Theme – Fall

fall-leaves-clip-art-117913Fall Is Here !

September Themes–COLORS, TRANSPORTATION

October Themes–APPLES, LEAVES, PUMPKINS

Communication: During the fall months, our Pre-K themes will focus on transportation, fire safety, apples, leaves and pumpkins. Mrs. Schmidt will be focusing on many new vocabulary words. Here are some you can incorporate into your home conversations: trains, planes, boats, cars, helicopters, trucks; apples, leaves, trees, branches, stems; colors- red, yellow, orange, green. We will be learning concepts such as round, circle, in and out, through. Some of our books from this theme unit are: “I Love Trains”, “Freight Train”, “At The Fire Station”, Pumpkin House”. Please share these ideas, words and concepts with your children at home.

Gross Motor:  We worked on our large motor skills in our transportation unit by riding our scooter board “cars” forward and backward.  We made a train with our chairs and filled up the “caboose” by passing balls of varying colors, sizes, and textures over our heads and under our legs.  Then we walked around the room holding a rope to keep us together like a train.  As fall progresses we will walk to the “apple orchard” and reach high on our tiptoes to pick the apples and then squat down low to put them in our basket.  We will also roll light and heavy “pumpkins” home from our pretend pumpkin patch.

Visual Motor: In September our fine and visual-motor skills focused on transportation and fire safety with lots of emphasis on drawing, coloring and cutting. Some of my friends worked on drawing the wheels for or the windows for cars, buses and trucks. Some students practiced drawing the entire car or truck. We worked on ink stamping, cutting, strengthening our grasps and bilateral fine motor coordination and spatial organization skills for opening containers, constructing projects and fasteners for our jackets, which we will soooooon be wearing! In October our focus changed to apples, leaves, squirrels and pumpkins. We have been working on incorporating our ability to draw circles, squares and diagonals to create representational drawings related to the above. We have been working on holding the spoon correctly to scoop apples into the basket, picking apples, leaves and acorns with tongs to develop and strengthen our grasps.

Pre-Readiness: During the Fall, we focus on the following basic skills while we’re differentiating instruction based on individual strengths and opportunities needed for growth: learning school and classroom routines (ie. lining up, participating in fire drills, sitting in circle for whole group activities, etc) matching, sorting, recognizing, and naming colors and shapes demonstrating understanding and use of positional, temporal, quantitative, and qualitative concept words (ie. top/bottom, first/last, more/less, soft/hard developing the ability to listen and follow direction.

Social and Play: Well developed social emotional skills are critical for future success in all areas of learning. We begin to help facilitate the development of these skills as follows: improve peer interaction skills (ie. sharing, treating each other with respect, taking turns while playing and in conversation, compromising and negotiation) develop problem solving skills improve independence in self-help skills teaching school functioning skills (ie. comply with teacher directives, using appropriate language, making smooth transitions between activities, coping with spontaneous changes in routines, and helping to clean up toys and materials)

Books and Songs: Reading “Leaves” You Smiling Favorite Fall Books!

  • Ten Red Apples by Pat Hutchins
  • Ten Apples Up on Top by Dr. Seuss
  • The Apple Pie Tree by Zoe Hall
  • A Day at the Apple Orchard by Faulkner & Krawesky
  • Apples and Pumpkins by Anne Rockwell
  • Fall Leaves Fall! by Zoe Hall
  • Red Leaf, Yellow Leaf by Lois Ehlert
  • Leaf Man by Lois Ehlert
  • Fresh Fall Leaves by Betsy Franco
  • When the Leaf Blew In by Steve Metzger
  • From Seed to Pumpkin by Wendy Pfeffer
  • It’s Pumpkin Time! by Zoe Hall
  • Pumpkin Pumpkin by Jeanne Titherington
  • Big Pumpkin by Erica Silverman.

Favorite Fall Songs!

A-P-P-L-E Song (to the tune of Bingo): There is a fruit I like to eat and apple is its name-o. A-P-P-L-E (3X) And apple is its name-o.

Way Up High in an Apple Tree: Way up high in an apple tree, 5 red apples smiled down at me, I shook that tree as hard as I could’ Then down fell 1 apple…mmm…it was good! (repeat with 4,3,2,1,0)

All The Leaves Are Falling Down: All the leaves are falling down, falling down, falling down. All the leaves are falling down…red, yellow, orange, and brown.

The Leaves are Falling Softly Down: The leaves are falling softly down. They make a carpet on the ground. Then SWISH…the wind comes whirling by, And sends them dancing to the sky…

5 Little Pumpkins: 5 little pumpkins sitting on a gate… The first one said, “Oh my! It’s getting late.” The second one said, “There are witches (or clouds) in the air!” The third one said, “But we don’t care.” The fourth one said, “Let’s run and run and run!” And the fifth one said, “We’re ready for some fun!” “OOO” went the wind and OUT went the light. And the five little pumpkins rolled out of sight.