Preschool B - On A Schedule

Can you believe it?  We actually accomplished everything I was hoping to accomplish today in preschool B.  Yay!  It always feels better when we figure out our schedule and I figure out the right amount of material to prepare for a class.  Of course, throughout the year we'll be mixing it up a bit and sorting it out again, but for now it's the beginning of a smooth learning time!  

Our morning group reading lesson continued with discussion about sounding words out (blending them) like people and not robots.  

 We were able to then work through our reading groups mastering the skill of blending and working on appropriate phonics for each group.

 The kids were fantastic in their center rotations as we worked on puzzles and went fishing for letters.

 Our writing time today was technically drawing time.  Many kids started off this year with a blanket statement like: "I can't draw." "I can't do that." "I can't make a circle."  With this negative attitude we aren't getting anywhere with writing letters.  So instead we're drawing shapes.  We have a new "How to Draw with Simple Shapes" book in our classroom and each person picked out an item they wanted to draw.  We did quite a few as a group and then I made copies of the pages and hung them up all over the room for the kids to practice.  For the first time a couple of the resistant writers took a chance and tried.  Yay!  I sent home each child's printed page from the book in the back of their binder.  PLEASE let them practice drawing their picked item over and over again.  We'll talk on Thursday about how practice helps us get better.  PLEASE encourage them to draw a TON this week.  It really will help their writing.

 Continuing our work on drawing and writing:

 For math today I introduced ten frames for the first time.  Each child got a ten frame sheet, a Q-tip and an ink pad to stamp the correct number of dots in each ten frame.  You'll find ten frame activities starting to show up in their homework as well.  We're working on our number sense - recognizing groups of items represent the numeral and the word.

 One of the ways we work on this recognition is through a subitization game of puzzles.  As a class we sorted through the puzzle pieces and made 10 little puzzles representing each number.

I was really impressed with the kids today and their strive to help each other, accomplish the tasks I asked of them, and really work hard.  They did a fantastic job!

Creative Learning in Preschool B

After our first week of school we are all ready to dive in working on blending letters again.  We started the day off playing with the word factory on Starfall.com on the SMARTboard.  We then read, "The Way I Act" again as a class to talk about all the words that we want to use to describe ourselves.  As we talked about the words that describe ourselves we started talking about things we love, things we like to do, and what we like to think and talk about.  This led right into our body maps.  We worked cooperatively to trace each other's outlines on huge sheets of paper.  Then we worked diligently to add symbols that represented who we are.  We're going to keep working on our body maps in school for another day or two to keep adding things that represent us.

 We had a great time learning the sight word "the" (or reviewing it) and talking about picture clues.  We are going to dive headfirst into our reading strategies on Thursday and picture clues is one of the strategies we can use.  Today we read, "Harold and the Purple Crayon" for our writing time.  As we started writing last week there was a lot of "I don't know how..." and "I can't do that..." when presented with their writing notebooks.  Through the story of Harold we talked about different ways to be creative, imaginative, and represent the ideas in our heads and hearts during writing time.

 I love that the kids get a chance to share their writing at the end of writing time.  There is so much good that comes from the opportunity to share one at a time about something that you created.  It also gives me a way to listen in to their thinking about what they were drawing and writing so I can make notes on the page when I date it at the end of writing.  Though we didn't have time to get to music (again...) we did have about 3 minutes before parents came and were able to build with the blocks and trucks for a short time.

I love how creative this class was today!  I hope we can continue building on the positive energy around learning and identifying ourselves as curious, responsible, compassionate, brave, trustworthy, friendly, persistent, respectful, cooperative, capable, active, considerate and imaginative!

Wheels in Preschool

This morning in preschool we had a letter review.  We got to play with wheels and talk more about the different shapes around us.  We played with all the vehicle toys and cut out pictures of wheels and trucks.

 We had a fantastic time in art today.  We cut out pictures of vehicles and glued them onto our pages according to if they were facing right or left.  Then we painted using toy vehicles to spread the paint all around.  We continued our discussion about shapes and talked about what shapes would roll the best.

 This afternoon we dove right into our Ready2Read and guided reading lessons.  We talked about letter X and had a great time reading the book "Max" by the Amazing Action Alphabet.

 We also spent time discussing the numbers 9-15.  We made a tape version of the tens and units homes.  We used unifix cubes and our big number mats.  We're still working on understanding that a stick of 10 is 1 stick of 10 units.  I'm hoping to really get a hang of what the numbers up to 20 mean so we can start working on counting to 100 next.  And not just the counting of it, the UNDERSTANDING of it!

Manners and what was supposed to be Karate...

Yesterday in preschool we had a fantastic time talking about manners, though manners may not be the appropriate word to describe it.  We talked about what good behavior should look like and practiced making the "/n/ /n/ /n/" sound at "David" the book character from "No, David!".  The kids loved it!  Our sight word for the week is "no".  Please read them the book "No, David!", you'll find it in their binders.  While you are reading PLEASE let them read the word "NO" every time you come to it.  You'll also find the word "I" and the word "the" (I think) that they can read as well.  We'll work on the letter N Amazing Action Alphabet book tomorrow in class.

