New Year’s Goals & Resolutions

New Year’s Goals & Resolutions was the theme for the first week of January at Shawnee Home Preschool. We talked about how the last year and month ended and now we have the New Year to celebrate and make some New Year’s Resolutions. We examined a calendar to look at the new month day and year. We discussed what resolutions are and we talked about goals that each child might strive to achieve this year – both academic goals and health goals.

In Art we painted, colored and made crafts about the New Year and other subjects. We also watered our indoor tomato garden and tried the mint herb that finally grew.

At Circle time, we were on the letter P for the week. We have started singing songs that correspond to each letter in the alphabet and the sound it makes, as well as continuing to learn sign language for each letter. We formed letters on the floor using rectangles and paper money. We also started to try to count by fives. We reviewed numbers, colors and shapes. We investigated some environmental print on cereal boxes- naming letters, sounds, pictures, colors and shapes.

The children played with dolls and playdough during Center Time. We have been incorporating nursery rhymes and fairy tales into our day. We practiced the Jack Be Nimble rhyme while coloring a picture of jack in a room lit by a lighted candle. Then we talked about how wax melts, how to be safe around fire and then practiced jumping over the cooled candle (not lit!). But the most fun was playing Simon Says!

For Gross Motor time, we danced and ran and played outside. We looked outside for orange (the color of the week) and examined the differences between the living and dead leaves and grass. We also played with the badmitton rackets and the birdies, and tried a new game called Ogosport which was a big hit. They did great on a balance beam walking toe heal toe. We also played hot potato, did some gymnastics, finger games, action songs and read stories about January and the New Year.