Hearts and a Day of Math

This morning in preschool we talked all about hearts as we get ready for Valentine's to be upon us next week.  We split into groups and played with some heart shaped boxes and toys and read.  We worked on reading about a snow zoo, which was really fun, and we drilled the importance of pointing at what you are reading.  We giggled about the different mistakes that I made when reading to the kids.  I'd point at the /a/ and say /z/ or at the /I/ and say /pickles/.  It was quite silly but it started to click!  Yay!  Point at the letters and make the correct sound at the same time.  Keep working on this at home!

 We also got to make tissue paper hearts in art time today.  The sticky contact paper proved to be a challenge at first but then they got the hang of it.  After art we played with pink play dough for a bit and then played with the shape blocks while I did a quick assessment to see what 2D shapes we were struggling with as a class.  It seems the rectangle and hexagon were the hardest.  Honestly, the hexagon doesn't really count in preschool.  It's an advanced shape for those ready to learn another shape.

 This afternoon, believe it or not, we spent 2 hours and 45 minutes on math.  I know.  I can hardly believe it and I taught it!  It was engaging and fun and lots of "I love this game" though we weren't playing what I would categorize as a "game".  We played with the foam TouchMath numbers while I did a quick check to determine who knew the numbers 0-9 and which numbers were still a struggle.  It turned out that the majority of the class knew 0-9 and were ready to work on numbers 11-20.  We spent time doing a lesson very similar to MathUSee with their concept of "Decimal Street".  I love how MathUSee is taught (at least the primer level) and was happy to have a more concrete example of place value to work with my preschoolers on.

 We worked mainly on the concept of a maximum of 9 units can live in the units house and when another unit wants to move in they form a stick of 10 to move to the tens house.  We will play with this concept with unifix cubes next week so they can stick the actual cubes together and move them into the next house (that's the downfall of base10 blocks, you have to trade them in).

We then cut out and played a numeral and picture matching game.  I would link the download but I didn't make it and it's now longer available :(.  Work on matching them at home every day and send the cards back on Wednesday next week so I can assess how they are doing.  This is an exciting time where we get to explore more about number sense and bigger numerals, yay!

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!

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! 

Giggles and Gumdrops

I love giggles and gumdrops day.  We read all these silly books and practice giggling, which then inspires more giggling and then we simply giggle all day long.  We started the day sorting out our hearts to put together our February calendar.  We worked on finding each number and putting it in order on the calendar.  We learned about the circle and how it has now straight sides or corners.  We also got to graph gumdrops and then make them into different shapes with toothpicks.  It was so much fun!