Letter B week was brilliant!

On Monday, the students worked on their letter identification tracing and coloring pages. They also practiced making the sounds of the letters in the different pictures on their pages.  Later on in the afternoon, the students played a very silly game of Simon Says. While the students had a great time placing their hands on the different body parts, the concept of “Simon didn’t say” was somewhat lost on them. We’ll keep practicing though! We also learned some fun body part songs. Here was one of our favorites.

The Touch Song
Touch your nose,
Touch your chin;
That’s the way this game begins.
Touch you eyes,
Touch your knees;
Now pretend you’re going to sneeze.
Touch your hair,
Touch one ear;
Touch your two red lips right here,
Touch your elbows
Where they bend;
That’s the way this touch game ends.

On Tuesday, the students continued to work on their letter identification tracing and coloring pages. They also practiced making the sounds of the letters in the different pictures on their pages. In the afternoon, the students of PPA got to meet two very special and important community members – Nurse Carla and Nurse Lillian.

Nurse Carla and Nurse Lillian are in the process of completing their coursework for a Bachelors of Science in Nursing at New Jersey City University.  For one of their assignments, the nurses needed to work with preschool aged children and teach them a lesson about staying healthy.  What better lesson to teach the preschool aged students (during the fall!) than a lesson on germs and hand washing!

First, Nurse Carla and Nurse Lillian read us a great story to help teach us all about germs and how they spread and ways we can try to keep them to ourselves.

Next, the nurses showed us the different steps of hand washing – we even learned a great song to sing while scrubbing the soap into our hands.

Sung to Twinkle Twinkle Little Star
Twinkle Twinkle Little Star,
Look how clean my two hands are!
Soap and water, wash and scrub.
Get those germs off, rub-a-dub.
Twinkle Twinkle Little Star,
Look how clean my two hands are!

After washing the soap off and drying her hands, Nurse Lillian asked the students, “When is a good time to wash our hands?”  Nurse Carla then called on different students to explain their answers.

After learning all about the reasons for hand washing, the students got to put their learning into practice!  Nurse Lillian and Nurse Carla led the way over to the sinks.  Needless to say, the students had never been so excited to practice hand washing!

On Wednesday, the students created a “My Body is made up of Bones” art project!  The students, with the help of the teachers, traced their hand on construction paper. Then the students used different types of noodles to create the bones of their hands.

Later on Wednesday afternoon was Spanish class! Of course Miss Saily and Miss Genie helped us review the greetings we discussed last week – Hola and Adios. They also introduced some other friendly and polite sayings such as “gracias” (thank you) and “de nada” (for nothing/you’re welcome). The students practiced saying these new phrases in the appropriate context by role playing instances of sharing. Here are two students practicing sharing and being courteous all while speaking Spanish!

This week in Spanish class we also learned some of the early numbers (1-5).  To help add some excitement to it, Miss Saily and Miss Genie introduced a fun game with big foam dice!  The students took turns tossing the die and then saying whatever number it landed on in Spanish!

On Thursday, the “tree rug” students created a list of the different parts of the body and how many of each part people have.  Miss Jocelyn used the list to draw a super silly sketch of a person with all of the body parts listed and the right number of each part.  Here is her sketch.

Fortunately, the students were there to set Miss Jocelyn straight.  Taking turns drawing each part, the students collaboratively created an accurate drawing of a human body – well, accurate despite the pig nose!

Since the students did such a great job identifying the different parts of the body the teachers thought it would be fun to see if the students could arrange the body if it was broken up like a puzzle.  With different levels of difficulty for the puzzles, the students really handled the challenge well.

In the afternoon, the students had Spanish class where they practiced saying “gracias” and “de nada” and the numbers (1-5) again!  We also took some time to observe what had happened to our Fall Tree.  All of our leaves had finally fallen off the tree and were now on the ground.  It will be winter before we know it!

Once the body was traced, the student had to place labels on all of the parts and decorate the face.  Needless to say, the life-sized body portraits turned out great!

In the afternoon, the students observed an animated musical educational short film from a series that some of the PPA parents may have viewed as children, Schoolhouse Rock.  Schoolhouse Rock is a television program that ran on ABC in the late 1970’s and early 1980’s which helped teach children about various topics through music and animation.  As you can see below, the students learned all about bones and the reason why they are a very important feature in our body!

-PPA