Where We Are In Place and Time

We had so much fun today talking about where we are in place and time.  With preschoolers it's a continual conversation to help them understand how each day is different and how they are represented on the calendar.  He acted out a whole week of waking up on a day, eating, playing, eating, playing, eating, brushing teeth, going to sleep, and waking up the next day.  While they were "sleeping" they were asked to figure out what day would be next when they "woke" up by singing our days of the week song.  They picked it up really quickly.  Encourage this conversation at home by telling them what day it is and asking them what day will be tomorrow.  The words "yesterday, today, tomorrow" are still not a concrete idea but the pattern of the weekdays should be well learned by now (at least in my classroom as we sing the days of the week all the time).  The kids were even singing it without prompting as they were working on their Very Hungry Caterpillar book today.

We spent a good deal of time talking about how things don't stay the same.  As we grow and learn time is passing and things are changing.  We talked about if we remembered when a sibling was a tiny baby and are they still the same tiny baby or have they grown?  We worked through a very real broken arm scenario with one of our gals by discussing how in the summer her arm wasn't broken and she could do whatever she liked, now her arm is broken and she has some limitations, but in a couple of months her arm won't be broken any more and she can go back to ice skating and other things she loves doing. 

 We've continued our lessons on digraphs (sh, ch, th, wh) and blends (bl, cr, etc).  We're seeing harder words (CCVC* rather than CVC**) in our reading books that indicate a blend at the beginning of the word.  We're also seeing more digraphs as we're ready to dive into more complex reading.  Our practice in 2D vs. 3D shapes is proving that these kids have quite nearly mastered this concept already.  I scheduled the whole month of November to work on them. Maybe we'll start counting faces and vertices, something I've never done with preschoolers before, but they're ready for more than just names. 

*CCVC = consonant, consonant, vowel, consonant

**CVC = consonant, vowel, consonant 

Race Cars and the Zoo

What a great time in school this morning.  Even with all the snow everyone was able to make it safely and we learned a ton!  I'm so glad we didn't have to cancel school but I was nervous for those of you on the roads.  This morning we were talking about letter R and race cars all day. Everyone LOVED the Usborne Race Cars book.  It has tracks for wind up race cars to go on.  It was a hit!  We also made a couple of cardboard cars and ran around saying /r/!  Each child got an eraser (cars, airplanes, boats or trains) and we raced them them in the air saying /r/!

 We had great reading lessons today.  I'm so proud of this class!  They are doing fantastic!  The letter R book introduced the sight word "to".  We practiced reading "to" with the sight word watch from the Moffatt Girls.  I was super proud of my second reading group who made great leaps in blending sounds together, they're getting it!

 For art today we played with a sensory bin of water beads.  It was used last week for our homeschool Bloodmobile lesson and since water beads tend to hang around forever we decided to play with them in preschool as well. After the sensory bin we had a fun math lesson about shapes.  We talked about all the shapes around us: the white board is a rectangle, the clock is an oval, there are triangles on the borders, etc.  Then each child got their writing notebook and went on a treasure shape hunt throughout the room.  They found lots of different shapes and drew what they found.  It was the cutest thing ever!  They were so busy with their "work".  Walking around and finding comfortable places like the stairs to sit and draw.  It was so cute and so fun!

 This afternoon we continued our Ready2Read lessons.  We started the Level 2 word wall with a few of the kids and began introducing consonant blends and digraphs.  We also got to read a new book "I Love You, Zooborns!"

 We also got to play with the water bead sensory bin after snack and I was quite impressed with the kids that were a part of the homeschool blood lesson.  They were telling everyone else about what the parts of the sensory bin represented.  I was happy to see that lesson stuck!

 After art we headed downstairs for math.  We're making our own books for math right now.  Each page has a number and a decimal street drawing to match.  We're working on labeling the houses ("tens" and "units") and drawing them appropriately.  We're working on making sure that 6 is represented with 6 units instead of 6 sticks of ten.  We'll work more on this the next couple of days before moving on to counting to 100.  Please continue to play the matching card game at home!

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!

Giggles and Gumdrops

What a fun day of preschool!  This morning we talked about the letter G with Giggles and Gumdrops.  G is a tricky sound to make.  I encourage kids to tip their head back and feel their throat to make the /g/ in the back of their throat rather than in the front of their mouth like /j/.  We read some very silly stories that really made us giggle!  Art and math were combined twice today.  We made fun gumdrop graphs and then made shapes out of gumdrops and toothpicks.  The gumdrops and toothpicks went home and you're welcome to decide their fate (they are technically spice drops, which aren't as commonly liked among preschoolers).  Then we  headed downstairs for math.  We talked about the four main shapes (circles, squares, triangles, rectangles).  One of the activities we did was to make lists of all the things around us that were each shape (clocks, beds, pizza, windows, etc.).  Please continue this conversation at home by pointing out different shapes in the environment. 

This afternoon we started our day with a number recognition activity.  Each child was given a pirate number graph and a die.  They rolled the die and colored in a square that matched the same numeral (dotted die and numeral sheet).  I was mostly watching to see if everyone knew their numbers 1-6.  This was a great activity to start recognizing groups of dots in specific patterns.  Every time you think of 4 you can easily picture the 4 dots on a die, right?  That's what I want our preschoolers to be able to do.  Know immediately the number represented on all of the sides of a d6.  (My husband told me I should just use d6 because I complained that writing the singular version of  dice over and over in a preschool blog was making me feel a little uncomfortable.  But he also warned me I'll sound like a Dungeons and Dragons player, which I'm not.  Anyway, I digress...)  We also worked hard on learning the letter Y.  Every student that is working on the Amazing Action Alphabet mini books said the /y/ sound as a /w/.  We worked on making our mouth ready to say the letter name "E" to say the /y/ correctly.  We then made great headway in our Ready2Read packets.  Every group should be finishing their current unit or even starting a new one on Wednesday.  Yay!

