First week of our Transportation Unit
Hello Spoede Pre-K Families! Welcome to December and an early winter! Brrr! This week we have been having a lot of fun with the our new unit on Transportation.
Monday- For morning work we started with a Train color by number up to 6. We started our Monday Circle time by sharing about our Thanksgiving break. We told stories about our favorite foods, where we spent Thanksgiving, and the fun things we did. Each student got a minute to share. In Centers, we used multiple colored shapes and glued them together to make a train engine pulling a train car. We added sentence strips for the railroad tracks. We decorated hot air balloons, first with oil pastel crayons and then painting with water color paints. We also played a puzzle game that matched vehicles to their shadows which works on visual analysis and critical thinking. "Visual discrimination is the ability to see and note the difference between objects and symbols. Since the shadows are all black, the students much focus on the on line and shape of the vehicle, ignoring details like color or amall features. This is a critical skill for recognizing different letters (like 'b' and 'd') and numbers later on."
In the sensory table, we explored kinetic sand, scoops and shovels, sand toys, and construction vehicles.
Tuesday - Enjoyed a surprise day off with a snow day! We missed music due to the snow!
Wednesday - For morning work, we wrote and colored pictures about our favorite things to do in the snow and shared them with the class on the carpet. The students were so excited talking about the snow, so we took turns and shared how we spent our snow day. We continued making our shape trains and hot air balloons. We made a We Go reproducible book to read to you at home. We had transportation floor puzzles out and a sensory table full of construction trucks, sand toys and kinetic sand.
Thursday- We got out our Matchbox Cars and Matchbox track and Mason, our Westminster student completing a service project helped make a really long ramp on which to drive our cars. We hadn't used the track or Matchbox cars since the very beginning of the year so this was an exciting new activity and every students participated. We took pictures out in the hall for our Hot Air Balloon projects which we will complete next week.
Friday- We switched out the sand in the sensory table and added snow. We played with cars and shovels in the snow and the kids loved it. The cars were buried in the snow so the students had to dig for them. Very exciting! In Art with Ms. Tara, we made cups of hot chocolate, decorating the cup and saucer with special lines, (straight, wavy, zig zags, dotted, curly, etc.). Our 4th Grade Buddies came to our room and I read the book, If You Give A Mouse a Cookie by Laura Numeroff. After we did a writing activity to match the story. The the big buddies helped their buddies write what they would do if they had a cookie. Then we shared the stories with the whole group. We checked out books from the Pre-K library.
This week coming up with be our second and last week of our transportation unit. Then we will move on to a Gingerbread/ Winter Holiday unit. Please see the message below about sharing your family Holidays with Spoede.
Upcoming Dates to Remember
***Spoede Pre-K Library Books should be returned every week by Wednesday or Thursday. Thank you!
12/19- Early Release Day: Last day before winter break. Dismissal is around 1:07
12/19 Eve's 5th Birthday
12/22 - 1/5 Winter Break: No School
1/6/2026 - School Resumes from Winter Break
Special Invitation to Share your Holidays
Share Your Family’s Celebrations!
Help us celebrate the many wonderful cultures and holidays in our school community! We are building a special display for our school TVs called "Family Celebrates"
We invite you to share photos and descriptions of your family's favorite traditions (holidays, cultural events, special days, etc.). We will feature different families each month in the Google slide document on our school televisions throughout the month.
Ready to share? Please click the link below to access the submission form and template:
https://docs.google.com/
We can't wait to learn more about your family!
Thank you so much for helping us distribute this exciting link! Please reach out if you have any questions.
Best,
DEI Committee
Please enjoy the photos of the fun things we did this week.
Making trains out of multi colored shapes, glue sticks, and sentence strips.
Playing in the Sensory Table with Kinetic Sand, sand toys and and vehicles
Matching Vehicles with their shadows.
Finishing up our Hot Air Balloon painting
More kids working on their shape trains!
Having fun making track to race our Matchbox Cars.
Playing in the sand with construction trucks and other vehicles.
Last of the Hot Air Balloon decorating.
Pictures we are going to use to "fly" away in the Hot Air Balloon projects the students painted! We will finish up our Hot air balloons next week and add to one of our bulletin boards. We will send them home at a later date.
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On Friday, we switched out the sand in the sensory table for snow and played with cars and shovels in the snow. This was a huge hit with the Pre-K friends.
Worked on dot painting the letter "T" for train.
We made cups of hot cocoa with colorful pastel crayons and learned about special art lines. See examples.
Working in Art Journals after completing their cup of hot chocolate.
Our 4th Grade Buddies came to our room and we read the book, If You Give A Mouse a Cookie by Laura Numeroff, and did a writing activity to match the story. The the big buddies helped their buddies write what they would do if they had a cookie. Then we shared the answers with the group.
Free Choice
