Bus Ride!

As part of our safety and community helpers unit, we got to experience a bus ride!  After we loaded the bus, we got to ride around the Ripley parking lot and the front circle a couple of times.  You should have seen the excitement and smiles on the kids' faces as we drove around!

Special Parents

Nathan's mom (PM Class) came in to talk about Chinese New Year.  We loved hearing about the special traditions that help celebrate this special holiday.  Thank you for our red envelopes!

Mr. Lee (Ms. McGregor's AM class) brought music and songs to the preschool.  We loved watching him play the guitar and ukulele.  It was fun to sing along and play our instruments with you!

Pizza Party

Pizza Party!
THANK YOU to all our amazing families for helping us to read all of the books to earn our party!  Can you believe that the preschool classes read over 2,000 books??!!
THANK YOU to our wonderful parent volunteers who helped out on our special Pizza Day celebration.  The kids were very busy and hard at work completing all of the games and activities thanks to all of you!

Safety & Community Helpers Unit

Safety can be a tough topic to work on with young kids, however, you would be surprised how much they already know!

• We began our focus on signs they see everywhere and basic things ways for us to stay safe.  They love the traffic light games with "stop, go, and slow down".   
• YUM and YUCK and TOUCH and DON'T TOUCH, are big themes for us as well.  These focus on what things are ok to eat or touch vs. things that will hurt us (eating or touching).  
• We talk about fire, stop-drop-roll, how to crawl to get out when there is smoke, learning about meeting spots, fire extinguishers, EXIT signs and how to find them, and calling 911 in an emergency.  Plus, we had to have a whole separate discussion on "what" an emergency actually is.

Community Helpers

• Learning about people who help us everyday within the context of where you would find them and what "tools" they use to do their job.
• We LOVED the career bags that many of you sent in for us!  Your children were so proud to show off the items in the bags that go along with the jobs you do.  What amazed so many of the kids was that there were parents that had the same or similar jobs.

Some favorite highlights of the unit.

• AM class got to go on an EXIT sign hunt around the school.
• PM class got to go on a safety scavenger hunt around the building.
• Making fire truck graham cracker cookies.
• The fire experiment!  We had three lit candles.  One stayed lit while the other 2 had things happen to them.  The second one we squirted water on it to put it out.  The third one we placed a glass container over it.  While the first one kept burning, the one with the glass container over it, lost all the oxygen to keep it lit.  They were fascinated with the experiment and we repeated it several times!

Robots

Mrs. Clement Wong came to our preschool to share some robots with us.  He brought the round Roomba vacuum that ate some Cheerios we threw on the floor.  Another robot was a long skinny one with a brush on the end that is used to clean the debris out of your gutters.  When Mr. Wong took off the brush, the kids got to drive the robot forwards and backwards with a little remote.  The last robot he brought us is one that is used by Armed Forces and Law Enforcement.  This robot can "see" and handle being thrown or dropped, so it is perfect to send into dangerous situations.  It can flip too!  The robot is controlled by a tablet type remote and showed the camera of the robot looking at all of us.  The kids got to drive this robot too.  It can go really fast and many of our kiddos figured out quickly how to change the controls to do just that.  Finally, Mr. Wong activated a "people" type robot at his work.  The robot drove all around his work and his co-workers.