Miss Christine's Preschool Page: Friendship, Valentine's Day and the Lunar New Year

Friendship

This month's Choose to Be Nice value is friendship. Similar to previous months, the children were introduced to the mouse that would teach them about friendship. This month's mouse is Filippe. Filippe (a puppet) visited the classroom and shared a story, You are Friendly by Todd Snow. Following the story, students shared how they've acted like a good friend to others. We then learned a chant:

“Share a smile. Say hello. Be a Friend wherever you go!”

We are practicing this chant each day during circle time as part of our routine.

We also sang friendship songs and the children worked together to paint a friendship banner.

ASL

Throughout the school year, following our discussion in September about embracing and celebrating differences, I have tried to introduce the students to different languages, cultures, celebrations, abilities and races. During our study of the Five Senses we not only looked at what our senses do, but what happens when one of those senses doesn't work as it should. We talked about hearing loss and blindness and how people with these disabilities communicate. We began to learn some ASL. Each day during circle time, the children practice signing the days of the week. We also learn together the signs for vocabulary related to our themes. Sometimes we are able to put together the signs that we've learned into songs. This past month, the children learned to sign words in Barney's Friendship Song. Ask your children to show the signs for the following words while you play the song.

friends

special

world

school

playground

help

sad

glad

Lunar New Year

Lunar New Year marks the first new moon of the lunisolar calendar. It is 12 full cycles of the moon. Lunar New Year is celebrated in several countries across Asia each with their own traditions. It is a time of new beginnings and family celebration. In China, the celebration lasts 15 days.

As a class we began our discussion of the Lunar New Year by reading the book Ringing in the New Year by Grace Lin. We also watched a Scholastic video and a video showing traditions in China, Vietnam, and Korea.

We discussed some of the traditions families have such as getting their hair cut, buying new clothes, sweeping out the old, sharing oranges for good luck, eating long noodles for a long life, giving red envelopes with money for luck and wearing red.

We learned that the Lunar New Year celebration often starts with a meal, includes a lion dance and ends with a lantern festival and parade with a large dragon puppet. The children had a chance to make lion puppets and paper lanterns.

Perhaps one of the most fun activities that we did during the week was learning about the story of Nian, a giant lion monster that scared a village in order to steal the villager's food. An old man in the village thought of an idea to decorate homes with red to scare Nian, make loud noise (firecrackers) and dress up as a lion. His plan worked and the villagers were saved. The lion dance is performed during Lunar New Year to remind people of the story and ward off bad things. We watched the following video and then followed the instructor to try the dance with our lion puppets.

Kidvision Lion Dance

Yoga: Each of the months of the Lunar New Year is named for an animal, but how did that come to be? There is a story called The Great Race which explains how the animals were chosen and in what order. As a class we watched a puppet show of the story, which is also a fable. We then learned how to do a yoga pose for each of the animals.

Literacy

The class continued to learn how to write straight line letters including H and T.

The children practiced identifying the beginning sounds in words, counting the syllables in words and we began talking about onset and rime (how words can be broken up into parts).

Math

We continued our work with repeating patterns. The students all created their own heart patterns which followed the rhythm of their choice, AB, ABB, AAB. I then introduced growing patterns which we will continue to explore after vacation.

Fine Motor

The students have been engaged in a variety of fine motor activities to practice their pincer grasp- needed for correct crayon grip, squeezing tongs- beginning practice for scissor skills and strengthening their finger muscles to prepare for more writing and drawing.

Playdoh

The children enjoyed making pretend candy and cookies for Valentine's Day with chocolate playdoh!

Valentine's Day

Throughout the week we also wove in the idea of friendship and love for Valentine's Day into our activities. The children made several heart projects such as shaving cream hearts and spin art hearts.

We ended the week with a wonderful party that included fun games such as musical hearts a toss game, a scavenger hunt and a craft.