Sight Words and Base Ten Practice

We had such a focused day today in preschool.  All the kids are working on their own set of sight words so I pulled out our iPads and set them up on TeachMe: Kindergarten.  I LOVE this app.  As the teacher or parent you can select what topics you want the kids to practice and how many correct answers they need to earn a reward.  I always choose 9 correct answers (the highest amount) and adjust the topic according to what we are working on.  Today I made it so they were only practicing the sight word list that was appropriate.  The kids LOVED having their turn practicing their sight words and it made it super easy for me to work with the reading groups.

We are still learning about tens and units and how they represent written numerals.  Today the goal was to play a matching game for the numbers 1-12.  It is so important to remember that different kids pick up ideas in different ways and at different speeds.  This game was fun for some but boring for others.  Some kids sped through it and others needed to take their time.  However, all were successful.  I was excited to find that three of our kids today were ready to work on the full set of numbers 1-20.  I sent home the cards to practice, but please send them back because we'll be working on them on Thursday!

Growing Our Muscles!

You just can't plan for these things in the classroom... Today we spent almost the whole time talking about growing our muscles, including our brains.  It started out with a child saying his hand was too tired to practice writing any more. My gut reaction was filled with enthusiasm, "GREAT! That means you're growing your muscles!" Promptly EVERYONE in the class had tired hands, legs and heads.  Thus, the conversation of growing muscles continued throughout the day.  "Shh!! Watch! He's growing his brain!" was said more than once as a child was demonstrating or sharing with the group.  It was so much fun!

 Today we reviewed the letter P and added the sight word "ball".  The kids had so much fun "taking a picture" mentally of the word so they could remember it.  We also continued our conversation about clock letters practicing the letter C.  In math we're wrapping up our number sense unit and had the opportunity to play a few games again.  We made ten frames with Q-tips, tornadoes made our base ten blocks get thrown all around and they needed sorting back onto decimal street, we built the 1-20 chart and made chains 20 links long.

It was such a fun day of learning!

Persistent Learners

Today in preschool we talked about being persistent A LOT.  We jumped right in to work on sorting sight words with do-a-dot markers and then moved to cutting and gluing to make a 15 chart.

 There was much conversation about how the 15 chart was difficult.  It was tricky figuring out what number goes where and which direction to place the number. Often times the first time you do something it isn't easy but with practice it gets easier.  As long as we are PERSISTENT and KEEP TRYING we are GROWING OUR BRAINS!  Isn't that exciting?

 During our writing time today we jumped back into forming clock letters.  We only talked about the letter O today but we did make a capital (mommy) and a lowercase (baby) attempt.  Imagine a clock.  When we write circle shaped letters (imagine the letter "o") we start at the 2 o'clock and go counterclockwise around the clock and back to the 2.  We do the same for letters like "a" (start at the 2, counterclockwise to the 2, then straight down), "d" (start at the 2, counterclockwise to the 2, straight up to the top and straight down to the bottom).  Clock letters include: a, c, d, f, g, o, s, q.  These letters all start at the "2 o'clock" (the f starts at the 2 on the top clock).  This is an important habit to encourage at home.

 The kids were thrilled when I told them they would get to watch a movie.  Shouts of "Iron Man" and "Blues Clues" were offered up as suggestions.  Instead, we watched Steve.  He's the man in the Math-U-See curriculum videos.  We watched about 3 minutes of his segment about "Decimal Street".  Then we played the decimal street tornado game.  Each child got a page with a drawn decimal street and some unit and tens blocks.  We would all make tornado noises and mix up all the blocks.  Then when the tornado ended we had to put the units back in the units house and the tens back in the tens house.

After playing the tornado game the kids were let in on a little secret.  When we write the quantity of blocks in each house it writes the same number as there are blocks!  I explained it in more appropriate 4 year old language and we built the numbers 1-12 on the white board as we were talking through the concept.

These kiddos certainly worked hard as persistent learners today.  Great work everyone!

Wednesday Preschool - Plants

If you haven't noticed yet, I love plants and gardening.  I'm always really excited to teach the kids little snippets of things I'm passionate about, and teaching about plants was one of those really fun days. 

 We started the day with puzzles again.  We're going to continue working on them every day for our starter activity for the rest of the year.  We have some kids who are working on 12 piece puzzles and others that work in teams on 48 piece puzzles and everything in between.  Keep working on them at home if they are challenging for your little one.

 We went upstairs to draw in our journals.  We got to draw a plant and then we talked about all the parts of a real plant and if we forgot to draw a part of it we added it to our drawing.

 We also talked about the needs of a plant and how plants need air, sun and water.  We cut open a piece of celery and talked about the small tubes inside of it that act as straws to suck the water up into the plant.  Then I put a piece of celery in red water so we could investigate it later.  (and that later never arrived... everyone was out the door before I remembered it again... oops.)

 Then we dissected seeds to see what the parts of a seed were.

 If you've never looked before, this is the best shot of the baby plant inside a seed that I could get.  The long part will become the stem and the "fish tail" at the end is actually 2 really small leaves that will become the first leaves of the plant.

