Blog
Día del Amor y la Amistad
We celebrated our friendships and love on Valentine’s Day, Día del amor y la amistad!
The children made beautiful friendship cards for their classmates and teachers. At school, we sat in a circle and the children one by one exchanged their cards and gave them to their friends. We really enjoyed celebrating our friendships and appreciations for each other!
February/Febrero
In February we learned all about shapes:
círculorectángulo
triángulo
estrella
óvalo
rombo
cuadrado
corazón
and many more.
We talked about how many sides and angles shapes have. We traced some shapes and we colored in shapes on paper. We used puzzles and blocks to repeat the names of the shapes in Spanish. The children also enjoyed reading about shapes and looking for shapes in our classroom. We also sang a song about círculo, rectángulo, triángulo, cuadrado.
January/Enero
In January we learned the Spanish names of pieces of clothing we wear/ropa que nos ponemos. We talked about different clothing we wear in the summer and clothing we wear in the winter. In summer we wear: pantaloncillos, falda, vestido, playera, traje de baño, pulsera, anillo, collar, zapatos, sandalias, chanclas. In winter we wear: pantalones, blusa, camisa, chaqueta, calcetines, calzones, medias, zapatos, botas.
We did a lot of arts and crafts activities related to our unit of study this month: we decorated paper cut-outs of vestidos with stickers, we painted wooden mitones with paint, we glued pictures of ropa onto paper divided into summer and winter clothes.
In January we played bingo and memory games with our teachers, read books, did puzzles, played with duplos and outside. We also very much enjoyed playing with magnetic tiles that two classmates gifted to our class. Muchas gracias!
Our Winter Creations
Learning about different types of clothing with creative projects!
December/Diciembre
In the month of December we talked about different holidays people celebrate around the world like Kwanzaa, Diwali, Hanukkah, Christmas, end of the calendar year traditions, festival of lights and others. For Spanish vocabulary we learned about candles, lights, pine trees, wreaths, ornaments, Santa Claus, deer, gifts, family, celebrating, food, etc. We also talked about the season of winter, estación de invierno. We talked about colder weather, rain, ice, snow, snow flakes, and more.
Most days the weather was still nice here, so we got to go outside and enjoy the toys in our backyard. We got a new toy donated where children can ride the unicorn down a path and they love it! We listened to and sang many different songs about holidays, winter and the season. We performed and sang some of our songs at our Colores community winter potluck lunch. It was so nice to see parents, siblings, grandparents and families!
Our first day back to school will be Tuesday, January 9th, 2024!
Fall/Otoño
In November we talked all about the season of fall or otoño that has started. After the summer ends in fall the temperature gets colder, leaves fall, we start wearing pants, jackets, hats, gloves. We learned a poem about the leaves or hojas:
En otoño las hojitas de los árboles se caen, llega el viento las levanta y empiezan a cantar, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la… bailar, la, la .. correr, la, la… dormir, la, la….
We also talked about Thanksgiving or Día de acción de gracias. We learned about different traditions of different families and talked about how families celebrate the holiday and what different foods families eat that day: pavo, papas, pan, judías verdes, vegetales, ensalada, pay y más. The children also enjoyed making turkeys with stickers and wearing their turkey glasses.
Our Fall Creations
See what creative projects the kids have been up to!
Halloween/Día de las brujas
To celebrate the holiday Colores students, siblings, parents, grandparents, families got together one evening. We dressed up, played together, visited, sang songs and danced. We also enjoyed dinner together.
On Halloween day the teachers prepared a breakfast of pancakes, fruit and juice for the children. We had a great time spending time together and celebrating!
La Familia
This month of October we learned about family/la familia and vocabulary related to the different people that make up the diversity of families that exist. Some of the words we learned were mamá, papá, hija, hijo, hermana, hermano, yo, bebé, abuela, abuelo, tía, tío, prima, primo. The children really enjoyed playing with figurines of family members. They also really liked making a book where we glued paper cutouts of members of families.
