Halloween is in the air!

Today was such a fantastic day in preschool!  We played on Starfall.com and read some Halloween stories to get started.  Then everyone helped decorate the classroom by cutting out pictures and taping them to the walls. 

 Every year we make "Ghost Footprints".  On a paper cut like a haunted house we paint our feet white and add ghosts.  A little tip - wrap completed feet in baby wipes to help with the cleanup process.  Also, having a trampoline for kids when their done is an added bonus since it takes time one-on-one to complete the painting part.  We'll write in our haunted houses on Thursday and then send our art home.

 We also worked on our books about Halloween and added skeleton bones to our body maps.

For math we worked on AB patterns with Halloween images, it was tons of fun!

Passionate Reading and Writing in Preschool

Chicka Chicka Boom Boom!  On Tuesday in preschool we used a loved classic to work on reading the word "and" as we reviewed the letter D.  We talked in great depth about how we don't write or color in books at the library, books at home, or books at Miss Amanda's house.  However, they were being gifted a special book where they had permission to highlight all of the words they know how to read in the story.  We read through the story together, highlighted the words we knew, and then read the story again...maybe even two more times.  The kids were so excited about their own books and a story many of them already loved.

 We also read two other story books and used all three read alouds from the day to make a graph of which story we liked the most.

 Yes, I really do teach kids to write this way.  In the bottom left picture you'll see how we worked on sounding out the following words: family, dump truck, Dora, Hello Kitty, villains, dinosaurs, dragons, and dino trucks.  We "grab" the word in the air and then slowly "stretch" it to find out what sounds we should write next (imagine grabbing bread dough and then stretching it long and thin).  We are not looking for accuracy in spelling here.  These guys are 4 years old, and even at 5 and 6 years old phonetic spelling is perfectly acceptable.  After we spoke in great deal about how to write words we continued our work on writing our very own books.  A few kids decided to start new books and the rest continued working on the book they started last week.  We have some great authors!  Encourage this phonetic spelling at home!

Nursery Rhymes and Elephants!

This morning in preschool we talked, actually sang, all about Nursery Rhymes.  When CJ was a newborn, I learned from a dear coworker that teaching children nursery rhymes before kindergarten was of the greatest importance to her.  She was the most fantastic kindergarten teacher I'd ever met and I want to make sure that these kids know their nursery rhymes.  That's why we sing them every week and have a few days each year dedicated to only doing nursery rhymes.  Sing and say them at home with your little ones to reinforce language skills that will help them as they grow and develop.  

In math today we went back to the unifix cubes to attempt to make AAB patterns. It's amazing how complex this idea is to preschoolers.  Please be patient with them at home as they clarify the information about the difference between ABAB and AABAAB.  Practice, practice, practice to make it easier!

 This afternoon our letter focus was letter E and boy did we have fun with it.  We had the blow up elephants and the circus tent out.  We played with all the animal masks and puppets and read "Hiccups for Elephant".  We had a fantastic time.  We moved forward with the Ready2Read program, drew pictures and wrote words in our journals and learned about pennies and nickels. 

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!

Play Ball and Ocean Animals

In preschool this morning we introduced the letter P with a "Play Ball!" theme.  We had tons of fun playing with different types of sports balls and talking about our favorite sport to play.  We used the foot print words under contact paper to play our reading ball game.  Everyone got a ball at the beginning, read the letter or word of each step they would step on and then shot a basket at the end.  They seemed to love it.  We talked about P the Pelican popping popcorn from the Amazing Action Alphabet and glued popcorn onto the activity page. 

 Each child got a couple baseball reading wheels today.  Check their binder for them.  We spin the wheel and say the letter name/sound or read the word.  The sight word "ball" was a new sight word today that needs to be memorized.  We continued our "Guess My Secret Rule" game in math.  Some of the kids were able to make their own sets without prompting and were allowed to go play the game as a group.  The rest of the group made sets with me following a step by step instruction.  "Take 3 blocks that are the same." (Interestingly difficult for them).  "Take 1 block that is different from the 3 you already had." (Relatively easy).  "Which block is different in your set?" (Difficult). "Why" (even more difficult).  PLEASE play this game at home to help us move forward in class!

This afternoon we had some fantastic reading lessons.  We practiced our nonsense words and sounds to warm up and then dove into some hard core reading.  We worked on the strategies readers should use when they get to a word they don't know.  There are 8 strategies in my February Dr. Seuss Preschool pack that we covered.  We'll continue referencing them as we're reading more difficult text.  We also talked about giving a 5 finger retell (1. Characters 2. Setting 3. Beginning 4. Middle 5. End). 

 We talked about ocean animals with the letter J this afternoon.  We read lots of books about ocean animals and found a great page in the encyclopedia that talks about the ocean.

 We continued our patterning in math by making patterns with giant beads.  We practiced making the patterns that were shown on the pattern cards today.  At the end of the day we enjoyed drawing with chalk in our notebooks.  The kids often talk about how their parents are going to be so proud of their art when they get the journal at the end of the school year.  It's so cute!

Spiders, Bubbles and a Hail Storm

This morning's class was all about the letter S as we talked about Spiders, Miss Muffet and the word "the"!  It was jam packed with activities right from the start.  They all have a new reading book, the letter S book.  I couldn't find my stapler so they are just a sheet of paper.  You can assemble them yourself or send them back Wednesday and I'll cut and staple them for you (found it at the end of the afternoon class!).  The S book is a BIG jump into reading skills.  We are blending words like "Sam" and "at" in the book and can now make "sat".  With the introduction of the sight word "the" we now have to memorize what "the" looks like and remember it!  It's not a word that can be sounded out like the other words.  We made bracelets and a clip card game with the word "the".  PLEASE point it out everywhere until your child has it memorized!  It will give them access to much more text this year once they've mastered it.  We also had a ton of fun making spiders in art and singing spider songs!

