Thursday, November 29, 2012

Animals in Winter - Tot School Thursday

EMan and Lil'GalB loved the warm winter den made from chairs and a big blanket.
 Lil'GuyJ dropped his bowl on the floor during snack and was determined to pick up all the corn that fell out.  What a great helper!
 We're still learning how to use an open cup in tot school.  You can see a few wet kids in this picture :)  When it's warm enough to play outside again we'll get a lot of water practice.
 To learn about being cold we played with ice and the aquadoodle mat.
 Learning the letter P!
 Playing with the Animals in Winter Tot Pack.  We were tracing the lines with our fingers.
 Ice is cold!
 Lil'GalP was having fun reading the cards on the rocking chair.

 Lil'GalB was "helping" Lil'GuyD go upstairs at the end of the day.  It was so cute!
 Building a warm winter den out of blocks.

Animals in Winter - Wednesday Preschool

We continued working on the letter P in preschool on Wednesday.
 We also set up a winter den with chairs and blankets.
 We are working on holding our writing instruments correctly and forming our letters.

 We play a game called guess my secret rule.  One person makes a set of 4 objects.  3 of them have to have an attribute that is the same, and the 4th one doesn't fit the rule.  The other person has to guess which one doesn't match.  We're getting better at making sets that follow these guidelines.  You can play this game at home with silverware or coins or other objects.  (3 spoons, 1 fork - What doesn't belong? Why?  ALWAYS ask why.)
 Practicing with our rhythm sticks.
 The preschool B schedule seems to be nearly the same every day :) I guess they like that order.
 Reading about gingerbread houses, towns and people.
 Reading about plants that eat bugs or are poisonous to people.
 Playing sight word bingo.
 Sorting crayons according to color to make gingerbread crayons.
 Watching the crayons melt in the oven into gingerbread shapes.  We'll get to play with them next week!

Tuesday, November 27, 2012

Animals in Winter - Tot School Tuesday

Our Animals in Winter Tot Pack is so much fun!  I love the page where you can put all the animals in their correct home for winter time.
 We built a den out of chairs and a blanket.
 We also tried on different types of warm winter clothing.



 Practicing the letter P.
 Acting out "The Mitten" with pictures from Jan Brett.


Preschool Monday - Play Ball

On Monday we learned the letter P and the sight word "ball".
 We played a fun word sorting game that helped us identify that words have individual meanings and uses and that we put them together for specific purposes.  This is a precursor to learning about syllables
 We circled all the words in our sentence strips.
 P the pelican pops popcorn!

 In preschool B we worked on a few new sight words (red, said, me, make, funny) and the word family -ill and -all.

 We explored the idea of imagination with puppets.
 Coloring our sight word bingo mats.
 Art for the day was water color painting.

Friday, November 23, 2012

Thanksgiving - Tuesday Tot School

On Tuesday in tot school we learned all about Thanksgiving with a focus on what we are thankful for.  We started the day playing with turkey basters to transfer water from one bowl to another.



The loved playing with the Thanksgiving Tot Pack and exploring all the different types of food.

We played with scissors and had scissor practice on scraps of paper.







Super cute Thanksgiving turkey handprints!
Free painting time.
After painting we used turkey and leaf stickers to decorate our papers.
We started playing the turkey grid game in tot school.  It's helpful to make dice that have dots representing only the numbers 1-3 for starters.  Find a homemade dice tutorial here.
Roll the dice and count how many spots are on side that landed on top.  Give your child that many counters.  Counters can be poker chips, pennies, etc.  If your child is starting to learn to count objects work with them to count out that many counters.
Then cover each turkey with one counter.  When all 10 turkeys are covered you are a winner!  If you play with 2 people each person has their own turkey page.  You do not play against each other, but rather you play until you cover all 10, dump off the counters and start again.