Dr. Seuss - Wednesday Preschool

I love Dr. Seuss week!  We always have so much fun.  We started at the kitchen table coloring our Cat in the Hat hats.  While everyone worked on their coloring I Read "The Cat in the Hat".  It's always fun to see the kids reactions.  Most say something along the lines of, "We have that book at home." I think it just shows me how much of a magical place preschool is in their minds. 

 Today was our last day working on "Hot Cross Buns" on the piano.  We've been working all month and the kids have all grown so much in their understanding of music.  There is no more random banging (thank goodness!).  They may not have mastered the song, but they are very intentionally exploring patterns in music.

 I had to grab a few photos of the crowd heading downstairs.  They all loved their hats so much that taking them off wasn't an option. 

 We had one of the best reading lessons ever.  I think it was one of the best because everyone so very actively engaged and following along.  We've been talking about all the things good readers do and now understand that we have to do 4 things at the same time.  That's a lot!  We look at the letters with our eyes, we point at the letters, we make the letter sounds with our mouth and we listen to the sounds with our ears.  Wow!

 After our reading practice I read "Green Eggs and Ham" and told them that there was a surprise snack waiting for them upstairs...

 After snack time I read the book "Bartholomew and the Oobleck".  They just couldn't believe all the crazy things that happened in the story.  Time for our second surprise... we got to be magicians and mix our own batch of Oobleck.  It became very hands on (and sticky at that) for me so I only have the before and after pictures. Before...

 After...

 When kids were done playing with the oobleck I had some coloring pages available to them.

 We headed downstairs to explore http://www.seussville.com/

 We also read "Hop on Pop" together and practiced naming the shapes we've been learning about all month.

 At the end of the day we were able to have some free reading time to explore all the Dr. Seuss books.

In preschool B we dove right into the 100 chart (I can't believe how much they are enjoying the activities with it!).

 We also played on the SmartBoard to review Long U sounds.

 I can't believe this is the only picture I have of this activity because it looks at first glance that CJ is grumpy and no one else is on task.  Neither of those first thoughts are true :) We were coloring all the vowels we could find in our "Dune Buggy" book.

 There were a few unfinished projects from art on Monday that we got to finish up today.

 Their homework tonight is a long/short u picture sort.  This one is much trickier than the others.  Please help them do it often (daily if possible).

 Cucumbers and Sweet Potato Chips for snack time.

 We started the first introduction of counting by tens today.  We can't quite count to 100 without the chart yet but I think that the pattern of counting by tens helps facilitate recognizing the pattern.  We'll keep working on this for a while and move onto our March math curriculum when we're ready, I'll keep you posted.

 We spent a good portion of the end of the day reading from our library of encyclopedias.  I think their personal encyclopedias have gotten a little dull so we'll work from our library at school for a while.  You can keep their personal encyclopedias at home until further notice. Do continue to encourage them to read the parts of the text that they can as you read through them together.