Last week was jammed filled with learning and play! We began our second week of Second Step lessons which are helping the children learn how to listen to one another, show respect and regard for each other. The children are really responding well to this program and enjoy our two new classmate puppets “Sunny” and “Hazel”. They were named by our classmate Rylo who is in our afternoon class!
We are moving right along in our “Myself and Others” unit with our last project called, “The Colors of Us-The Stories About Us”. Based off of two stories we read last week that introduced the shades of color our skin can be, students began to dialogue what makes up the different colors of us! What makes us unique? What makes us the same? In our art area we began to mix various paint colors to create each child’s skin color! When we were close to a color the child approved they they began to paint their skin color onto their art paper with a child stencil. After it dried, students cut out their person and began to create clothes, hair, eyes, and other features that represented them! Miss Santiago assisted in this activity and the end result of their projects are AMAZING! I cannot wait for you to see them! This week we are beginning to write a story about ourselves that will go along with their art project of themselves. This project has taken us a total of 2.5 weeks to do, so please take the time to discuss your child’s project when they bring them home later in the month.
In Science during week four we ended our apple study with apple taste testing! Woo hoo!!! It was a HUGE hit! My favorite quote from one of our students was, “Miss Hopkins! This apple is delicious! No wonder why they call them golden delicious!” It made my heart smile! Using their five senses, students discussed the various traits each apple had. We examined red gala apples, green granny smith apples, and yellow golden delicious apples! Yummy! The children also finished up their still life drawings of apples that I will be displaying out in the hallway.
During week five (this week), we will be learning and celebrating SHAPES!!! Shapes are all around us! For our younger learners we will be introducing the five basic shapes: circle, square, rectangle, triangle, and oval. For our older learners, we will continue on with more complex shapes: hexagon, pentagon, octagon, cylinder, cube, etc… The children should be bringing home every day a new shape puppet for help remember the shapes name, how many sides and corners it has, along with equal sides vs. non equal sides.
Enjoy some pictures of our learning from week four!
Preschool in the City with Mrs. Gabelman 
Tonight we had the best time reading the blog and looking at pictures. I heard so many stories about what happens in room 121 and it was so fun to hear the names of all the kids. Thanks for keeping us informed!