Tot School - Doctors

We had such a blast today talking about Doctors and the letter H.  We had out the baby dolls and 300 bandaids to start.  I love having young kids play with bandaids.  The fine motor skills required to open the package and put the sticky bandaid on something successfully is amazingly difficult.  Plus, they have a ton of fun doing it!

 We had a pretend doctor visit and made charts of how tall everyone is (not exactly accurate, if you're wondering).

 We also added our weight to the doctor chart (also, not accurate, but close). 

 We had our first formal writing activity today as we practiced using pencils to trace the letter H.  We learned the song "Head, Shoulders, Knees, and Toes" and had it playing on loop for about an hour for background noise.  It was fun to listen to them sing along from time to time. 

Doctors and Graphing

We had so much fun being doctors this morning.  H the horse needs help from a doctor so we practiced our skills.  Many of us were covered in the nearly 250 band-aids that we used up this morning.  Thank goodness the kids were such great helpers at cleaning up all the garbage!

 We did a few different activities for art today.  We worked on the H the horse maze from the Amazing Action Alphabet, we made doctor charts and marked our height and weight, and we did an eye dropper on coffee filters art.  It was such a blast!

 We had one of my favorite math lessons this morning.  We talked about above/over and below/under.  It's the one day that I tell them to stand on a table or chair and they think they've won the lottery! We do it over and over.  I say, "Make your body be OVER a table or chair." They all scramble to a new location and we raise our hand over our heads and say "Over! Over!" Then repeat with under/below and above.  So much fun!

 This afternoon was awesome!  We had great reading lessons and even got a jump start in learning the sight word "my".  Our math was so much fun because we quickly reviewed all of Comparing and Classifying objects and were able to move on to graphing.

 We practiced our cutting today by making "spider webs" or anything each child wanted to make out of coffee filters.  We finished up our lessons early enough that we spent the last 10 minutes outside.  Wasn't the weather beautiful?

Bears and Bats and Helpful Kids

Preschool had a fantastic time learning the letter B this morning.  We talked about bears and bats and read oodles of books about them.  We were able to split into reading groups to work in smaller groups on our reading for the first time today.  The kids not working with me got to "read" the books about bears and bats to a sock monkey. 

We practiced with our letter cards during reading today.  You'll find them in their binder in a Ziploc baggy.  You can play with them like we did (identify name and sound) or you can play Making Words with them.  Find the Making Words instructions on the bubble making words homework.

 During art we painted toilet paper rolls and made bears and bats.  They turned out super cute!

 This afternoon we were very busy with reading and I had left my camera upstairs.  I'm short on pictures of the day but we were not short on learning!  We learned about letter H as we talked about doctors, loosing teeth and not sharing germs.  We also talked about being helpful kids.  We read all about being a "Bucket Filler" in a few different books and then put a classroom bucket into action.  Our classroom bucket hangs on a wall and when kids do things that fill a bucket they are given a pompom.  When they distract from class or make a sad choice they go get a pompom out of the bucket and return it to me.  It was a great activity!   All the kids have a bucket they've taken home with them.  I encourage you to try it for a while!

We spent time working in our reading groups as well, each practicing at their own level.  Look in their binder for the new book today and work on reading that 3x a day (minimum).  Especially work on sounding out the words on the second page.  It's harder when it's not in an order they have memorized and really challenges them to do all the things that good readers do.

In math today we started "Guess My Secret Rule".  With 3 blocks having a matching attribute and 1 block not matching we ask our friend, "What block doesn't match?"  When they answer we ask, "Why?"  Some of the responses to "why?" may include: color, shape, size, or thickness.  You can play this game with a bucket of play kitchen items (3 spoons and a fork for example).  It gets more difficult with the attribute blocks that we use in class but the most important part of the game is being able to verbalize "Why?"

Doctors

Last Thursday we had a fantastic day learning about doctors and the letter H.  We started the day with many fine motor games including using tweezers to pick up pompoms and cheerios and put them in containers. 

 We had a great day of reading one-one-one.  We worked on the H book but also reviewed a few other books.

 The kids were excited about the opportunity to learn above/over and under/below.  I let them stand on the table (aren't they excited!) and crawl under the table.  We also do the H the horse maze from the Amazing Action Alphabet, danced and played doctors.  We had a great time!

Doctors

Ok, we had so much fun today that I simply couldn't do any less pictures!  They are all so great.  We learned about doctors and the letter H today (H the horse is helped at the hospital by a doctor).  Check out the corresponding tot pack here. We had so many activities and so much fun today!  One of the activities that was out right off the bat was filling bottles with pompoms and cheerios.  There were tweezers out as well to make it a little more challenging. Toddlers (and even my kindergartner) LOVE this activity!

 We also had the doctor set out with the baby dolls and about 100 band-aids.  Yes, I let the kids put the band-aids on anything they wanted too.  Yes, I did have to clean up 100 band-aid wrappers and remove band-aids from most surfaces before the day was over.  (A note to the others that may try this at home: If band-aids get put onto clothing or carpet and are left there it is VERY difficult to get off.  I'm fairly certain it took me a few months last year to get some stubborn band-aids off the carpet.)

