Bucket Filling Reading Friends

What an awesome day of preschool we had!  It was absolutely amazing!  We started our day off reading "How Full is Your Bucket? for Kids".  I LOVED reading this with our class.  We had great discussions about how we can't see our bucket or other's buckets but we can feel them with our emotions.  It's similar to not being able to see air, but when you blow on your hand you can feel it.  We added the words "Bucket Fillers" and "Friends" to our "Who We Are" chart hanging on the wall.  As we continue to broaden the language we can use to describe ourselves we keep adding to the chart.

 Next we had a fantastic lesson about blending sounds.  Many of the kids know all of their letter names and sounds and we are all ready to master the blending aspect of putting words together.  We worked through the first few books of the Amazing Action Alphabet together.  These are a great tool for beginning readers.  Even the kids who can read most of the words almost instantly are able to learn and practice the act of blending sounds into words.

We really focused on blending the first sound into the second one.  Another way to phrase that is to "not stop the first sound until your mouth is making the second sound."  We spent many a moment laughing hysterically at Miss Amanda's impression of a robot reading.  Just in case you were wondering, teaching a robot to read is REALLY HARD!  However, teaching a PERSON to read when they can blend one sound into the next is super easy! Note to parents: YES, it will still take A LOT of time for your new reader to be fluently reading chapter books.  However, celebrate the blending today and continue working on it!

I put together a little video of how I want the kids to read their Amazing Action Alphabet books from the Baggy Book.  Please be kind - it's not a professional movie.  (See this type of lesson in action from last year here.)  It's amazing how using the strategy of blending each word slowly, then saying it quickly, then rereading the whole sentence fluently sets kids up for successful reading strategies in the future.

Mid reading lesson we got our wiggles out by "Dancing the Robots out of us" to some robot music and sharing about our teddy bears and their names with our classroom buddies.  The teddy bear name thing connects to the Letter B book from the Amazing Action Alphabet.  We went through all of these readers last year with these kids as 3 year olds and this year we're  reviewing them in quite a speedy manner.

 After our incredibly successful reading lesson we only had 15 minutes of our class time left together so we spent it enjoying each other's company and playing with blocks and trucks.  It was amazing to watch these kids light up when they blended the sounds together and successfully read a word.  I loved it!

Preschool 9-3-2015

We had a great second day of preschool B today.  We started off the same and kept the activities very similar to day one to focus on the routine and expectations in the classroom.  After playing on the SmartBoard we reviewed our class expectations and then read a book called "The Way I Act".  I LOVE this book because it highlights good qualities in a high quality poem like format.  It helped us talk about the type of people we want to be.  Then we reviewed what centers was supposed to look like and got to work.

 During centers I met with the small guided reading groups.  We had so much fun.  We were learning about blending letters for the first time, blending the beginning into the middle sound, and were practicing our early readers with sight words and CVC phonics.

 After we cleaned up (which they did phenomenally well) we read a book about drawing pictures and writing words to match.  We talked again about how we draw in the empty space and write on the lines.  We discussed the lines and how we use them with our letters.  We also had a mini lesson about how to draw people.  We talked about using circles for the head, eyes and body and using lines for the mouth, arms and legs.  Some kids drew a person for the very first time today and it was adorable!

 After writing we got to play some math games.  We warmed up with our staircases game and then moved to building towers.  They loved building towers and the math language that came out of it was amazing.  I love that I caught the two girls comparing their towers of 6 to make sure they were the same length.  They cooperatively worked on building all the towers they could on their sheet until they ran out of blocks.  Then they started again.  I love how great they worked together!  The environment in our classroom is wonderful, there is so much compassion and desire to learn.  Keep up the great work!

Preschool Day 1

What a fantastic first day of preschool B 2015!  We hit the ground running talking about who we are from our inquiry block.  We shared our favorite colors and started a list of words to describe ourselves.  So far we have "Learners" and "Readers" on the list.  A great start!  We spent some time talking about expectations after we had our "Who We Are" list started.  We talked about how expectations are rules and we shared ideas about why they are important.  We came up with the following reasons for having expectations: *So we can learn *So we can stay safe *So we can all be happy.  What a great list.  Next came our class expectations or rules.  We decided on the following: *Treat things nicely *Treat people nicely.  Using this language we were able to go throughout our day discussing how to treat things and people nicely within the task we were set out to do.  

The first task at hand was learning about centers.  We've never really done "Centers" before in preschool.  I've always had activities for kids to do as I work with small reading groups.  This year I'm making them into more formal centers where we set a timer and rotate from activity to activity.  They did great at picking up the routine.  We went fishing for letters and sang the song about their name and sound when we caught a letter.  We played puzzles and we worked in small reading groups.