Our afternoon class focused on the letter B with bubbles today.  We had a great time blowing bubbles in the back yard.  We even tried to blow some for the chickens who seemed more scared than thrilled with the idea :).  We headed inside when the clouds began to rumble and spent the rest of the class time in the basement with hardly any mention of the larger than grape sized hail pelting down on the world around us.  Please work on the letter B book called "Bam" as homework.

 We drew and wrote in our journals all about blowing bubbles and we played with and started discussing the attribute blocks.  We will begin classifying the blocks with our game "Guess My Secret Rule" on Wednesday.  Have a great Monday night!  I look forward to seeing you all on Wednesday!

Dinosaurs in Preschool!

We had so much fun learning all about dinosaurs!  To beat the winter cold we decided to purchase the sand for our sandbox in January and fill up a swimming pool with it in the living room.  It made for a whole lot of fun for about a week!  The sandbox was filled with dinosaur toys of all sorts as well as paintbrushes for digging.  We read "Dinosaurs Before Dark" and practiced making dinosaur noises all day. 

 We wrote/drew book reports about the story we read before moving on to talk about patterns, practicing the piano, working with puzzles and reading more books.  It was a great day!

Wednesday Preschool - Manners

We continued to learn about manners through studying the letter "N" who happens to be a naughty newt.  They were still enthralled with the "No, David" series of books during our reading time.

 We watched the book "Fair Bears" to talk about what is fair and how we should be treating people.

 We tried flip chips today to practice patterning and I think we're starting to get it!  Please continue working daily on AB patterns with your child.

We played the Starfall.com board game to practice our letters and letter sounds while using our manners in taking turns.

 At the end of the day we pulled out all the dishes and dolls for some exploratory play.

 Afternoon preschool has been reviewing short vowel sounds while learning new letter rules.  Today we learned the sound that /sh/ makes.  Sh is considered a digraph: two letters that make a single sound when they're together.

 Matching /sh/ words.

 Practicing our numerals.

Monday Preschool - Manners

Monday preschool started with the unifix cubes.  We're still working on ABAB patterns and I'd encourage you to work on patterning with your child every day.  There seems to be a clear split in the class, either they understand the concept and are able to reproduce the pattern or they have not grasped the concept at all and build at random. It is okay for them to be in either stage, we're working towards understanding what a pattern is by the end of January.  For kids that are ready for harder patterns we'll be introducing AAB and ABB patterns in the next few weeks. 

 We learned that N the naughty newt (Amazing Action Alphabet) is in trouble for painting with finger nail polish on the wall.  We practice our polish painting on paper.

 We've really been focused on making the sound of the letter we see in order to read words.  If your child is struggling with letters please focus on the sound the letter makes at home, they can learn the letter name later :)

 The independent reading groups were very happy to explore the "No, David!" series of books.

 We started to follow a pattern on the piano today.  I showed them how to play the 2 black notes at the same time (2x in a row) followed by the adjacent set of 3 black notes at the same time (2x in a row).  This will lead to them mimicking sound patterns and playing simple patterns of notes.

Preschool - Moms

I don't often show pictures of us working on our name cards because I feel I need to protect the kids by blocking out their names and that's more work than I want to do every week. We do, however, do this activity often and it is very obvious how many families encourage their child to do their name tracing at home.  PLEASE do it weekly at a minimum and daily if you can.  Being able to write their own name is a goal for the end of preschool and I need your help at home to make it happen.

 We had a little "Listen and Move" break right away since we were a bit antsy.

 We learned how to spell mom and that good readers make the sounds of the letters they see written in words.  Each child got 3 circle stickers, each with one letter of the word "mom" on it.  We put the stickers on our fingers and tap our fingers to our thumbs.  When the letter is touched by our thumb our mouth has to make the sound that the letter represents. We say the sounds faster and faster until we know what the word says.

 Practicing our letter sounds.

 We took a little movement break and did a Sun Salutation (Yoga - Track 1 on Dance for the Sun).  I love this track because the lyrics sing the movement you should be doing, so with a very little yoga information you can be successful.

 Here are the boys working on reading their Letter O book about all the jobs moms do.

 We had our first lesson on patterns with some unifix cubes today.  Each child took home 20 blocks (theirs to keep at home) please help them make an AB pattern with their blocks EVERY DAY for the next 2 weeks.  You can also encourage them to make different designs and explore what they can do with the blocks.

 We ended the day working on the 2, 3, 2, 3 pattern of black keys on the piano.  We play the black keys all the way up the keyboard saying the number of keys we're playing.

 Preschool B is working on short vowels for the next few weeks.  Our focus for today was short e.

 We also spent a lot of time reading from our encyclopedias and finding all the vowels in every word.

 Coloring all of the vowels.

 We were reading about light and the different colors we can see with light in one of the encyclopedias and the kids decided that they wanted to paint and mix the paint to make new colors for art time.  So we did.

 We played with the Touch Math 3D Numerals for the first time today as we tried to match up the correct number of dots onto each numeral.

 I have to say that I've been quite leery of paint and messy projects lately since my house has been so clean (due to an awesome barter with an awesome mom).  Perhaps EMan is the true culprit in my leeriness since he had to have a mini bath in the kitchen sink before we could move onto math in preschool B...