Opera and Talents - Monday Preschool

Monday preschool was all about Opera and Talents as we talked about the letter O (O the Ostrich sings Opera).  We made a list of all the talents that we have and they were so cute.  The list included: playing, playing outside, opening cans with a can opener, giving hugs, running, painting, and helping mom. 

 We've mastered the reading group switch with the use of these awesome blue chairs that I found at Target about 8 years ago.  I originally bought at least 8 for my 2nd grade classroom at the time, but over the years it's been whittled down to 4 remaining in tact.  Just the right amount for our preschool class.

 When a good reader sees a letter they make the sound of that letter.  We're working on making the sound of letter O so we can master the word "Mom" on Wednesday.

 We played the letter O game on Starfall.com on the iPad and iPod while taking turns practicing our letter sounds one-on-one with Miss Amanda.

 I love this picture of CP singing opera.  We were listening to Carmen: "L'amour Est un Oiseau Rebelle" (Havanaise) which happens to be my favorite opera and one of the handful that I've actually been too. It's so fun to introduce kids to snippets of information and/or culture like this.  They all loved dancing around and singing along.

 We painted with corn syrup and food coloring to make shiny O the Ostrich pictures from the Amazing Action Alphabet.  We'll send them home on Wednesday since they take quite a bit of time to dry.

 Our music lessons for January-May will be taking what we've already learned (pitch, volume, rhythm, etc.) and applying it to the piano.  The first lesson was that there is a pattern of black keys (2, 3, 2, 3, 2, 3).  Next up we'll start applying patterns to the piano, hopefully by the end of May many kids will be able to pick out a simple tune.

 We've been working on graphing and will finish that unit on Wednesday.  Next up: Patterns.

 Preschool B had a very important reading lesson today about Vowels.  We learned that there are five vowels (a, e, i, o, u) and that they are special for a few different reasons.  Vowels are the only sounds that don't have a constriction or closure of the mouth and there is no build up of air.  Vowels are produced with an open vocal tract.  Vowels also have two sounds, a short sound (like "a" in "pan") and a long sound (like "a" in "pane").  We haven't learned the reasoning behind long vowels yet, but we're headed there at the end of the month.

 Today's focus was short a.  We read "Zac the Rat" from Starfall.com and everyone colored the vowels in every letter.  Did you know there aren't any words without a vowel?

 Watching the letter A vowel movie from Have Fun Teaching.  They have clips of most videos on YouTube.

 We're continuing our focus on numerals 1-9 and the quantities they represent.

 We also got to play on the piano.

 Art is very consistent these days.  Since preschool B kids get to pick their materials they've been picking colored paper, crayons, scissors and glue - almost every day :) I guess that's better than glitter every day, but don't remind them that that's an option :)