Earth Day

This morning in preschool A we had a great time learning about plants.  And how fitting that it fell on Earth Day.  We talked about the parts of plants that we eat (a review) and then had oranges for snack time.  I love having the preschoolers peel their own oranges.  They feel so proud of themselves when they are successful.

 After snack we dissected seeds.  The key to this is to soak large beans (I use large white beans) overnight and then let the kids take them apart. There is the skin, the food (cotyledon), and the baby plant inside each seed.  It's fun to let them discover this.  Then we moved on to art where we made pictures of plants and labeled them with their parts.

At the end of the day we reviewed numeral 7 and introduced numeral 8 on the TouchMath app.

This afternoon we had a fantastic lesson about reading strategies.  We talked about how we're really good at all the things that good readers do (look, point, listen, say sounds).  Now we need strategies to help us when words are harder than the basic phonics we know.  Each child now has a flip book of reading strategies in their baggy book to help them when they get stuck.  If they ask you what a word is in their book turn the question back to them and ask what strategies they have used to try and figure it out.

 Our reading lesson moved into a lesson about cement patios as the cement truck (finally) pulled up and there was a group of men working on pouring a patio in the back.

We continued our lessons with work on decomposing numbers and counting to 100.  We're working on writing numbers to 100 and then counting to 100 by tens.

Trees

This morning in preschool we had fun talking about the different types of trees and how they change (or don't change) through the seasons.  We drew trees and learned the letter X.  We worked on our super fun X book "Max" from the Amazing Action Alphabet.  We did leaf rubbing pictures and learned the number 7.

This afternoon in preschool we had a really fun lesson about our reading strategies (what we can do when we're reading and we are stuck).  We worked on utilizing those strategies in new guided reading books that are a bit trickier for us.  In art today we made our own puzzles.  They were super fun and are REALLY hard to put back together.  We continued our work on numerals and the 100 chart.  Today we also started talking a little about comparing numerals with "greater than", "less than" and "equal to". 

Animal Friends and Reading

This morning was so much fun playing with our Animal Friends theme!  We read "Brown Bear, Brown Bear" which is a perfect text to read the word "at".  We also read "Big Red Barn" and found all of the a's.  We had tons of fun coloring our A watches from the Moffatt Girls, playing on Starfall.com and working on our Amazing Action Alphabet activity page and handwriting page.

In math we had oodles of fun learning about MORE and LESS.  We watched a few short clips of Sesame Street characters explaining the concept and then got to work on our game.  This is a great activity to encourage identifying more and less.  If you don't have flip chips you can easily spray paint one side of a poker chip and achieve the same affect.

On Monday we had a monumental reading lesson in our morning class.  Today's monumental reading lesson was in the afternoon class.  The morning class will get this lesson in about 3 weeks, though it'll be a year long lesson.  It was such an awesome lesson that I have no pictures.  But I do have a video to walk you through it.  The video is 9 minutes in length but shows you the key parts of our reading lesson.  Please watch it to know how to support your reader at home or, if you are a teacher, watch to see the strategy I teach in my classroom.  (The video was too large and had to be split into two sections, find both below.)

In math we learned the rules to the game Compare. This game is identical to the card game "War" but sounds much nicer to call it "Compare".  Using a set of 20 cards each with a quantity of stickers 1-10 (done twice to make twenty cards) we split the deck evenly.  Each player turns over their top card at the same time and the person with more stickers gets to take both cards.  Continue play until your deck is gone.  Then pick up the cards you "won" and repeat.  This is a fantastic game to be playing at home!

Preschool B enjoyed drawing and writing with colored pencils today and we had a fantastic time doing the "Freeze Dance" during music.  It was a great week of learning!

Wednesday Preschool - Planting Seeds

Spring is in the air and we're planting seeds at Little Adventures Preschool! First, we started with ice cube trays and children's tweezers.  The goal was to sort all the beans into the tray according to type (color).

 We had a review of #1 and introduced #2.  These number packets will be coming home with kids next week.  Please use a wet erase marker or a dry erase crayon to complete the pages. This is the new homework and should be done a minimum of a few times a week, every day if possible.

 We did seed art today.  Each child got their own bottle of glue and was instructed to make a flower out of the seeds. They turned out very cute.

 We also planted our own seeds.  We started by poking holes in the bottom of egg cartons (so the water could drain).

 Then we filled up the holes with dirt.

 And added seeds. We planted 8 peas, 1 sunflower and 1 pumpkin.  Keep them warm and moist at home and plant them outside when they pop up.

 We're practicing writing the number 2 in the air.

 We've been learning Old MacDonald on the piano.  It's so fun to watch them pick up the patterns.

 Afternoon preschool started with sorting beans as well (who can pass on an awesome activity that is already out and ready to play with?).

We also practiced reading our level C DRA reading books.

 Since we've been working on fluency, we started recording our reading and listening to the recording.  They get a kick out of this, and if you have the availability to record at home please do.

 Our math challenge increased today.  I had the kids put the numbers in the calendar chart and they discovered that the calendar doesn't follow the same patterns as the 100 chart.

 Art today was a chalk exploration outside.  Yay for being able to be outside more often.

Animals in Spring - Preschool Wednesday

We had a lot of fun learning about animals in Spring today in preschool.  We've been working on puzzles all year long and are starting to get into bigger puzzles (24+ pieces).  Be sure to play with puzzles at home to foster critical thinking skills. 

 We also got to play with the spring eggs and try to match them and put them together (and of course take them apart!).

 The kitty and the tiger.

 Everyone got a copy of Mouse's First Spring.  We practiced reading it together as a group.  We worked on staying on the same page, pointing to the words, and saying the words that we already know how to read (or had memorized by the end of the story).

 The tiger and the lion.

 Art was seriously adventurous today...

 We each picked a flower color and were supposed to match the decorations of our flower to the color of the paper we picked.  Some of us got it, some just had fun making a collage.  At a minimum, we all had super fun.

 What happens when you give a bottle of glue to a 4 year old?  He decides to glue his hair and then needs to give himself a bath in the sink.  Silly boys :)

 Today we moved onto nickels.  They are silver colored and worth 5 cents.

 In afternoon preschool we continued with our Easter book.

 We sorted some pictures, worked on the short e sound and started learning about sentences.  Please start pointing out capitals at the beginning of a sentence (we colored them green to signal "go") and punctuation at the end of sentences (we colored them red to signal "stop").

 Then we drew a picture of our favorite part of the story.

 We had free art with all the supplies from the morning class, and once again...a large mess ensued.

 Thank goodness they were willing to clean it up in the end! :)

Wednesday Preschool - St. Patrick's Day

Celebrating St. Patrick's Day is always so much fun.  Kids are really a fan of the large motor hopping game that's in the St. Patrick's Day preschool pack.  We play this game throughout the year.  It starts simply with just jumping from spot to spot until you get to the end.  Then we count each jump along the way.  Now, we're ready for something more difficult.   It's like a human sized board game.  We roll the dice and jump that many spaces and repeat until we get to the end.  Preschooler LOVE this!

Making shamrock hand prints.

We're still working very hard on learning what a good reader does.  (Look, Point, Say the Sounds, Listen to the Sounds) I have a word at the top of the board with a green light on the left hand side (to indicate the starting position) and a red light on the right hand side to indicate the ending position.  Then we practice sounding out the words.

We're learning about the piano right now and how to play a pattern on a piano.  There is a great webpage that has a piano that words wonderfully on the SmartBoard.

As we work on identifying 3D shapes we're exploring if they roll down a slide, bounce, or slide.

Putting together our own paper cylinders.

Working on some comparing and contrasting reading comprehension.