WELCOME BACK!

FALL 2018

Hello and welcome back Näsbypark preschoolers!  We are really looking forward to an exciting year with the exciting IPC theme...."Let's Pretend".  

Our Entry Point: 

To kick off the Let's Pretend unit, the children were encouraged to bring their favorite books and dress up as their favorite character from the story.  We had LOTS of Elsas, a Vaiana, transformers, batmans and a boy from Ghana.  The children participated in a character fashion show to show off their costumes.  The also took turns taking about their favorite stories.  This term we will use stories as the base of our Let's Pretend theme.  We will be targeting language and literacy skills in both Swedish and English.  The children will develop their story comprehension skills by being able to identify important story grammar components, sequence a story and retell stories to their friends.  We will also do a lot of play and act out the stories we have read.  Fun times to come!!

Gruffalo’s Child

language, creativity, science/nature, math

Activities:

The group read the Gruffalo’s Child by Julia Donaldson.  The children used pictures to retell the story and developed their phonological skills by focusing on initial sounds of keywords.  We talked about the animals in the story, paying a lot of attention on their homes and footprints as an introduction to our Animal Tracking activity.  They also developed their mathematical skills for addition by participating in a Gruffalo’s Child themed math activity.

 

Purpose:

• to develop story comprehension and language skills
• to use literature as a way to introduce animals tracking and Swedish forest animals.
• to develop mathematical skills

Connection to the Lpfö-98 revised 2016:

The preschool should strive to ensure that each child….

• develop an interest in written language and an understanding of symbols, and communicative function
• develop their ability to listen, reflect
• develop their understanding and knowledge of plants and animals

  

How Old Is This Tree?

Counting Rings

Measuring the Circumference

Making Tree Rings

Activity:

The children learned ways to estimate the age of a tree: counting the rings inside the tree and measuring the circumference of a tree's trunk. During the ring counting activity, we brought logs into the school from the playground. Needless to say, bugs came in with them. The children were really excited about the little visitors. It was a great opportunity to work on language and communication skills. We talked about how they bugs got into the school, made projections on how the spider may have felt being in the school and explored beyond the here and now, discussing where it may be going.

Teacher: Oh wow, wonder how that got in here!

Child 1: the log

(The children start to chase the spider all around)

Teacher: How do you think the spider feels when you chase it around?

Child 2: Scared

Teacher: Why do you think it might be scared?

Child 1: because it is small.

We went out into the forest and measured the tree trunks of various trees, recording our findings. We later used string to demonstrate the different trunks and use comparative language such as big/bigger/biggest, short/shorter/shortest, fat/fatter/fattest to compare and contrast the trunks. They then created their own colorful tree trunks practicing their fine motor skills (cutting, drawing circles and coloring within the lines).

Purpose:

• sensory exploration: tactile, visual, olfactory
• language skill development: superlatives and comparative (big/bigger/biggest, etc), taking on the point of view of others, making predictions/talking beyond the hear and now 
• Math skills: ability to compare and contrast, make inferences based on known knowledge, use of measuring tools

Connection to the Lpfö-98 Revised 2016:

"Children search for knowledge and development through play, social interaction, exploration and creativity, as well as through observation, discussion and reflection.  A theme based approach can broaden and enrich the child's learning"