February News from Preschool

     February Preschool News

We are into our second week of our theme, The World of Color.  Some topics covered in this unit will be color names, color mixing, stains, fading, camouflage, and color patterns.  Through the Story Time books, the children will hear about a dog that stains his white coat, a lion who paints pictures, a boy who gets special letters from his grandmother, and a rabbit who wants to buy a special shirt.  We will continue to learn about letters and sounds, including rhyming words and the children will participate in music, poetry, mathematics, science, and art activities. 

    Theme Concepts

 *Color is one thing that makes our world beautiful, both in nature and through art.

 *Color can carry information.

 *Paints and dyes are used to color other things and are mixed to make new colors.

 *Different substances can cause stains of different colors.

 *Sun and washing often bleach colors-make them fade.

 *Color is an identifying feature of many natural things. 

 After reading Max’s Dragon Shirt, the children had fun designing their own special shirts like the rabbit in the story.  Some made dragons and others designed their own favorite shirts.  Right now, our Dramatic Play area is a Laundromat, where the children are sorting clothes by patterns and colors, and working with coins.  Some other activities this month will be finger painting, matching colored objects to the colored picture, using an eye dropper to mix primary colors on paper towels, creating secondary colors,  adding food coloring to our play dough, and predicting, observing, and writing about paper that fades over a period of three weeks.   The unit will end with our dramatic play area being turned into a post office.  The children will take turns playing different roles (e.g. customer, postal worker) at the post office, buying stamps, mailing letters, making special deliveries, and stamping letters.  The writing center will allow them to write their own letters and postcards.  It will be a busy and fun unit.