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!

Families - A Preschool Review of MTA

We had oodles of fun in school today.  It's a letter review week and our theme was Families.  Each child started the day with puzzles of their own families that they had to put together.  They loved it and many of them kept hold up puzzles pieces and saying "This is my Mommy."  It was so cute! 

We talked about all the shapes that make up bodies and had a little art lesson about using the shapes to draw something.  We drew ovals for heads, rounded rectangles for bodies and arms/legs.  It was fun to go around the room and write down some details about what they were drawing. 

We worked on sounding out letters in words today since we're reviewing all the letters we've learned.  One strategy is to drive a car under the letters and while the car is under a letter we say the sound of the letter.  The car can drive on the street over and over while the word gets faster and faster. 

 We also had an introduction to numerical order today.  We started talking about first, second and third.  This isn't something that many preschoolers will master, but introducing the vocabulary is great at this stage. 

September 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 "September Preschool Packs" contain 7 theme based lesson plans, a total of 182 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. 

5. Feelings {Download}
Feelings are an important concept to develop vocabulary around during the preschool stage.  The feelings packs provides 37 pages of lesson plans and printable activity pages to talk about feelings.  We also cover the quantity of 4, size sequencing, colors that relate to feelings, music and mood.

6. Fall {Download}

"Fall" is the most jam packed preschool printable when it comes to printable activities.  There is a location word book with a scarecrow that gets to sit over the hay, in the corn, and behind the pumpkins.  With cute graphics from ScrappinDoodles I absolutely love this pack. This pack introduces the second letter that we learn this year.  Letter T.  I highly recommend that you follow along with us in this non-alphabetical order to learn your abc's.  It makes much more sense to teach a child how to read while learning their alphabet.  Learning them in isolation is confusing!  A great resource for the alphabet is the Amazing Action Alphabet.  I use their flip chart to introduce the letters and then their mini books to demonstrate how to read.  I followed this curriculum last year, and you just can't beat 6 of 7 kids ending our 10 months together knowing how to read.  What power they now have!  There are some fun songs that show up in the packs as well as some sequencing activities (such as the tree activity below).

7. Dentist {Download}

I like to print all the pages of my packs, cut and laminate as needed, and bind them into books with a comb binder. We use wet erase markers or dry erase crayons on the pages to keep notes, color, circle and trace things.  Wet erase markers and dry erase crayons wash easily off of lamination. You can use dry erase, but it doesn't clean off as well.

 The "Dentist Preschool Pack" has a memory game with small cards.  I'd recommend keeping them in a small baggy in a folder with your pack so you always have them handy!
The dentist pack includes 29 pages of lesson plans and activities.  We start talking about quantities up to 5, play with puzzles, explore visual discrimination and color capital and lowercase T's.

8. Opposites {Download}

The "Opposites Preschool Pack" has 3 pre-reading books with pages that illustrate different opposites.  I like to cut them out, laminate them, and bind them together with a simple binding ring.  We continue working on tracing, equal quantities up to 5 and the letter a.  This pack is 32 pages of awesome!  The opposites Tic-Tac-Toe game is one of EMan's favorite activities to play.  Though he doesn't have strategy to win yet he does have strategy to stop me from winning. It's so fun to have some intentional play time with my little man. 

 9. Animal Friends {Download}
The Animal Friends pack is 24 pages of letter review and activities about animals.  It is a review pack for the previous 3 letters we've learned (M, T, A).  There are phonemic awareness games in almost every pack and the one in this pack I completely love!  The way this game is laid out clearly shows parents and teachers how learning what sounds the animals make transitions into learning what sounds the letters make.  Both versions of the game are in this pack. This pack also finishes up the "More, Less or Equal" unit in math.  I very strongly believe that there are certain mathematical principals that kids need to learn BEFORE they learn to recognize numerals.

 10. Families {Download}

The families pack is 19 pages of lessons and activities about families.  It's a review pack that reviews our first 3 letters (MTA) and kids practice reading with a little Road to Reading game.  We practice reading the sounds of the letters as we drive our car on the road. It's so much fun your preschoolers will play it over and over.  Because of the sequential learning through my curriculum your preschoolers will be successful at reading these words (and nonsense words) even though they only know 3 letters.  This pack also introduces ordinal numbers, a short path game, tracing, visual discrimination, and sets up to 4. 

 11. Nursery Rhymes {Download}

I was told just before leaving the public school system on maternity leave that nursery rhymes are one of the most important things a kid needs to know before entering kindergarten.  The teacher that told me this is one of the most loved and respected kindergarten teachers I've ever met.  I remember then that I didn't know much about what a kid should know by the time they are school age.  Boy have I learned a lot!  There is overwhelming evidence that early learning of nursery rhymes and rhythmic poems, songs, and chants significantly enhances early reading skills and phonemic awareness. In fact research highlights phonemic awareness as a strong predictor of a child's reading success.  This pack includes a half dozen nursery rhymes (in case you've forgotten them from your youth).  There are also numerous activities that go along with nursery rhymes.  It's the last pack of review of the first 3 letters that we've learned and kids get to play this fun initial sound sorting game. There are pages in this pack specifically for art as well.  There are name recognition activities and a star for making into a twinkling star!

This set of September Preschool Packs is certainly moving our preschoolers in the right direction to be successful as adults!