Wednesday Preschool - April Showers

Wednesday Preschool started with puzzles and name tracing, then moved right into cutting.  We spent nearly 45 minutes cutting out the cards we would be using for school and homework.  I was really impressed with the kids as they worked hard to cut out all their cards. They've come a long way!

 After all the cutting we played a the games.  I hope by now you've seen these games in your child's backpack and you have gotten the chance to play them at home.  Stack all the green numbers on the green square.  Put the same number of raindrops on the clouds as the green numeral.  Take the top numeral off and do the next number.  Some kids picked this up very quickly.  When playing at home they just need a thumbs up from an adult to move on to the next number.  Other kids are working on one-to-one understanding need an adult to sit with them and help them put one raindrop on at a time while counting out loud until they reach the desired number. Others are in-between the two stages and will need some assistance.

 Clean up!

 We learned all about the water cycle through books, songs, and videos.

 They were really excited to dance to this water cycle video.

 Afternoon preschool started with our companion reading book that works on the diphthongs /oi/ and /oy/ (like in boy, toy, coin).

 Though they could read these books mostly by themselves I decided to make it the companion reading book because it was quite a struggle to make it through the longer text.

 We also read a level C book "Go Away, Lily!"  We talked about cause and effect, words that start with R, and exclamation marks.

 We've been working on representing numerals to 100.  We did a quick review today before moving on to comparing numbers.

 I've very loosely introduced "greater than" and "less than".  They have pictures of alligators that are going to the beach for the picnic.  They only want to eat the biggest picnic and need to point their mouth towards the largest quantity.  Right now the quantities are shown as base ten block images and most are visually discernible.

 Next week we'll move on to identifying greater than and less than according to numerals (they'll build the numerals with blocks for a bit).

Wednesday Preschool - Zoo Animals

We had so much fun today learning more about the letter Z and zoo animals.  I didn't put the blow up zoo animals out on Monday hoping that they'd be more engaging after they'd played with the other zoo items we had around.  They turned out to be a hit!  

 We also had the little finger puppets out still and due to a dump truck toy being left out by my boys the night before a new game appeared... feeding the blow up animals the finger puppet animals.  The tiger finger puppets were the big blow up tigers food, the elephants were the elephant food, and so on.  The truck became the transport and sorting center.  (and no, I would have never thought to leave out a truck on purpose, what creative kids!)

 We have been working on shared reading throughout the year.  A shared reading is when everyone has a copy of the text and is responsible for following along and I read out loud.  On Monday we paused before reading the text on every page and did a word/letter hunt in the text for words/letters that we know.  I love doing shared readings because there are so many skills that simply need a repetitive practice to master.  Some of these skills we're working on include: holding the book the correct way (upright and forward), turning one page at a time, following directions and staying on the same page as a group.  Today's shared reading was a great success as kids were monitoring themselves and offering to assist their neighbors if they got lost.  It is so heartwarming to watch how they interact at this time of the year.  They've grown together as a school family.

 VB decided to put a stool right next to my rocking chair and wanted to be my helper all day.  It was so cute.

 During our music time all of the blow up animals were invited to sing along with us.  I can't believe how great our class is at our program songs already.  They picked them up so quickly.  Be sure that you've marked your calendar for our end of year BUG celebration to watch their cute performance.

 Drawing our favorite zoo animals.

 We've been working on recognizing the numerals 0-10 and got to play on Starfall.com today on the SMARTBoard.  Every child got to take a turn picking a number and completing the activities that went along with it.

 Working on our puzzles.

 These two boys were so creative.  One was a tiger (ZR) and one was a bear (CJ).  They were piling up the blow up animals on this bench and then they "Needed to eat meat!" so they'd rambunctiously pretend to eat all the animals.  Okay, now that I type it it sounds gruesome  but when they were playing it I thought it was quite ingenious.

 Afternoon preschool moved on to reading a level C book called "Sherman Sure Is Shy" from ReadingA-Z.com after playing outside for the first 15 minutes of the day (it was so warm and we couldn't resist!).

 We talked about the definition of a character and described Sherman's thoughts, feelings, and actions.

 I thought today's math activity was going to be incredibly awesome and engaging.  I was wrong. :( They weren't very interested in matching the numerals to the images of the numbers and the puzzles (being only 6 pieces) weren't difficult to put together without paying attention to the numbers.  It also turned out to be not such a great printable due to the images of the numerals.  I didn't notice before we started playing with it that the base ten blocks weren't separated in the ones category, they were rods just like the tens.  I think it ended up more confusing than anything.  Oh well.  We'll try a different activity next week.

 We did more studying about worms, their body parts and habitats since we'll be doing our mud and worms day on Monday.  Be sure to watch your email for details about that, it's sure to be a messy day!

Vegetables - Monday Preschool

On Monday we got to study the letter V and talk all about Vegetables.  When kids arrived we had plenty of fruit and vegetable cards and kids could either match them to their written word or find matching pictures. 

 We are loving the green spots for group time.  They're just place mats, but they are a perfect size for fitting little bodies and are helpful in defining space for each person.

 EMan got to stay for preschool today since his sitter was unavailable and he did very well.  He's actually the same age now as CJ was when he started just less than 2 years ago.  He's ready to play and participate and I can't wait for him to join us in the fall.

 We enjoyed a variety of vegetables for snack time.

 Art turned out really cool.  We had left over broccoli and zucchini from snack and we used it to paint with (instead of paint brushes).

 Calendar time.

 As we continue to work on recognizing numerals we get to play fun games.  Today we played the "Race and touch the number game" :)

 Working on our numeral workbooks.  These have now been sent home.  Please use a wet erase marker or dry erase crayons on them to complete them every day.  Wipe them off and use them again.  Do this for the whole month of April to reinforce the numerals 0-9.

Utilizing the TouchMath texture cards to trace the number 3. 

 Afternoon preschool has been working on R-controlled vowels.

 We're also working on thinking about books as we read them.  We're doing a number of story maps for the books that the kids are reading and for books that I read aloud to them.  Writing down the information (who, what, where, when, why of the story) helps us visualize what we're thinking about when we read the story.  Keep asking your kids all those important questions about the books you are reading aloud to them.

 It was requested that we paint for art today, so we did...

 What an awesome day!