Little Adventures Preschool: Animals in Spring

Showing posts with label Animals in Spring. Show all posts

Wednesday, March 21, 2018

Tot School 3-21-18 Animals

We had so much fun learning about animals and colors today in tot school. We pulled out the folding table play house and played a million rounds of "peek-a-boo". We also played with the animal hand and finger puppets pretending they were walking around, making animal noises, and going in and out of the play house. There were so many books to be read and toys to be played with!

Almost everyone tried out the balance board. It's so fun to see them try to stand on it and lean from side to side!

Wednesday, March 18, 2015

Animals in Spring

This morning we had a great reading lesson about stretching out sounds to write words. We're working on the -in family today. We did some work on rhyming words and made a list of as many -in words as we could. Each time we'd "grab" the word from the air and stretch it out (sound it out slowly) to figure out what letter to write down and then repeat to find the next letter sound. We read tons of books about spring and animals in spring. We also sang the song "Popcorn Popping" and did fun popcorn art.

After art we learned all about the nickel and continued with our "Which coin is in my pocket?" song that we learned on Monday. We just switched it up now to talk about the nickel and how it's worth 5 cents. After math was the best part of the day. We took turns holding the chicks and feeding them their snack. Most kids were okay with holding them in some manner and all kids were really excited to feed them when they were back in their brooder (sounds better than cage, yes?).

This afternoon we worked in our guided reading groups and then read a book called "Very Special Friends". We got to draw a favorite part from the story or about our own very special friends in our journals and then share them with Miss Amanda. We sang about spring (see popcorn song above) and made popcorn tree art as well.

We also got to play with the chicks this afternoon. It's always interesting to see the different reactions to being able to hold the chicks. It is the most wonderful thing for some and the most horrifying thought for others. After we played with the chicks we worked on piecing together the number 1-20 on the 100 board. We're still getting 16 and 19 upside down so we have 61 and 91. We'll continue talking about the place value importance and hopefully it'll stick soon!

Thursday, March 20, 2014

Animals in Spring - A Preschool Chick Experience

Wow! Talk about a great day in school! How fun is playing with baby chicks for the "Animals in Spring" theme? With the bigger preschoolers we were able to sit in the kiddy pool and let the baby chicks explore.

This is a great photo grouping of how nearly everyone reacted. 1. "I'm not certain about this..." 2. "They're climbing on me!" 3. "This is so exciting!" 4. "I love chicks!" It took a little bit to get accustomed to each other but in the end everyone was happy to have one climb on their lap and be able to pet it. We even held out little grains of their food for them and loved watching them jump from one person's lap to the next.

The rest of our day included our lesson in spelling, which is a great activity if you haven't looked into it yet. Up to this point in the year we've been working on reading words written down. Now we're talking about how the words that come out of our mouths are just combinations of letters that we can then write down. Check out the "Animals in Spring" pack for more information. We also did a group reading of "Mouse's First Spring" a book with many little words that the preschoolers can already read. The bonus is that they each got to keep a copy of the book. In math we learned about the nickel. In preschool it's purely introduction and they love it. We sang our pocket song to "Shortning Bread". It goes like this: "Which coin is in my pocket, pocket? What's in my pocket worth __ cents? (then they guess what it is and we continue) It's a shiny ____, _____. It's a ____ worth ___ cent." The kids love it!

Wednesday, March 19, 2014

Animals in Spring

We had so much fun in school today talking about animals in spring. We had our sensory bin with green rice, Easter grass and plastic eggs galore out for exploring. We also had poker chips and large crayon banks that we sorted the chips according to color into. Between those two stations everyone was very busy at work until snack time. We learned "Popcorn Popping" a song about the blossoms on fruit trees looking like popcorn.

We also had a few large cardboard boxes out to talk about them as dens and the animals are starting to wake up in spring time. The kids loved eating snack around the baby chicks. They were so excited about watching their every move!

We enjoyed popcorn art that went along with our song, read oodles of books and had an enjoyable time playing outside. Yay for springtime!

Wednesday, March 20, 2013

Animals in Spring - Preschool Wednesday

We had a lot of fun learning about animals in Spring today in preschool. We've been working on puzzles all year long and are starting to get into bigger puzzles (24+ pieces). Be sure to play with puzzles at home to foster critical thinking skills.

We also got to play with the spring eggs and try to match them and put them together (and of course take them apart!).

The kitty and the tiger.

Everyone got a copy of Mouse's First Spring. We practiced reading it together as a group. We worked on staying on the same page, pointing to the words, and saying the words that we already know how to read (or had memorized by the end of the story).

The tiger and the lion.

Art was seriously adventurous today...

We each picked a flower color and were supposed to match the decorations of our flower to the color of the paper we picked. Some of us got it, some just had fun making a collage. At a minimum, we all had super fun.

What happens when you give a bottle of glue to a 4 year old? He decides to glue his hair and then needs to give himself a bath in the sink. Silly boys :)

Today we moved onto nickels. They are silver colored and worth 5 cents.

In afternoon preschool we continued with our Easter book.

We sorted some pictures, worked on the short e sound and started learning about sentences. Please start pointing out capitals at the beginning of a sentence (we colored them green to signal "go") and punctuation at the end of sentences (we colored them red to signal "stop").

Then we drew a picture of our favorite part of the story.

We had free art with all the supplies from the morning class, and once again...a large mess ensued.

Thank goodness they were willing to clean it up in the end! :)

Animals in Spring - Tot School Tuesday

We had so much fun talking about the coming springtime on Tuesday. We had a sensory bin of green rice (like the green that will be growing soon). In the sensory bin there was also Easter grass, erasers with baby animals on them, and bunny rabbit toys. We scooped and dumped almost all day!

We also played with spring eggs trying to match tops and bottoms, colors and snap them together (quite difficult even for my 4 year old).

It was great fun to pretend we were animals waking up from hibernation or returning from migrating south.

Snapping together a ladybug egg.

We did lots of reading about spring and baby animals.

Our art today was stamping with pre-inked stamps of baby chicks and eggs. The kids loved them!

We also started talking a little bit about money. They got to play with our large laminated coins.

We learned a song called "Popcorn Popping". Find the music here.

We glued the popcorn on our apricot tree pictures and then they got to snack on them, but only after I took the glue away :).

Pretending to be a tiger.

Here comes mommy cat!

Tuesday, February 19, 2013

March Tot Packs

Getting ready for March? Tot Packs are ready for you!

I create all of my lesson plans to share digitally with other homeschooling families and small classrooms. If your child attends Little Adventures Preschool you can easily supplement their learning at home by downloading the lesson plans. It will also give you a good idea about what we covered. I always plan more than we will ever actually get to so there is often a great idea within the plans that you can share with your child to extend their learning. You can find all of my toddler and preschool lesson plans here: http://www.teachersnotebook.com/shop/LittleAdventuresPreschool
Find the year long theme calendar {here} and follow along with us! This post gives details and pictures of all February Toddler Packs. Be sure to scroll down to see all of them.

Tot Packs 29-32 Tot packs are about 20 pages in length. They each have 2 pages of activity ideas, book suggestions, and links to the materials I use. You can certainly use all or part of the lesson plans. The printable pages include songs, matching games, drawing games and other activities. Tot packs are designed to be a first introduction to math concepts, letters, shapes and colors. They are not meant to obtain mastery in any subject. Let them be a guide for educational play between you and your child.