 We jumped right into what good readers do (use their eyes to look at letters, point at letters, say the letter sounds, and listen to letters).  We are working on reading books, blending letters into words, and combining sight words and simple phonics within stories.  After our reading and centers time we did a "Jumping Contest" where I play a song and the kids can jump around the room without touching or talking and get their wiggles out. The sofa turned out to be a great centerpiece for a "jumping race track" around the room and when the song was done they were all lined up!

 Next we moved into writing.  We talked about the way to hold a pencil, that we don't turn pages since we only work on one page per day, we draw pictures on the top empty space and letters/words on the lines below.  We also started talking about the way to form letters.  We talked about what lines are on writing paper (sky line, airplane line, baseline, worm line).  We talked about how letters start at the #2 position on the clock and work their way around (not all of them, but we worked on letter a today).  Then we drew and wrote.  It is always so fun to see from the first day of school to the last week of school how much they grow during this 4 year old year.  I love it!

At the end of the day we learned how to play "Staircases".  It's a number sense game that I love.  We roll the dice and then make a step with that many blocks.  We keep rolling the dice until we have steps 1-6 to make a staircase.  If the roll is a number we already have we simply roll again.

With all these great activities the kids went home already reading and playing math games.  Try to read and play at home so we can keep the momentum going and build upon these concepts on Thursday.  Happy learning!

Zoo and Guided Reading

This morning we had so much fun learning the letter Z with our Zoo theme.  We had the blow up zoo animals and the animal masks out for some run play.  We read a book called ZooBorns that was super cute, and there were plenty of words that we could read.  Our Amazing Action Alphabet mini book for the letter Z was a fun one to read about a monkey named Liz.

 We practiced our handwriting in our Amazing Action Alphabet handwriting book and even did stamps of zoo animals for art time.  Today we learned the numeral 9 and worked on all the numerals by having our zoo animals jump on the mats the correct number of times.

This afternoon we had an AMAZING guided reading lesson with the whole group based on a book about zoo animals.  We talked about more reading strategies and what we can do when the words are tricky.  We discussed punctuation and practiced using periods, question marks and exclamation marks.  Then we read our books to ourselves utilizing the strategies as we got stuck.  We also worked on a decodable reader and our Ready2Read phonics and sight words sets.  All the kids were super on task and so much fun to read with today that we didn't get to math.  We did, however get writing and art into our reading lessons, so I call it a win!  Great work kiddos!

Preschool 3/25

It was a surprise to have snow this morning!  What a fun way to talk about weather.  I had planned on going out in the rain but since it was awful cold snow instead we stayed inside.  We talked about the different types of weather and how it changes from day to day.  We talked about how weather changes with the moving air which can be hot or cold.  We practiced our letter W beginning reader and drew pictures of our favorite weather.  We even started exploring the idea of writing words to match our pictures in our journals.  We learned about quarters today to finish out our unit about money and had a great time practicing our songs in music. 

This afternoon we started off with puzzles and worked through a few last Ready2Read pages and our guided reading groups.  Many of the kids are ready to start a new unit on Monday.  Yay!  We're currently reading the "Now I'm Reading" series of books that utilize short vowel words so we can be successful in reading.  We also continued our discussion of place value and counted to 100.  I had each child write their numbers as high as they could to assess where any misconceptions were. 

Play Ball and Ocean Animals

In preschool this morning we introduced the letter P with a "Play Ball!" theme.  We had tons of fun playing with different types of sports balls and talking about our favorite sport to play.  We used the foot print words under contact paper to play our reading ball game.  Everyone got a ball at the beginning, read the letter or word of each step they would step on and then shot a basket at the end.  They seemed to love it.  We talked about P the Pelican popping popcorn from the Amazing Action Alphabet and glued popcorn onto the activity page. 

 Each child got a couple baseball reading wheels today.  Check their binder for them.  We spin the wheel and say the letter name/sound or read the word.  The sight word "ball" was a new sight word today that needs to be memorized.  We continued our "Guess My Secret Rule" game in math.  Some of the kids were able to make their own sets without prompting and were allowed to go play the game as a group.  The rest of the group made sets with me following a step by step instruction.  "Take 3 blocks that are the same." (Interestingly difficult for them).  "Take 1 block that is different from the 3 you already had." (Relatively easy).  "Which block is different in your set?" (Difficult). "Why" (even more difficult).  PLEASE play this game at home to help us move forward in class!

This afternoon we had some fantastic reading lessons.  We practiced our nonsense words and sounds to warm up and then dove into some hard core reading.  We worked on the strategies readers should use when they get to a word they don't know.  There are 8 strategies in my February Dr. Seuss Preschool pack that we covered.  We'll continue referencing them as we're reading more difficult text.  We also talked about giving a 5 finger retell (1. Characters 2. Setting 3. Beginning 4. Middle 5. End). 

 We talked about ocean animals with the letter J this afternoon.  We read lots of books about ocean animals and found a great page in the encyclopedia that talks about the ocean.

