Wind and Insect Release

What a great day to start talking about wind today!  There were gusts of strong wind and some mild wind throughout our class time. We made kites, talked about the letter W and read books about wind.  We learned that wind is made by the hot air going up and the cold are coming underneath it. We played outside flying our kites and running around until the sandbox was just too tempting to stay away from.  We headed inside and learned all about dimes and practiced our songs for our upcoming end of year celebration.

This afternoon we started our day by observing and writing about our now full grown butterflies.  We completed our regular reading lessons and then headed outside to release ladybugs and butterflies.

 We had a great time watching them and holding them, catching the ladybugs again after they flew off our hands and trying to keep them from crawling down shirts, up pants or in hair :).  We spent tons of time with one butterfly who enjoyed a nice long snack of grape juice and everyone that wanted to was able to hold the butterfly on the grape.  It was wonderful!  I'd highly recommend cutting a grape in half and then scoring the inside to see if you can hold the butterfly for a while when releasing.  The other 3 butterflies weren't interested, so it may not work, but we had a good 10 minutes of passing around this one butterfly.

In math today we counted all the way up to 100, but we didn't count normally.  We said each number according to place value.  So we'd say "Six tens, three units. Six tens, four units." and so forth.  I even drew the unit house the tens house on top of the plastic on the hundreds chart occasionally.  I think we had a break through lesson today and I can see the place value number sense kicking in!

Caterpillars and Insects

What a fantastic day of school!  We loved talking all about caterpillars today.  We read the letter C book and learned about the stages of a caterpillars life.  We even got to see a live caterpillar thanks to Lil'S bringing in her pet!  We were just like C the Caterpillar in art today.  We cut leaves!  This class needs A LOT of cutting practice and this would be a great activity to do at home this week while it is still warm.  Just head outside with a pair of kid safe scissors and let them cut all the leaves into confetti.  We also learned more about rhyming words today as we came up with rhymes for "at" and "am".  During math today we went outside and practiced "near" and "far".  The kids ran "near Miss Amanda" and "far from Miss Amanda".  They ran back and forth over and over until they were completely exhausted!

 In the afternoon we talked about the letter I and did a shared reading of "The Big Bug Dug".  It had many letters in it that we haven't talked about yet but most words are phonetic and we were able to read the majority of the book with help on a few advanced sight words.  We practiced reading in our reading groups and played the "i Word Machine" on Starfall.com.

 We continued working on graphing today in math.  Today we colored in different graphs.  We also had oodles of fun with the do-a-dot markers and insect stickers during art time!

Helpful Kids and Caterpillars

We had such a great time in preschool yesterday morning.  We spent the morning reading "The Little Red Hen" and making bread together.  Everyone got to put an ingredient in the mixer...

 Then they all rolled their own dough, put it in their pan and I put it in the oven.  

 It cooked while we continued our lesson about being Bucket Fillers and helpful kids.  We played with the kitchen toys after decorating our buckets and ended the day with a taste of yummy bread!

Afternoon preschool has really taken off with their reading!  I'm so glad that we have arrived at a place where kids can be actively working and playing while we do all our different reading groups.  We read Amazing Action Alphabet mini books, Bob Books and our Encyclopedias. 

 We've mastered the game "Guess My Secret Rule" and are ready to move on in math a bit earlier than expected, yay!  We had a great time reading and drawing about the life cycle of a caterpillar. 

Caterpillars and a Preschool Reading Lesson

We had a great day learning all about caterpillars and butterflies.  We talked about the life cycle and some of the key words (like cocoon) that they'd encounter in their reading.  Everyone got 5 'C' stickers and got to look through all the reading books that we had about caterpillars.  They were so engaged in looking at the pictures and finding the letter C within the text. 

 We continued our reading lessons following the Amazing Action Alphabet.  Grab our caterpillar preschool lesson plans here!

 We had oodles of fun doing leaf rubbings, cutting leaves like crazy, and practicing the vocabulary "near" and "far".

Sometimes when we're working with preschoolers it's good to see how a lesson might actually happen.  Today I spent about 5 minutes per kid in some one-on-one reading lesson time.  I took video of a few of the kids, but due to the nature of the beast there are names used etc so I can't post them all.  Here is my reading lesson with EMan (now 3yrs 2months).  I haven't edited it so it's very realistic to what really happens in our little classroom.  

October Preschool Packs

Find the Year Long Theme Calendar here and follow along with us!

The preschool curriculum that is all inclusive and provides hours of fun and engaging learning!  

The "October Preschool Packs" contain 9 theme based lesson plans, a total of 263 pages of lesson plans and activity printables.  My preschooler has begged to do his "homework" because it's a wonderful time that we spend together learning age appropriate concepts!  These plans are intended to be taught in a 10 month sequence from Aug-May, though may be adapted to use individually. 