We sang many songs related to families and Halloween. Some of the vocabulary we talked about related to Halloween is Día de las brujas, Día de los muertos, esqueleto, espantapájaros, calavera, calabaza, araña, gato, fantasma, disfraz. The children made all kinds of arts and crafts related to our vocabulary of Halloween or Día de las brujas. Read all about our parties where we celebrated Halloween in our next blog post!
All About Ourselves
We had an awesome first month of school! We learned our back to school routines very well. During the month of September we learned all about ourselves: our parts of the body, face, expressions, emotions, partes del cuerpo, cara, expresiones, emociones, etc.
We sang a song called Mi carita redondita and another one called Cabeza, hombros, rodillas, pies, rodillas, pies. The children like singing our songs and following along by touching parts of their body or face.
We did several art projects related to the human body by gluing different kinds of paper or coloring with different media. We also started talking about las vocales A/a y E/e. We repeated names and words that start with A and E.
We also got to play outside a lot. The children really enjoyed that.
Back to School Open House
You are invited to a Back to School Open House for families to say hi, meet the teachers, ask questions and drop off any supplies or paperwork you have ready.
What: Back to School Open House
Who: students, siblings, families, parents, teachers
When: Thursday, August 31st, 10 am to noon
Where: Colores Preschool classrooms and backyard
This is a come and go event: come by anytime between 10 am and noon. Come to meet, visit and play!
Transportation and Vehicles / Transportes y vehículos
In May we learned all about transportes y vehículos or transportation and vehicles. The children really enjoyed this unit of study because we imagined that we were riding on a car/carro, a train/tren, a motorcycle/motocicleta, a bycicle/bicicleta, a boat/bote, a plane/avión, a helicopter/helicóptero and many more. We pretended to be vehicles and ran around our classroom making their noises. We also sang songs about vehicles. We played with toy cars, trains, planes, helicopters, boats, etc.
We learned a song to sing to our moms on their special day, Mothers’ Day. We performed our song for our moms, dads, siblings, families, our whole community. Then we chatted, enjoyed popsicles and celebrated the end of a successful school year!
See you all back at school on Tuesday, September 5th, our first day of school! We still have a few spots available for new friends to enroll.
Animales/Animals
In April our unit of study was animals/animales. We talked a lot about Spanish vocabulary related to animales. We repeated the names of animales in Spanish with flashcards, we put stickers on sticker pages and repeated the names of animals, we glued pictures of animals onto paper, we used animal puzzles to learn about animals, we colored coloring pages of animals, we pretended to be animales, we sang a song about different animals and more… The children really enjoyed the songs, the stickers, the coloring, the blocks, the pretending, the toys and more… We had a fun party with parents and students to get together for our spring community night!
Plants and Spring / Plantas y Primavera
In March we learned about what happens in spring/primavera and how plants/plantas develop and grow. We pretended to be seeds/semillas of flowers/flores, trees/árboles or plants/plantas by making ourselves into balls sitting on the floor. Then as our pretend plants grew, we slowly stood up while learning and repeating Spanish vocabulary for roots/raices, stem/tallo, leaf/hoja, flower/flor, etc. When we stood up tall our pretend plants or trees were fully developed. We also made several art projects about plants and trees. We glued collages of pictures, we colored images of trees, we sculpted plants, flowers and trees out of playdough.
We also talked about and made art projects related to Easter. The children enjoyed playing with and learning from the puzzles, blocks and books in our classrooms this month.
“We love Colores and will be recommending it to our friends with little ones. Thank you for such a wonderful introduction to school for our daughter! It has been perfect for our family this year.”
“Our daughter started at Colores when she was 2 1/2 years old, and it was her first school experience. She absolutely loved it from the start. We were anticipating some tears or at least some hesitation in the first couple of weeks, but she was completely comfortable with going to school at Colores right away despite coming from an English-speaking household. I put a lot of the credit on Reka and Carmen’s warm and calm demeanors. It seems like they can handle any classroom situation with ease which allows the kids to fully enjoy their day. Our daughter loves Reka and Carmen and loves all the fun art projects she gets to do. There is no question in our minds that our younger daughter will be attending Colores when she’s old enough. We wouldn’t send our kids anywhere else for preschool.”