 We used eyedroppers to paint on coffee filters for art today.  My kitchen table is now stained a lovely hot pink :).  It'll take a few weeks and some magic eraser but it'll eventually return to normal. We used cupcake containers filled with water and food coloring as the paint.  The kids loved to stick their eyedroppers in the paint and then squirt it onto their coffee filter.  Today's theme ended up with lots of fine motor activities, which are fantastic for toddlers!

 After we did some major clean up we got to spend the last 15-20 minutes outside.  It's getting chilly here but they still love to go play!

I can't believe that I forgot to weigh each child and measure their height.  It's something we'll do with preschooler's tomorrow and had intended to do it with the toddlers today but it simply slipped my mind since it wasn't written in my toddler plans.  Oh well!  We had a fantastic day with fantastic kiddos!

October Tot Packs

October has already been so much fun for us at Little Adventures Preschool.  The tot packs for the month are now bundled and there is still a lot of fun to be had.  I still need to get some pictures taken care of, but they'll be coming soon!  Check out the details for the packs below:

October Tot Packs {Download all 4 October Tot Packs}
7. Safety {Download}
This pack is just full of great ideas for learning about Safety! Each pack includes links to all the books and supplies you'll need to have a fantastic time with your toddler learning about firefighters, policemen and staying safe!

Pictures and details of the completed pack coming soon!

8. Bubbles {Download}

Printables in this pack:

Introduction of letter B

Parts of a Face

Bubbles Songs

2 piece Puzzles

Primary Color Bubbles

9. Doctors {Download}

Printables in this pack:

Introduction of letter H

Naming Body Parts

Doctor Shadow Matching

Doctor Themed Songs

Location Word Book

10. Pumpkins - SUPER PACK {Download} (NOT included in the October download of 4 packs)
This pack is a SUPER pack, meaning it is so chalk full of ideas that you will not need to look anywhere else for ideas about pumpkins. There are many more activities in this pack than you will be able to complete in a week, so pick the ones you like the most and get playing!

Printables in this pack:

Introduction of letter C

Pop-Up Pumpkins

Pumpkin Clothespin Party

Matching Jack-O-Lanterns

Identifying parts of the pumpkins face

Size Sequencing Pumpkins

Pumpkin Investigations

Jack-o-lantern Shape Matching

Lacing Pumpkins

Pumpkin Play-Dough

Pumpkin Songs and Poems

This tot pack has 3 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.

11. Halloween {Download}

Printables in this pack:

Costume Heads and Tails

How is the Jack-O-Lantern Feeling? A mini book.

Pumpkin Seed Counting Mat

Halloween Letter Review M, T, A, S, B, H, C

Halloween Color Matching

Halloween Shadow Matching

Halloween Tracing

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.  

Bodies, Doctors, and Germs

This morning we learned about bodies, doctors, and germs.  I started the day by reading a great book called, "Germs Make Me Sick".  I read the book while the kids were coloring K the kangaroo since it's a longer book.  You might not be able to tell, but in the picture just below the kids are kicking their feet to fight germs, just like K the kangaroo kicks /k/ /k/ /k/.

 After finishing the story.  I prentended to sneeze into my hand (after secretly putting glitter in my hands) and then I touched and shook hands with everyone.  It was great to watch their faces as they discovered that they were being covered in fake germs!

 Of course, that prompts a "Washing Your Hands" lesson.  Where everyone scribs and sings the ABC's.  We sing the ABC song while washing our hands because soap needs about 20 seconds to reach its germ fighting time, and the ABC's take just about that long to sing.

 We learned our new K book today about Kim the Doctor (or doc).  I'm so impressed with the kids focus on the letters and sounding out the words.  We tap the letters to give us something physical to do while reading.  So when reading the word 'Kim' they touch their pointer finger and thumb to sound out the K, their middle finger and thumb for the I, and their ring finger and thumb for the M, and then blend them together to make the word.

 The biggest new vocabulary word from today was limp.

 Once we figured it out we had to practice limping around the room.

 We used paper plates to draw on some faces and glue on a tissue and a hand to remind us to alway use a tissue - no nose picking please :)

 Math today was superb!  We started focusing on classifying groups of objects according to attributes.  So first I dumped out the silverware tray.  What do they all have in common?  They are all used to eat.  Next I added a paintbrush and we talked about why it didn't "fit" with the others.

 We did the same activity with a doctor set and a tool set.

 Then I introduced the attribute blocks.  I challenged each of the kids to make their own tricky challenge for me to figure out which item doesn't belong.  This was harder with the blocks since they could be sorted by size, shape or color (they didn't discover thickness today).

 We continued our study on how music has a beat by tapping our rhythem sticks to the songs of the Amazing Action Alphabet.