October {Download all 9 October Preschool Packs}

12. Spiders and Miss Muffet {Download}
The Spiders and Miss Muffet lesson plans and activities are such a blast!  We're introduced to the sight word "the" and get to play some matching games with it.  We also talk about long and short and continue our study of numerical order.  There is a "Spider Facts" mini book and a clip card spider with dice.  You can also play "Smack that Spider!" and play with the Little Miss Muffet printables.  There is a long path and a short path spider game (who will win first?) and a hidden letter activity.  We focus on the letter S and making all sorts of new words. 

13. Safety {Download}
I really look forward to the Safety preschool pack.  I'm always amazed that as preschoolers are taught very specifically certain ideas the ideas stick!  My kids are still asking to be excused from the table when we're done eating and we worked on that in August!  The safety pack addresses safety in crossing the street, using scissors, being in the kitchen, playing with toys and many other activities that we do every day.  They can practice the sight word "the" with a sight word money and pockets game.  We also work on colors, the vocabulary "tall" and "short", non-standard measuring and play a long path game where you have to decide what the best choice is to stay safe. 

14. Bears and Bats {Download}
Bears and Bats pulls from a couple favorite story books: "Brown Bear, Brown Bear What Do You See?" and "Goldilocks".  There are manipulatives to act out both of those stories as well as sort items according to size, determine quantity equality, use Do-A-Dot markers and sing songs.  We'll also be tracing and working on CVC words.  We're learning the letter B and there is the cutest toilet paper roll craft to make a bat or a bear. 

15. Bubbles {Download}
It is a lot of fun to play with bubbles and explore the different things we can do with them.  In this pack there are so many ideas for making bubbles, using different colored bubbles to make art and even a part about washing the dishes.  The printables are adorable and so fun to play.  There is a long path game where you have to help the kids get to the bubble bath!  There are also counting and matching games, a hidden letter B art, Do-A-Dot "the", a long path phonics game, dot-to-dot and tracing activities. 

16. Helpful Kids {Download}

I'm particularly excited about the Helpful Kids pack because it is based on Bucket Fillers.  It's the idea of teaching children that we all have a bucket inside of us and if we do something nice, kind or helpful for someone else we are filling their bucket.  It's a perfect set of lesson plans for improving the peace and kindness in your school or home.  We introduce the letter H and talk about all the different things we can do that would be helpful, including how to tie our own shoes.  We continue working on the sight word "the" and size sequencing items.  The Little Red Hen makes an appearance with a recipe for bread and the "Rhyming Dust Bunnies" also stop by to make rhymes with word families that we've already learned (and some we haven't for a little added challenge!)

17. Doctors {Download}
The doctors pack is intended to help children feel comfortable going to the doctor, even if it's just for a regular check up.  We talk about all the body parts and how we can tell if they are working and growing correctly.  H the Horse from the Amazing Action Alphabet goes to the doctor when he is stung by a hornet.  There is a letter H hidden picture and "the" puzzles. 

18. Caterpillars {Download}

The letter C makes it's appearance now in our curriculum.  We learn all about caterpillars and their life cycle.  There are puzzles, size matching games, tracing and word families.  We also continue non-standard measurement and introduce the vocabulary "near" and "far". 

19. Pumpkins {Download}

Pumpkins is another fantastic day in school.  We spend the day exploring pumpkins in many different ways.  We measure their weight, height and width.  We dissect them and talk about all the parts of the pumpkin plant.  We find out if they sink or float.  The printables are great with puzzles and songs, recording sheets for the science experiments, hidden letter coloring pages, size sequencing, shadow matching and tracing. 

20. Halloween {Download}

Halloween is a very exciting time of year.  With this complete lesson plan you're ready to make the most learning happen around an exciting holiday.  There are two mini books that now feature tracing pages and coloring pages.  Make the jack-o-lantern's face match the text and trace the words in the Halloween beginning reader.  We're still comparing objects by single characteristics and developing vocabulary around different traits. We get to review the letters we've learned thus far and can trace them on fun Halloween monkey pages.  There are pages to make your own haunted house writing and add Halloween characters, we're determining which is different and practicing the sight word "the"!

**Preschool packs are lesson plans intended for a small preschool classroom or homeschool.  They are not to be used individually as they follow a year long curriculum that builds upon itself.  The themes specify what the underlying topic is that we'll be talking about with literature, in our art, and any science or social studies activities.  Reading and Math activities most often do not relate to the theme and these lesson plans are heavy in the reading and math department.  Printables expand on what we're able to cover in our 2.5 hours allotted to learn the materials and are often used as homework practice. The reading lesson plans are designed to be used with all the materials from the Amazing Action Alphabet and have been proven to teach children to be successful readers.

**Each preschool pack has 3 pages of lesson plan ideas.  Each child should be introduced to activities that don't involve something you can print from a computer, such as building blocks or painting.  These first 3 pages of lesson plans have all of the ideas that match the theme in one easy spot.  The lesson plans pages are organized by subject for easy referencing.  I've linked many of the materials listed to Amazon.com to provide you with more information about products you might want to consider using.  These packs have a lot of research behind them as I am a licensed teacher with experience teaching PreK-2nd Grade for 10 years.