Pre-K: Penguins/Antarctica

January 26-30, 2026

Dear PreK Families, 

Well, the wintry weather outside surely added to the excitement of our journey to Antarctica this week! It was fun to look out our windows over the high snow drifts and watch the wind blowing the snow around…

This week, we established our “location” by looking at a globe and talking about the North and South Poles on either end of the Earth. Landing on the South Pole (Antarctica) this week, we learned about the many species of penguins (different sizes and coloring) and that Antarctica consists of a land mass that is 98% covered in ice! We created our own South Pole in our dramatic play area, plenty of (soft!) icy area to go on pretend explorations and do some ice fishing.

In Art this week, the children created their own penguins, and created “marbled paintings” using shaving cream and paint and swirling them together. Cardstock was then pressed down on top of that mixture, and squeegied off to create a very cool art piece… We also took a scientific direction in Art this week: the children added salt to big ice blocks to learn of the effect salt has on ice. Then, using tear droppers, we added liquid watercolors to the ice and watched the rivers of color form- icy fun!

We read many books this week, including the Tacky the Penguin series by Helen Lester, Penguin in Peril, by Helen Hancocks, The Little Penguin, by AJ Wood, The Emperor’s Egg, by M. Jenkins, and I Really Want to Win, by P. Simon, a book that celebrates having fun vs. feeling like winning is always essential.

Other Highlights this week:

  • Tripp’s ME Week! We loved learning more about Tripp and his family–and especially enjoyed a visit from ALL the Hughes family on Thursday–how fun to see his older siblings Reese and Wyatt, both former students at WNSH!
  • We had LOTS of movement and sports time in the big room as it was too cold to go outside most days. Also, on the one afternoon temps stayed just above 20 degrees, we were able to play in the fresh snow! It was SOOO fun!
  • Fun, imaginative Math Bags this week!
  • The children (and teachers) LOVED our MAD SCIENCE presentation of Fun With Magnets! Miss Kelly provided such an engaging, hands-on lesson in how they work (and even tied in our South Pole/North Pole unit by explaining how they are magnetic)!
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We look forward to next week, when we will travel to the other side of the Earth to visit the Arctic!

Wishing you all a fun weekend– stay cozy,

Miss Karen, Miss Jan, and Miss Dana