The Five Senses begin with hearing

Our first full week back to school and everyone is happily settled in. This week we have started learning about the five senses, beginning with hearing and sound. The children had a fun time making, singing about and listening to popcorn popping. We sang the Popcorn song: 

You put the oil in the pot and you let it get hot
You put the popcorn in and you start to grin.
Sizzle, sizzle, Sizzle, sizzle, Sizzle, sizzle,
Sizzle, sizzle, Sizzle, sizzle, POP!        

Everyone loved listening to the sounds of the popcorn as it popped and as it overflowed from the air popper into the big bowl. It was just as much fun to hear how it crunched when they ate it!

As the week progressed, we learned about the structure of our ears and how there are three parts, the outer ear, middle ear and inner  ear which work together to allow us to hear sounds. The outer ear collects sounds, the middle ear changes the sounds to vibrations using your eardrums and the inner ear tells our brain what we hear.

We played a sleeping, wake up and listening game where after you "wake" you move about the room making sounds like an elephant, monkey, bird and so on.

During Ms. Marybeth’s music and movement class they learned about counting musical beats. We discovered some friend’s names had one beat and some had as many as three beats. We clapped along to louder and softer beats of music, too.

We have also spent some time during our preschool and pre-k curriculum groups learning about sounds. The preschoolers played the game “Can you guess what’s in the box?" The children took turns shaking a mystery box with a surprise item inside: one had pom-poms, one had wooden beads and one had popcorn kernels. They also listened to the rain stick and made some guesses about what they heard including popcorn, marbles and rain. 

The pre-k children discussed the sounds that an elephant makes with his truck ("PPPFFFF") and his feet ("thud") and then we all drew a picture of and named our own elephant. We also each had our own fun instrument to play in our school band and sang the song B I N G O. It was so much fun, especially when we did not say any letters and just used taps, 2 slow taps, and then 3 fast taps with our instruments! During the week some friend decorated the tapping sticks.

The teachers continued to work with the kids on their portfolios and spending some quality time getting to know your child.

We have some exciting plans for next week as we continue learning about our five senses. On to smell and taste week!

Upcoming Dates and Reminders:

October 3: October tuition is due
October 5: Curriculum Night - check your Evite for more details and to RSVP!
October 10: SEE closed in observance of Columbus Day
TBA: October's monthly gathering
TBA: Halloween celebration
November 1: November tuition is due
November 11: SEE closed in observance of Veteran's Day
November 23: SEE closes at 3:00pm
November 24-25: SEE closed in observance of Thanksgiving

Pictures from the week:

                   Mr. Potato Head can hear really well with four ears.

Listening to popcorn pop, hit the big bowl and crunch as we ate it!

Our ears have three parts

Tapping to the song B I N G O

Ms. Pauline