 Our numbers and counting activity was to glue the correct number of seeds (split peas) onto a numbered stick.  So if the stick was labeled "5" we glued 5 seeds onto it.  This was completely independent (other than me occasionally identifying a numeral for a child), so if there are correct or incorrect numbers on your child's project it's a great assessment of what they know.

 To get some movement into our day we got to walk/run/skate/tip-toe around the house to a song called "Listen and Move".  It's a great movement activity song.

 We also practiced number sense with numerals by putting the correct number of dots on large foam numbers from TouchMath.

 In afternoon preschool we got to read an "easy" book today.  It's more about the fluency and building confidence as readers since the next few books we'll be doing will take quite a bit more patience.  They won't be any harder to decode, but the text is longer (multiple sentences per page).

 When your kids are reading their books to you please listen for fluency.  They shouldn't be pausing between each word.  If the sentence ends with a question mark their intonation should represent that.

 We played a fun matching game with some sight words that we've known for many months and are "so easy".  (Is this a theme?  It seems that all day they kept telling me how easy things were.  I guess I'll be bringing on the challenges on Monday :)

 We're continuing to work on representing quantities with base ten blocks.  They each advanced to slightly higher numbers and will continue to get higher number cards (up to making 99 with this game, and possibly making numbers up to 999 with another).  Keep playing this at home.  The more they understand what each number in a numeral represents and how to show it the more they'll understand the manipulation of numerals (addition, subtraction, etc).

 We decided at the end of the day that we'd explore the play-dough.  The game apparently turned into some form of "making cookies for Santa".  It was fun to listen to their conversations about it.

Monday Preschool - Picnics

We had so much fun with our picnic theme on Monday for preschool.  We spent the whole day outside exploring the play food, the letter Y, the number 1, learning the Teddy Bear's Picnic song, and just having a good time. 

 We're still working on our CVC letter swap game.  CVC stands for Consonant, Vowel, Consonant.  They are short vowel words like "cat".  We swap out a letter and see what new word we can make.

 Our yummy picnic.

 We've been working on our cutting skills and we're starting to show improvement.  Please let your kids cut up all your junk mail and newspapers when you're done with them.  It's an important skill that has to be learned and practiced.

 We've started our math module about numerals.  Today's day was the number 1.  Each day will have a numeral and we'll talk about them in numerical order. Start pointing out numbers to your kids in their daily life.

 We went inside to dance to the Teddy Bear Picnic song at the end of the day.  They had so much fun!

 Afternoon preschool started outside in the nice warm springtime air.

 We went through the 40 sight words (Jan-May) and put a check mark or a dot next to the ones we were successful at reading.

 Then I plugged the words each child still needed to work on into a bingo sheet for practice.

 We've been working on level C books.  We're focused on the comprehension of the stories and reading fluently.  Please have your child read their reading books every day.  Even multiple times a day if possible (to mom, dad, grandparents, even the family pet or a teddy bear).  The idea is to read them so many times that they have it memorized and can read it fluently, like they talk rather than pausing between each word like a robot.

 As they read or you read to them be sure to talk about the characters in the story, where the story takes place, and what the main idea of the story is.

 We had a challenge today in math.  I took out every other row of cards on our 100 chart, mixed them up and had the kids put them back where they go.

 They did surprisingly well and were fantastic at helping each other out and fixing mistakes.

Weather - Wednesday Preschool

What a fun day to talk about weather.  The snow if finally melting and it's getting a little bit warmer outside.  I'm hoping that spring is finally here!

 We started the day coloring paper that would eventually become our own kites.

 Then we headed outside to try and fly our kites.  As it turns out, the snow wasn't quite melted enough so running in the grass area was rather difficult.  I hope everyone brings their kites Friday to our Field Trip Friday so we can see how they fly when we can really run.

 We headed downstairs to work on our reading activity.  I put a secret word up on the board and when you knew what it was you were supposed to act it out.  The secret word was "hop".  How fun!

 Remember the mud art we didn't get to do on Monday because of the cold and snow?  Well, insert that activity here:

 W the worm wiggled through some watery mud. (Amazing Action Alphabet Activity Page)

 Today we learned about quarters.  When I told them that a quarter was worth 25 cents the majority of the eyeballs in the classroom became the size of silver dollars - WOW! 25 cents!  It was so exciting to them that they got to keep their very own quarter!

 We've now finished "Mary had a Little Lamb" on the piano.  Even if your child hasn't mastered this song they are making great gains in learning the basics of playing the piano, the rhythms in music, and that music is fun.  Woot woot!

 Afternoon preschool started off with some playtime.  It was requested that we first play our card game (I can never remember the name of it...).  It involves quick thinking to match one of 4 attributes on the card that's on the top of one of the piles in the middle.

 We also practiced our sight words with "Zingo Sight Words".

 Writing time was focused on writing a list.  We talked about different types of lists that we could write: our favorite colors, people in our family, what to buy at the grocery store, etc.

 Art time was so much fun in tot school yesterday that we decided to repeat the activity with preschool B.  Mix glue and shaving cream for a fantastic sensory art time.

 Boy, what a mess!  It's so much fun, but super messy!