Pizza, pizza!

Making something from scratch can help you understand each step a little bit better.  That's exactly what we've been doing in language experience over the last few weeks.  One week, we read a book in class about the little red hen who made a pizza.  As you can imagine, the little red hen wanted help with along the way, but no one was available to help her.  

Luckily, I had a lot of help!  While the preschoolers told me that they usually got pizza from the pizza delivery man, they were happy to volunteer their expertise when making their own personal pizza.  First, we made the dough & tried to stretch it out.  

 

 

We even attempted to throw the dough up in the air...but I think that we might need a little bit more practice with that step.  :)  Then we added the pizza sauce and our very own pile of mozzarella cheese!  The best part was watching it bake in the HOT oven.  While some of the preschoolers were skeptical of the homemade pizzas, some of them ate it all up...without any help.  :)  YUMMY!

The Forest

Our new thematic unit has begun!  Over the next few weeks, we will be learning all about bears, the season of fall & the forest.  While we are playing in the forest, we will meet some other animals who live there, too.

We will explore a bear's habitat, their physical characteristics as well as what they bears like to eat and do during the day and at night.  We will discuss what bears do in the fall as well as the fact that they hibernate during the winter months.  Lastly, we will be using our dramatic play skills to cooperate with our friends and carry out some real & pretend scenarios with our animals.

For example, last week we pretended to have a teddy bear picnic.  We made sure to bring our picnic blanket, our picnic basket & a lot of goodies to eat!  We even listened to a song about a teddy bear picnic.  This week, we will be going on a bear hunt because "We're not scared!"

In the end, our main goal is to help the preschoolers to learn something new and give them a reason to talk to their friends.  We want them to have so much fun learning language that they don't even realize it's actually a tough job.