Exploring Spiders

We've had a new friend in our classroom this month. I wasn't sure how the kids would respond to this large arachnid, but it turns out they love including him (and other smaller spiders) in our class activities. 

The Itsy Bitsy Spider Play

Colored Spider Sorting

Stuck in the Web

We looked for the letters in our name, "stuck" in the light table spider web.

Spider Web Geoboards

The students wanted to add spiders to our tree geoboards, to make spider webs.

I'll share a few more of our favorite spider activities, along with a new spider book I found this year in a book love post. :)

Introducing Fall and Lines

We've been exploring a few topics alongside each other this month, in addition to some that are more spooky for Halloween.

We've been thinking about trees in the fall, and other changes that happen during this season.

We've also been thinking about lines: looking for lines in nature (i.e. in leaves, pumpkins, spider webs), and how to use lines to form shapes, letters, etc. 

Fire Safety

During the first week of October, we focused on fire safety and the work that firefighters do in our community.

Fire Art

We mixed yellow and red colors to make some fire art.

Fire Positional Words Game

We played this little game to practice using positional vocabulary, and find different fires throughout the house.

Fire Dramatic Play

The firefighter play kept up throughout most of the month.

Field Trip to the Fire Station

We also enjoyed a fun trip to the local fire station. We are so grateful for the time they took to meet with us, and for all the work they do in our community!

Exploring Shapes...and Friendship!

We wrapped up the month of September by exploring shapes, and how they are the same and different- just like all of our friends at preschool!

While reading the book Friendshape, we worked together to recreate some of the pictures from the book. 

There are a lot of fun ways to explore with shapes- 

a topic that we will continue to visit throughout the year.

We finished off the week by practicing some friendship skills with this simple high-five game from Teach Preschool. You just ask a friend to give you a high-five, and then fill in a finger on your recording sheet.

Simple invitations often lead to deeper interactions, like how these two started talking about and counting each other's fingers. :)

After a month of getting to know each other and exploring things together, I asked each class to come up with some rules or guidelines for being a good friend in preschool. I loved hearing what was important to them, and will use that understanding as the foundation for building up our community as we move forward this year!