We read "Where the Wild Things Are" and drew our favorite parts and added words.  Each child took a turn sharing their book report with the rest of the class.  I was impressed with some new confidence in this exercise as a few students are finding their public speaking voice.  I'm really loving this simple activity and how we're really growing into it.

Have a great day of learning!

Ocean Animals and Interest Led Learning

What a wonderful day of school!  Today we learned all about the letter J this morning with our Ocean Animals theme.  We used the phonics headbands from the Moffatt Girls and added "tentacles" to the back of them.  It was so much fun to dance around as jelly fish.  We worked on reading the letter J and the J book.  We also spent some time going back to the beginning and reading together all the mini readers.  It seems that a couple of kids are stuck at about the B book.  When you are working on reading at home please back up and read the books that your child is attempting with most success and leave the other letter books (with more letters) for study later.  Next we worked on art, coloring J the Jellyfish and adding tentacles to her.  We also drew our favorite sea animals and practiced writing our names.  In math we continued graphing.  It was a super fun day!

 Preschool B had an interest led day today.  We started with our encyclopedias and each found a topic that was interesting.  I then pulled out kid books on the same topic to give them a larger browsing library.  We worked in our Ready2Read (congrats to the kids who passed of Level 1 Unit 4) and we worked with the letter G.  Make sure when your child is reading the g book that they make the /g/ sound in their throat.  For art we drew and wrote about what we had looked at in reading time.  There were space themes, animal themes, transportation themes and knights and dragons.  We spent our math time building shapes and building with shapes.  It was wonderful!

Snowy Dinosaurs

This morning we had a great time talking about snow.  We played with shaving cream and glue "snow" as well as powdered "snow".  We learned the letter F and never before has the letter F been so easy to teach (Thank You, Frozen!).  We're working diligently to sound out the letters and blend them into words. 

 One of the reading groups had a really fun time teaching their sock monkey all the things that good readers do.  It was so fun to watch them do this.  We also practiced tracing our names on snowflakes.  In math we continued working on graphing.  We did just a couple pages of practice on the SmartBoard before our time was up for the day.

This afternoon we were talking about the letter D and dinosaurs.  We started the day being paleontologists digging for dinosaurs in our mini sand boxes.  The kids really loved this activity. 

 We read a book about dinosaurs and used yellow markers to mark the words that we could read.  Then one group continued that strategy by marking the words in their mini readers.  We also read the page in our encyclopedia about dinosaurs.  In their encyclopedia you'll find a small paper glued into the dinosaur page.  It's a b and d reminder picture to help kids remember which is which.

We had a ton of fun with math today.  We're talking about 2d shapes and their characteristics.  Today we utilized a shape building toy I have to work on it.  I first pulled out the pieces to make a shape and asked them what shape I could make.  We talked about how we could know for sure what I was going to make (shape of the sides "curved or straight", how many sides, how many corners) and then I built it.  After the lesson I set them loose to make any of the 4 basic shapes on their own.  It was quite interesting to watch them figure out what pieces they need in order to complete the task.

We did a lot of great learning today. Don't forget that Wednesday is Polar Express day and kids are welcome to wear their pajamas and bring a teddy bear!

Hearts

We had so much fun ushering in February with our hearts theme.  We got to play with many of the sensory items and had so much fun.  We played with colored rice, tweezers, and play dough.  We're working on learning our shapes this month and had a great time talking about the heart and square shapes.  We continued to work on letter G and playing Hot Cross Buns on the piano. 

Toddler Hearts

We had such a fun and messy day learning all about hearts in tot school. We are working on identifying, sorting and classifying 2D shapes through the month of February.  We worked on the heart, circle and square in tot school today.  Be pointing out all the shapes at home and in your environment to your toddler.   We spent much of the day playing with play dough, rollers and cookie cutters.  Many of our supplies were colored purple today since it seems to be the color that gets left out most often and is taking up my cupboard space :).  We played in our rice sensory bin with heart containers putting them together and filling them with rice was certainly a big hit.  We also painted with shape stamps and used the tweezers to pick up small heart shapes.  We read a book about it raining hearts and making Valentines to prep for next week.  It was a great day! 

Manners - Tot School Tuesday

I made a silly picture mistake and uploaded pictures from my camera and my iPod at the same time and my computer went bizerk and ordered them all crazy, so I apologize about the random order of the pictures in this post. 

 We read the story "No, David!" and let David know when he was making a sad choice by shaking our finger at him and saying "/n/, /n/, /n/" to practice the N sound.  Then we made "Yes, ___(child's name)___" books.  We practice saying the sounds in our names as we wrote it on every page and then children drew/scribbled pictures of themselves doing good things like helping people, playing outside, giving hugs, etc.  When you read your book with your child ask them what good things they are doing in each picture.

 I left the blocks out from preschool patterning and they became pretend ice cream that we learned how to pretend eat without actually putting it in our mouth.
 We sang the song, "Do as I'm Doing" while we jumped, clapped, twirled and stomped.
 Playing with the Manners II tot pack.

 We're playing a little bit with ABAB patterns and today we explored the idea with beads which also helped us work on our fine motor skills.

 N the newt was so naughty because he painted with finger nail polish on the wall.  We painted with finger nail polish on our papers!

 At one point I was being mobbed with kids who wanted to play our shape learning game.  We're working on learning 2D shapes through February and then we'll play with 3D shapes in March.