Review Day 1-14-2015

We had so much fun this morning in Preschool A.  We continued practice on our name writing pages and they are looking so fantastic!  Once we had practiced our names a few times we also worked in the Amazing Action Alphabet Handwriting 1 book and did a trace and cut assessment page.  We had tons of fun working on our letter N book at the SmartBoard and learning that an exclamation point means that the sentence is yelled (I apologize in advance for them yelling "NO!" at the end of each page, I was trying to make a point :) ). 

 We also continued our work on ABAB patterns.  Our tool of choice today was colored chips.  We made long snakes in our patterns and then mixed them up and did it again.  We utilized VirtualPiano.net to practice the piano on the SmartBoard because it gave me the ability to circle sets of 2 black keys and 3 black keys and write on the page "A" and "B" above certain notes to practice making musical patterns.

 This afternoon we worked hard in our Ready2Read program.  What you can't tell from the pictures is that my house, and the children, were all covered in glitter by the end of reading.  Glitter certainly makes learning sight words that much more fun!  Four kids passed off their units and moved on to more sight words and word families.  They really like when the whole class cheers for them, it's so cute.  Writing today was tons of fun.  I read "Alice the Fairy" by David Shannon aloud to the class.  Then we did a 5 finger retell as a group.  We each shared our favorite part of the story and then we went to work drawing and writing about that part in the book.

 The kids really enjoyed math today because it involved playdough.  We made the playdough together and then worked on making our 3D shapes with it.  Today was the last day of 3D shapes since we'll be working on coins for the rest of the month.  Please point out spheres, cubes, pyramids, cones and cylinders to your kids as often as possible.  This is important vocabulary.

What a great day of learning!  Enjoy Monday off for MLK Day!  See everyone Wednesday!

Manners and what was supposed to be Karate...

Yesterday in preschool we had a fantastic time talking about manners, though manners may not be the appropriate word to describe it.  We talked about what good behavior should look like and practiced making the "/n/ /n/ /n/" sound at "David" the book character from "No, David!".  The kids loved it!  Our sight word for the week is "no".  Please read them the book "No, David!", you'll find it in their binders.  While you are reading PLEASE let them read the word "NO" every time you come to it.  You'll also find the word "I" and the word "the" (I think) that they can read as well.  We'll work on the letter N Amazing Action Alphabet book tomorrow in class.

We also spent a great deal of time talking about how to write our names.  It's our goal to have the 3 year old class writing their names by Valentine's.  That's just a month away!  Be sure to practice EVERY day!  Sometimes it works better to use a wet erase marker on the lamination because they have such a fine tip, if you need one please let me know - I have a stash and would happily share.  One of the things we spent a lot of time on was the shape and size of each letter in our name.  Trying to see the shapes of the letters in order to draw them.  There is a great app called iWriteWords (no I'm not paid by them or anything, but if they want to contact me I'd happily give away a copy of their awesome app to a reader on my blog).  Anyway, if you have a device that you let your kids play on, consider installing the app and improving their handwriting skills at the same time.

Wow.  Certainly a lot happened in school yesterday.  We also had the great opportunity to paint with nail polish yesterday.  It's a super fun activity for the kids to practice painting and putting lids on and taking them off.  We only had one bottle drop and explode, phew!  I've already cleaned up with nail polish remover and I'm happy to have all the nail polish given away to preschool families so I can move past this activity in my house. Once again ... phew!

 This afternoon was a whirlwind of reading.  It was the type of day where we never got to our theme (Karate) and only got the bare bones done.  We are doing a little rearranging and with everyone's help (ahem...homework) we'll get into a better spot where I don't have to do 6 different lessons for 8 kids.  We practiced the letter K and worked on reading our Amazing Action Alphabet K book, we began Ready2Read Level 1, we continued work in Ready2Read, we ran around the house like crazies for a few minutes after snack and we drew pictures in our journals while I chatted with adults after class.  There is so much learning going on at this stage of these awesomely absorbent brains that I simply can't fit it all into our short time together each week.  Thanks for enabling your kids to reach great potential by supporting their learning explorations at home!

Sharing and Manners

Today was a great day learning all about sharing and manners.  We had a review of letters in the morning and the kids are doing fantastic!  We started the day playing with puzzles.  If your child struggles with 12 piece puzzles I'd highly suggest getting a couple for Christmas and practicing with your child.  Being able to put a puzzle together is a problem solving skill that needs to be learned.  We simply don't have enough time to practice enough in school.  We had a blast fishing for letters during our review.  Once a letter was caught we sang the "Every Letter Makes a Sound" song for that letter and then put it back for someone else to catch.  We enjoyed art time drawing pictures in our notebooks and working on a secret art craft that turned our toes green!  We learned about graphing in math today.  It was an introduction that used hats as the example.  We only wear our own hats and they have to go right on top of our head or they will fall off if we put them up too high.  They did great for a first introduction!  We also played "Motorboat" for music time talking about the tempo of music, boy did they love that!

 This afternoon we also talked about sharing and manners.  Our focus, however was the letter N and naughty behaviors.  We learned the sight word "no" and read the book "No, David!"  We talked about N the naughty newt painting with nail polish and then had a chance to paint with nail polish in our notebooks (yes, my house is still stinky)!  We also worked on a secret art project that turned our toes green.  That should wash off quickly :).

Manners

We had so much fun today.  As a review day we got to plug in all the activities that we've missed in the last few weeks.  We got messy and had lots of fun.  The kids really loved the "No, David!" series of books and read them over and over.  We continued working on AB patterns and hope to move to AAB patterns next Tuesday.  

Manners

Tot school this week was all about manners and the letter N.  We had so much fun playing with Starfall.com and the letter N.  The kids LOVED the part where the little boy is swinging a net to try and catch a butterfly.  They played that page over and over again.  They also loved running around with the flip chips using them as "money".  I believe it was raining money on people and the trampoline was the "bank".  We also spent much of the day playing with the peg boards building many towers. 

Manners

We had a great day in preschool today!  It was fun to learn the letter N with manners and "No, David!".  We continued working on AB patterns and are starting to understand the concept.  We also got to paint with nail polish today!  Since it was such a small group I also let them paint their finger nails in addition to the paper.  We had so much fun!