West Richmond Preschool

In keeping with our belief that it is important to expose children to different holidays, we celebrated Hanukkah in class today. Of course, we made potato latkes... We squeezed out all the water- cooking becomes a gross motor activity as we use our whole body! We cracked eggs. Three people and three eggs- phew! We fried them in oil-yum! Comments made while watching them frying in the pan: Kensie: I see it getting brown a little bit. Connor: It smells yummy. It smells like hash browns. Miele: I think it smells good. Connor: Hash browns, I love so much. Miele: Me too! Connor: There is hash browns at Great Wolf Lodge. Miele: I have been there. We had a hot tub and a snow ball fight. Connor: They have a scary ride. Miele: My brother went on that. I can't go on the ride at the PNE. Kensie: I went to the PNE. I saw the dog show. Miele: I went to the dog show. Kensie: Flip them (the latkes). Connor: It smells like crab. Everyone tried the latkes and t...

Vampire Bats What we know on Nov 25 Emma: They don’t drink blood at people. They drink blood at cows. Addie: They drink blood from sheep. Joban: They drink blood from horses. Matias: Vampire bats drink blood from owls. Miele: They come from South America. Addie: They live in caves. Makena: They have arms inside their wings (fingers) and they can hear far away. Miele and Addie: They are as big as our thumbs. Addie: They comb each other. Makena:They use echolocation. It means they can see in the dark. Addie: Their echo bounces back off the wall. What do we want to learn Jack: Do they have blood in their bodies? Kensie: What happens if a bat flies into a volcano and it gets hot? Rhys: About their blood. Emma: How big are their eyes? Makena: How big are their tongues? Grace: How big are the bat’s wings? Jordyn: I don’t know what I want to learn. Matias: How big is their nose? Addies: How big are their teeth? Miele: What about their lip...

I love how the upcoming buddy visit created this buzz and excitement in the classroom for days before our trip. Since this was our first time going to our buddies' elementary school, there were also some nerves as children did not know what to expect. Aside from talking them through what the day might look like, I also thought it would be helpful to find something that could ground them and make them feel personally invested in going to the school. Typically, I make home-made cookies for our buddies but it dawned on me that is far more meaningful if the preschoolers baked for their big buddies themselves.  And, to further personalize the gift, the preschoolers would decorate bags with their buddies name on it. And, to further the learning around that… we would send home the bag of cookies (stapled as a safety precaution from any looming cookie monsters!) on Wednesday and the children were to bring them back on Friday- certainly learning around responsibility to others and working o...

Social responsibility- a term that has now become quite common in the field of education and has the potential to lose its meaning if we are not careful. As an early childhood educator, I have always placed great importance on the need to develop this way of thinking in young children. It is for this reason that we engage in activities that benefit others, such as volunteering at our local food bank, adopting an owl, or raising money for Variety Club. With the recent catastrophe in the Philippines, my mind was suddenly thrown into its own typhoon. I found myself asking questions around social responsibility and what it really means. What does it mean to me? What does it mean to my preschoolers? How far does it extend into the world around us? Can four year old children grasp these deep and complex concepts? What can they understand about their world? How can we teach them about being socially responsible to: ones self; ones family; ones community; ones province; ones country; ones worl...

And our box adventures continue... I have been meaning to bring boxes outside to the sandbox for a very, very long time but just never got around to actually doing it. So, when we brought the boxes back into class this week, I suddenly realized that this is a perfect opportunity to bring them outside. The children worked on them more in class-they coloured and used long strips of masking tape. Very long strips of masking tape! They loved unrolling the tape and often worked together with one person holding the roll and the other unwinding the strip.The box play was involved; cooperative and generally peaceful (with a few exceptions stemming from artistic differences or ownership). A grey but dry day, we headed out, boxes in arms, to the sandbox. I wasn't really sure how they would use them. I thought they might turn them into castles or some type of building. In fact, they did not use them for this purpose but rather used them more as tools-diggers, shovels, rakes. They worked a...