Seaside Ranchos Preschool

December brings many beautiful traditions and holidays from all over the world. The Sea Stars kicked off our month of multicultural holiday curriculum with these Kwanzaa collages! Students had two stations—one for scissor work and another for final collaging. The scissor table took representative colorful paper strips and clipped them into small pieces. Then, students arranged their paper bits like a mosaic on their black paper bases at the collage tables. Getting to this stage of finemotor control to use scissors should be a time for celebration in and of itself! All the rolling, pinching, pressing, balling, cupping, threading, tracing, dotting, and finger isolation workouts we’ve done until now are very much on display in this art. What a lovely process art piece! 💚🖤♥️✂️

🦃 Our Goldfish Class Has Grit! 🦃 This colorful activity helps little hands, ready for action, practice precision, hand-eye coordination, and concentration — all while having fun. Using tongs strengthens the same small muscles needed for writing, self-feeding, and dressing skills. It also encourages patience, problem-solving, and turn-taking when shared with friends. All good things! Plus, look at how proud they are when they hold up their full bottle! 💪🏽

Puddle jumping and wet sand castle building! Come play! We’ve got room under our umbrella -ella -ella -ey -ey -ey! ☔️ 🌧️ 🥾

Ms. Araceli’s Sea Stars made Pumpkin Soup! We first read the whimsical story Pumpkin Soup by Helen Cooper. Students added pumpkins, seeds, gourds, and a salted water broth to our tuff tray which made the perfect base to mix up, measure, strain, scoop, and pour.

This hands-on activity helped us practice teamwork, sequencing, fine-motor skills, sensory exploration, and language development as we talked about the steps of the “recipe” and everyone’s role.

🎉 Hold on tight! Because we’re on to something good! 🎉 Director Melanie is joining our amazing staff to steer our little school with the big heart toward new horizons. She has decades of experience under her belt in ECE, leadership, and curriculum development and design and is eager to get in and get to work on making our school that much better. She’s a forever learner and has the vision. Let’s do this thing! Welcome, Director Melanie! 🍎 😊 🎉

October curriculum so full of magic it was spoooooooky! 👻🎃👁️🕷️

BOO! Miss Jill’s class has their 👀’s on you!

It’s a MONSTER MASH UP over here! We’ve been brewing up some spooky art and getting so much outside play time it’s scary! The Tadpole class made finger paint monsters using cut outs and glitter AND a bubbling cauldron using paint, bubbles, and paper towel rolls. The paint bubbles popped on the page! Our Goldfish joined in on the outdoor, crisp fall morning playtime 👻 🎃 🛝