindergarten workbook. We teach in the following developmental order: vertical and horizontal, magic C, big and little curves, and diagonals. We begin with capital letters as a group, seperate from lowercase. Instead of teaching 52 letter symbols with different sizes, positions and confusing starting places, we divide and conquer and start with 26. We begin with F & E and the reason we start with those is because of the simplicity with lines and the amount of steps it takes to make the letter.

Chester Hunt!

This week was all about Chester the Raccoon and The Kissing Hand! We learned it's ok to be scared and nervous, and no matter what, our mom's & dad's love is always with us! The kids have all enjoyed reading your notes, and we even made "Our Class Kissing Hand Book" which includes your notes and hand prints. Now, throughout the year, if they get sad they can go to our library center and find their notes from you. Finally, we had a CHESTER HUNT with both Pre-K classes! And oh my, did the kids love this! We had a special delivery of clues that led us all around campus and when we returned to our class, Chester had left us a special surprise. Please enjoy the video of our hunt today!

Centers, Table Work, Outside Time

Let’s Measure!

HOW MANY BLOCKS....

In preschool we introduce units of measurement that children can really wrap their minds around. Usually those are with regular household objects and toys. In these activities children delve in deeper to understand measurement of length and height with blocks and cubes!

How many blocks will my shoe be?

This was a great activity that involved estimating and measuring. I traced everyone's foot on a piece of paper then asked each child how many blocks they thought it would take to go from the bottom of their shoe to the top and wrote down their answers on the whiteboard. Then we measured and counted our blocks and compared the difference with our predictions.

What a wonderful talent show! We realize that any good performance takes time and a great amount of effort and flexibility. Rest assured that this has not been wasted time, rather time well spent. This is how St. James stands out from all the rest. Some of our curriculum objectives that your child has learned through this experience are: following limits and expectations, traveling skills, gross-motor skills, speaking clearly, following directions, attends and engages, and persists.

They also gain a tremendous amount of self-confidence and self-control. It’s not easy at the age of 4 and 5 to perform in front of an audience. We think these children did a remarkable job.

All of this would not have been possible without help from our parents, Mrs. Denise and her middle school helpers, and Mrs. Wright. A big thank you to all of these special people.

Super Duper Hatchers

We used a candling lamp which is a scientifically designed, purpose made lamp for inspecting the embryo development during incubation. The kids loved peeking inside the eggs and watching the little chicks move around.

Super Duper Hatchers!

The kids have loved having baby chicks in class and it's not everyday you get to see them actually hatch! Sadly, our time with them is coming to an end. We let the chicks out to play one last time and this gave us the perfect opportunity to snap some sweet photos- however not everyone wanted to hold a chick. :)

P.E. Stations

In PE, the students worked on eye tracking, also referred to as visual tracking. This is the ability of one's eyes to “track” from left to right efficiently and “follow” the movement of objects.

Coach Nicole set up three stations, one of which was to work on visual tracking. The students had to roll a ball on the line from left to right and only use their eyes to follow the ball, not move their heads.

drive in movie

What better way to end out box study then with a drive in movie using cardboard box cars! The kids loved this and I think you all did a AWESOME job creating vehicles with you child!

Special Visitor

We were so lucky to have Mr. Butler from UPS visit with our class this week! Mr. Butler talked with the kids about different boxes, what they can hold, how UPS ships packages, safe driving, and much more. The kids absolutely loved it! Thank you, Mr. Butler!

Which comes first? The chicken or the egg?

Our Pre-K classes are going to find out thanks to Cherrie Curtis, CEA - 4H and Youth and Development Leader. She brought us eggs, an incubator, and talked to the children about the different stages in the development of the chicken in the egg. Now, we wait 21 days.........