We also spent a great deal of time talking about how to write our names.  It's our goal to have the 3 year old class writing their names by Valentine's.  That's just a month away!  Be sure to practice EVERY day!  Sometimes it works better to use a wet erase marker on the lamination because they have such a fine tip, if you need one please let me know - I have a stash and would happily share.  One of the things we spent a lot of time on was the shape and size of each letter in our name.  Trying to see the shapes of the letters in order to draw them.  There is a great app called iWriteWords (no I'm not paid by them or anything, but if they want to contact me I'd happily give away a copy of their awesome app to a reader on my blog).  Anyway, if you have a device that you let your kids play on, consider installing the app and improving their handwriting skills at the same time.

Wow.  Certainly a lot happened in school yesterday.  We also had the great opportunity to paint with nail polish yesterday.  It's a super fun activity for the kids to practice painting and putting lids on and taking them off.  We only had one bottle drop and explode, phew!  I've already cleaned up with nail polish remover and I'm happy to have all the nail polish given away to preschool families so I can move past this activity in my house. Once again ... phew!

 This afternoon was a whirlwind of reading.  It was the type of day where we never got to our theme (Karate) and only got the bare bones done.  We are doing a little rearranging and with everyone's help (ahem...homework) we'll get into a better spot where I don't have to do 6 different lessons for 8 kids.  We practiced the letter K and worked on reading our Amazing Action Alphabet K book, we began Ready2Read Level 1, we continued work in Ready2Read, we ran around the house like crazies for a few minutes after snack and we drew pictures in our journals while I chatted with adults after class.  There is so much learning going on at this stage of these awesomely absorbent brains that I simply can't fit it all into our short time together each week.  Thanks for enabling your kids to reach great potential by supporting their learning explorations at home!

Families

We had such a fun day today learning about families.  We were reviewing the letters M T and A today in our morning class.  I used a company called Create Jigsaw Puzzles to have each child's family picture made into a professional puzzle.  They turned out so fantastic!  Each child has their puzzle as homework.  Keep them at home and do them over and over again.  The minimum goal by the end of the 3 year old preschool year is to be able to do a 12 piece puzzle.

 We had fun with our reading lesson today practicing being a blender (like the video from last week).  We are practicing words like: at, am, mat, tam.  We talked about 'tam' being a nonsense word that isn't real but fun to read.  In math we started talking about ordinal numbers.  We talked about first, second and third.  At home point out different situations like: Mom will be served fish for dinner first, Daddy second and EMan third.  It was fun to watch the 3 year olds explore drawing people.  Some have been drawing people for a while and others are brand new to the idea.  We talked about the different shapes that make up bodies and how to draw them.

Our afternoon 4 year old class got much bigger puzzles.  Unfortunately the options available are pretty much 12 pieces or 100 pieces so we jumped to the big size. This is a REALLY big challenge that kids sometimes don't master until they are 5, 6 or even 7 years old.  Practice with them at home to make your fun family photo puzzle.

We had a great reading lesson with the letter S this afternoon.  We are continuing the strategies from the video posted last week.  Sound out each word slowly, reread the word quickly, move to the next word.  At the end of the sentence go back and reread the whole sentence quickly.  This strategy may seem very repetitive right now, but the books get much harder in the next few weeks and we'll benifit from practicing this way.  Some of our afternoon kids are working on the Moffatt Girls Ready2Read level 1 and are just about done with unit 1.  We're excited to move into the next word families!  We're still working on mastering counting one-to-one in preschool.  Today we played with the pattern blocks while counting.  We also built towers, forests, dragons and other cool things with the shapes.

We had a great day of learning!  I look forward to seeing everyone on Wednesday!

Animal Friends

We had a fantastic day learning about the letter A and animal friends today.  All of the kids loved coming in this morning to find these mini animals, fishing poles with fish, animal hand puppets and stuffed animals galore!  There was plenty of animal noises around the room as they played with all the items. 

 Art was amazingly engaging today.  We first drew with crayons and then water color painted over the top of our drawings.  Many of the kids were focused on their art for upwards of a half hour!

 We also talked about puppets and made sock puppets today.  Last year when we did sock puppets there was a bit of hesitation about them. This year the kids were ready to dive in and put them on themselves.  They even brought me a second one for their other hand so they could have a puppet on each hand.  The puppets played all around our back yard and some are still drying off from a bath in the tub of sandy water in the sandbox.

 We played with our Animal Friends tot pack today.  I loved playing one-on-one with this little man as we sorted where the animals should live - in the barn or in the house.

Spoiler Alert!

If you are a grandparent to one of my boys, and you don't wish to know what you're getting for Christmas from them, PLEASE don't read any further!

If you don't care if you know early, or it doesn't apply to you, enjoy!

Thursday was craft day in our house.  Little Learners didn't have anyone signed up to come, so we stayed in our paint clothes all day and got to work.  I don't know if any of you are brave enough to let your kids paint with semi-gloss, wall paint, paint and primer in one but I decided I was this day.

 We're making all sorts of picture blocks for Christmas, so we got busy painting.

 And EMan got busy eating crayons, yum!

 After the boys were done painting they needed a little snack.  As you can tell C also painted his legs, indirectly of course.

 It's days when I just give them the Costco sized animal cracker bucket that make me thankful for our kid sized vacuums.

 The boys had the job to paint the blocks.  When they were dry I used some Mod Podge and put pictures on them.

 The boys are getting this set of nine blocks that will have six different puzzles on them.  I don't have the room in my house to do this type of project without the boys seeing, so they've seen it and will hopefully forget it so it's kind of a surprise on Christmas morning.

 Grandparents will be getting these cute blocks with pictures of the boys on the sides.

And yes, I still have paint on my chairs to clean up.... oh well.