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?

Helpful Kids and Caterpillars

We had such a great time in preschool yesterday morning.  We spent the morning reading "The Little Red Hen" and making bread together.  Everyone got to put an ingredient in the mixer...

 Then they all rolled their own dough, put it in their pan and I put it in the oven.  

 It cooked while we continued our lesson about being Bucket Fillers and helpful kids.  We played with the kitchen toys after decorating our buckets and ended the day with a taste of yummy bread!

Afternoon preschool has really taken off with their reading!  I'm so glad that we have arrived at a place where kids can be actively working and playing while we do all our different reading groups.  We read Amazing Action Alphabet mini books, Bob Books and our Encyclopedias. 

 We've mastered the game "Guess My Secret Rule" and are ready to move on in math a bit earlier than expected, yay!  We had a great time reading and drawing about the life cycle of a caterpillar. 

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!

Helpful Kids

I love the theme "Helpful Kids".  We learn about the letter H and we talk about how kids have an important roll to play in the world.  We read few of the "Bucket Fillers" books and talk about how our actions affect not only ourselves, but the people around us.  All day long we get to put pompoms into our class bucket as we're doing things that really help out.

We spend the majority of the day working on our reading skills.  Now that we've introduced the letter H we can work on so many new words (ham, hat).  We love using whiteboards in our reading groups.  I utilize the Amazing Action Alphabet mini readers and write one word per board for each of the kids so they are each presented with a different word they need to read.  We go around the circle many times so that in the end they practice every word, but never right after the person before them. 

 Some of our preschoolers are still working on remembering our letter names and sounds, and that's a perfect place to be!  We practice with our letter cards from Amazing Action Alphabet because the picture of the animal always helps us remember the story about them and the sound they make. We also play funny word games with the white board.  I put a word on like "hat" and together we sound it our really slow, then a bit faster.  Then I'd say something like "I know, it says socks!" and they'd all giggle and we'd talk about how it can't say socks because socks starts with the letter s.  The concept of the letters matching the sounds coming out of your mouth in speech can be a really tricky one to master.  The more you play with the letters and letter games in words the better at this age.  We're having a fantastic time in preschool and I hope you are too!  Check out our Helpful Kids Preschool Lesson Plans Here!