Sea Animals

Preschool was so much fun today!  We continued our study of the letter J by talking about sea animals.  We started by reading, "Fish is Fish" and "Swimmy" both by Leo Leoni and both in big book form.  The kids were enthralled!  I think it's taken us a semester to get into the groove, but they listened to the whole story without one tackling another or crawling away or playing beauty salon :)  They were completely riveted by the stories and they understood the lessons learned, like working together to solve a problem.  YAY!

 After I read those two stories to them I turned on Storylineonline.net and let them watch "The Rainbow Fish".  If you've never watched stories there before you should check it out - very high quality.

 After the story we did a shared writing about the story the rainbow fish.

 Then I turned them loose to do their own writing about it.

 I love how 'M' drew the rainbow fish, she's pointing at it above.  I also loved how 'A' drew a fish and started writing about it below.  She completed "THE" by herself and then asked what to write next.  After talking about it she decided that fish should come next and with prompting wrote the "FI".  These kids are learning such great things!

 I love this picture of 'C' with 'I' and 'M' from today.  He snuggled in there and said, "You guys are my best girlfriends." Grin.

 I have the kids split into two reading groups, today we worked on tracing the letters and identifying their names and sounds with one group...

 ...and reading our J book with the other group.  Can I just say that I am THRILLED with the SMARTBoard?  We had some great clarifying moments today in our reading groups and I think the use of the board has helped.  It's not easy to take the pages of our printable books (just 2x3 inches in size) and manipulate them, but toss it up full size on a 77inch screen and write and color the heck out of it and BAM! instant learning, plus you can erase all the writing with a single click and start over or take it in a different direction.  We had some very happy times today in our reading groups :)

 Art today was a free explore with crayons and watercolors.  They caught onto me really quick from a few weeks ago when we had "Magic Letters/Words" that appeared when they painted their papers.  'T' and 'A' grabbed the white crayons first off to create their own magic letters/words before they started painting, then the others caught on.  I also love doing art right after snack.  It is so open ended that kids that are taking their time with snack can finish as they like and others can move right on.

 'M' drew and painted me a picture of my family.  It is so adorable!

 For math we pulled up a digital photograph dice and graphed the pictures that we "rolled".  I used the printable pack from 1+1+1=1 to do this game.

 We started our formal music curriculum today by learning about how music makes us feel.  I used the "How Do I Feel Today" chart and cut them apart so each child had a full set.  We played different music, picked the feeling that matched us individually and then danced to it in that manner.

 I absolutely love what I do and I appreciate the families who send their adorable children my way for a little bit of learning and a lot of fun.  Thanks for playing, everyone!

P.S. Did I mention preschool was so much fun today?