 We continued our patterning in math by making patterns with giant beads.  We practiced making the patterns that were shown on the pattern cards today.  At the end of the day we enjoyed drawing with chalk in our notebooks.  The kids often talk about how their parents are going to be so proud of their art when they get the journal at the end of the school year.  It's so cute!

Encouraging a Love of Reading

My philosophy on teaching reading is far different from many homeschoolers I’ve met.  I believe that children can learn to read at a very young age.  Children younger than 3 are introduced to letter names and sounds though aren’t expected to retain the information.

            Once children are 3 years old they have the ability to learn letter sounds and how to use them at the same time.  We focus on one letter per week.  We do not learn the letters in alphabetical order.  We learn them in an order that presents the highest number of CVC words for them to sound out.  As we focus on a new letter each week we add it to the letters we've already learned to successfully read decodable texts. 

            When you give young children this power to successfully read they are so proud of themselves.  They look forward to utilizing their new found skills in increasingly difficult books.

            We can encourage a love of reading by providing children the opportunity to be successful readers.  Giving them the opportunity to be surrounded by books encourages them to pick up a book, even if it just means looking at the pictures.

            We also encourage a love of reading by demonstrating a love of reading.  We can take the opportunity to read for ourselves as well as read to our children.

            I love using a child’s interests to encourage them to read more.  My oldest (a kinder) has a set of picture encyclopedias.  His reading lessons go as follows:

·         *He gets to browse through all the encyclopedias any time he is interested.

·         *If he’s interested in something specifically we read the encyclopedia page about the topic.  He reads the words he can read and I read the rest.

·         *If that satisfies his thirst for knowledge on the topic we move on and browse again.

·         *If he’s still interested in a topic after we read the encyclopedia we find other sources of information.  Sometimes this means visiting the library, finding books around our home, or utilizing an online leveled book library.  We find a text on his reading level about the topic of interest.  We also find a text that is much harder that we can read together.  He takes both books and highlights the words he can read (either with a highlighter or highlighter tape).  This empowers him by giving him the responsibility to discover what he can do.

·         *Lastly, we read the books together, over and over.

As we read together children are improving their reading skills and learning about ideas or reading stories on a topic of interest.

            We read things according to our interest in the topic.  We love reading because it satisfies something within us.  The stories captivate us.  The non-fiction texts empower us with knowledge.  It’s crucial to give children the same satisfaction with appropriately leveled texts and support for their current skills. 

Preschool B - May Math and Reading

Preschool B has been working on developing an understanding of sets greater than 10.  Today we got to explore with a cut and paste base ten printable.  It broke down tens+ones=set.

 After math (which they did excellent at) we moved into reading.  We're now done with our phonics lessons and were able to dive back into interest led reading.  We looked through our encyclopedias for the topic each person was most interested in reading about for the day.

 Lucky for us everyone's first pick had two books on ReadingA-Z.com.  We printed one book that was at/slightly above their independent reading level and printed a second book that was way beyond their reading level but would make a great companion reading text.

 Then they each took a highlighter and marked all the words in the books that they knew.  We discovered that one of the books they knew almost all of the words in and the other book was quite a bit harder.

 We took turns reading our independent reading book.  Then I read the first page or two of the companion reading text with each child.  As we read I would read words that weren't highlighted and the child would read all the words that were highlighted.  I'm hoping that you've been jointly reading the companion reading books all year long.

 If we came to a word that wasn't highlighted but I thought the child would be able to figure it out I would pause and see if they'd jump in.  If they did and figured out the word then they highlighted it.

 I sent home their highlighters in their companion reading book bags so you could continue through the book in the same fashion, adding highlighted marks as needed.

 Then we headed outside for some play time, song practice and snack.

 At the end of the day we drew and wrote in our journals about what we've learned, liked or experienced in preschool throughout the year.

What a great day of learning!

Mud and Worms - Monday Preschool

Preschool Mud and Worms Day!

 We started the day inside doing some reading about worms.  We learned about the different parts of a worm (did you know they have a tongue?) and we learned that they poop dirt (ewe!).  Those were the two most important things to the kids in this class :)

 We opened up our worm composting bin and everyone got a nice scoop of worms right onto a plate.  They could dig through it to find and hold the worms if they'd like, or they could just watch.

 Of course my boys dug right in since these are actually their "pets" :).

 We headed outside and it took a little convincing, but everyone eventually got dirty (even if only a bit)

 Afternoon preschool started with reading "Sheep in a Jeep".

 Then we reviewed some of the information we've been looking over for a few weeks about worms.

 We also got to explore the worm bin.

 When we headed outside everyone stayed out of the pools for quite a bit longer than I expected them too.

 And finally they decided to sit.

 Then Miss Amanda asked them why they were only sitting in the muddy water and not the actual mud.  They changed pools quickly.

 And the camouflaging began.

 CJ was a Mud Monster and walked around the backyard trying to scare everyone.

 A little mud art.