Monday Preschool - Wind

What a fantastic day of school!  I love talking about the wind with preschoolers.  They get such a kick out of it. We started the day off tracing our names at the tables and then we met at the rug to work on our reading skills.  I read a few books about wind to them and then we practiced the 4 things that good readers do.
We look with our eyes.
We point with our fingers.

We make the letter sounds with our mouth.
We listen to the word with our ears.
Great reading!

The letter of the week is W and the w book from the Amazing Action Alphabet always makes the kids laugh.  Be sure to pull it out of your child's backpack and read it with them.

 For art we were supposed to do a mud art project, but due to the snow we had to pass on it for today.  Instead we pulled out our journals and drew and wrote whatever we wanted.

 Next came our science time.  We pulled out a couple of fans and everyone got a feather to play with.  They had so much fun chasing their feathers around in our homemade wind :)

 We're continuing our unit on coins and today we talked about dimes.

 Preschool B is now working on R controlled vowels. This week we're talking about R controlled A.  Words like "car" sound like /k/-/letter name R/ instead of /c/ /a/ /r/ (like trying to say cat and throwing an /r/ sound on the end).

 Picking through the boxes of reading books to find one they like.

 We've been working on counting to 100 by 1's and 10's.  We've moved on to representing quantities with numerals.  We've been talking about all the patterns in the 100 chart and now we're putting those thoughts into practice by writing the missing numbers in the 100 chart.

 At the end of the day a little game of "Circus" broke out as we showed off tricks and set up chairs for the audience :).  It was a lot of fun.

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! :)

Trains - Monday Preschool

On Monday we got to talk about trains in preschool.  We had so much fun playing with the train tracks while everyone arrived. 

 We also had two boxes set up as train cars that we were coloring with markers.

 Everyone got a conductor hat (to keep) and a bandanna to wear for the day. Don't they look great?

 We've been working really hard at the basics of blending letters together to make sounds.  We've been playing the same game each day with different word families.

 This week is a review week so we practiced the letters that we've already learned.

Some of the preschool kids are ready for a slightly more challenging text so we started introducing Bob Books.

 Train art.  We used a picture of a train, colored it and cut it out.  Then we used parts of paper towel tubes to make them stand up and look like they had wheels.  They were fun to play with after we were done making them.

 We've started learning about coins.  On Monday we talked about pennies.  They are copper colored and worth 1 cent.

 The weather was still beautiful so we started preschool B in the backyard.  We had blankets and pillows and a couple of boxes of just right books for everyone to snuggle in and practice their reading.  (Oh, we had also set up the circus tent in case the wind was too chilly.)

We had book boxes out that they could choose from for reading.  It is helpful to let them start picking out what to read and practice identifying "just right" books that aren't too hard or too easy.

 Back inside we're continuing to work on counting to 100 by 1's and 10's.

 We started a book today about an Easter Egg Hunt.  We each drew and wrote about what we like about Spring/Easter time.

 "I like to find the Easter eggs."

 "I like to color the big eggs."

 "I like to find the Easter Egg."

 In our quest to count to 100 by 10's we've been playing with unifix cubes and images that represent sticks of ten. The goal of these cards is to organize them from smallest to largest.

What a great day of learning!

St. Patrick's Day - Thursday Tot School

Happy St. Patrick's Day everyone!  We had so much fun in school today coloring, painting, exploring our sensory table, reading books and playing with our large blocks and slide.  I forgot to grab green lentils, so we played with red lentils on a big oil pan. 

We explored some 3D shapes with St. Patrick's Day artwork.  I like to create these shapes with Velcro on the edges so that they can be taken apart and reassembled over and over.

We love playing with our large foam blocks and practicing walking up and down the ramps.

We painted short sections of paper towel tube with green paint as a St. Patrick's Day bracelet. 

We had a very fun art project today!  I took a piece of clear contact paper and attached a white frame around the edge so it left a sticky section in the middle.  We used pre-cut pieces of green tissue paper to create a stained glass window. They turned out awesome!