Gingerbread Friends - Tuesday Tot School

Gingerbread Friends is one of my most favorite themes.  I think I say that quite often, so maybe I have a theme or two each month that are my favorites... maybe I just like my job :)

 Dry rice was our sensory snow for the gingerbread house to start the day.  It became a lot of fun to make it "snow" on the ground.  Dry rice and hard floors = slippery surface!  Children may have come home with a new bump on their knees.  I ended up vacuuming during class to avoid catastrophe :)

 Reading and listening to the Gingerbread Man.  "Run and run as fast as you can!  You can't catch me, I'm the gingerbread man!"

 We tried coloring on sandpaper with cinnamon sticks, but I think mine must have been too old since they did practically nothing.  Oh well. We also enjoyed playing with the Gingerbread Friends Tot Pack throughout the school day.

 We made gingerbread cookies.  Before rolling them out and cutting them we got to smell the dough first. What does it smell like?

 It became messy, so there are no more pictures after this of cutting the cookies.  I only have so many hands...

 Snack of vegetables while the cookies are in the oven!

 Decorating our cookies!

 Yum!

 Time to make a gingerbread house!

 Wow!  Look at all that frosting!

 The gingerbread play-dough was a lot of fun!

 We also painted with gingerbread scented finger paints (home made, check the tot pack for the recipe).  It's quite a squishy experience.

 At the end of the day we decided to color our gingerbread men with the scented crayons since the cinnamon sticks didn't work out as well as we had hoped.  Thank you to the families who sent crayons our way!  We melted them down, added some ginger and cinnamon oils and cooled them in little gingerbread shapes.  They are super cute and leave a great scent behind.

Monday Preschool - Sharing and Manners

It's December!  I can't believe it!  What a great time to review how to share, use manners, and work together!  Check out our sharing and manners lesson plans here.

 We played a fun walking game where we identified the letters we've already learned as well as some short words that we've learned to read.  I also did a quick assessment on each child to check for individual recognition of letter names and sounds.  You should have gotten a copy in your child's folder.  Please help them work on any letters that do not have 2 check marks by them.  Check marks means they know it.

 As we worked together we made a giant paper chain.  Did you notice it hanging on the wall in our living room?

 We started exploring tempo by walking, running, tip-toe-ing (did I just make that word up?), and hopping along to music according to the tempo and style of the music.  We had so much fun!

 We ended with a Sun Salutation (yoga) to get back into focus mode.

 It's a bit hard to tell from this picture, but we just finished making a graph of all the people that are in our families.  We have much bigger families this year than last years class.

 We ended the day working on our lacing skills.

 Preschool B started outside since the weather was so beautiful.  Can you believe it's this warm in December?  Here we are writing our sight words on the giant chalkboard.

 We headed inside to schedule our day.

 Working on our writing skills was the first task for the day.  We also wrote letters to our families.  They were super cute, I hope you found them in your child's backpack.

 Then on to reading. 

 3D shapes will be our unit of study for math in December.  We played with the wooden shapes first.

 We started making some paper 3D shapes as well.  Expect many of these shapes to make their way to your home this month.

August-December Tot Packs

Welcome to Little Adventures Preschool, Tot School! In my quest to homeschool my boys I've developed a curriculum that we'll be sharing throughout the year with our Tot School friends, you included! Tot school is a theme based exploration of books and manipulatives as a child's first educational experience.

Jumping on the Tot School bandwagon? Download all 19 August-December tot packs in one easy download. These packs are great for kids in the 15-36 month developmental age range. Kids older than 36 months will also benifit from playing the games. I know my 27 month old and my 47 month old love playing them together (in fact, they're a hot ticket item in my house). Enjoy!

http://www.teachersnotebook.com/product/LittleAdventuresPreschool/aug-dec-tot-packs-all-19-packs

This is aproximately 380 pages of tot packs to get you from August to December. For all of the pack details and pictures please see http://www.littleadventurespreschool.blogspot.com/p/tot-school.html

These printable lesson plans include resources for the adult to bring the theme to life as well as pages for kids to manipulate to enhance their learning.

To see our year long calendar of themes {click here}. Each week a new tot pack will be available for download for you to follow along at home. If you've never seen a tot pack before they are a bundle of awesome. {Click here} to see a general outline of what my tot packs look like.

In a year of tot school (intended for 15-36 month olds) we'll be introducing so many new ideas! Children will be exposed to the alphabet through a letter of the week. They'll listen to many stories and explore books of all shapes and sizes. Scissors, crayons, markers, and craft supplies galore will introduce new creative outlets. A first introduction to basic math concepts such as shapes, quantities, location words, and patterns will be explored through manipulatives of all sorts. Science activities and social skills also make the list of things to explore. Students will learn all about music through play and song. If you have a toddler, this is the place to be. A step by step curriculum that will enhance your experience with them.

I create all of my lesson plans to share digitally with other homeschooling families and small classrooms. If your child attends Little Adventures Preschool you can easily supplement their learning at home by downloading the lesson plans. It will also give you a good idea about what we covered. I always plan more than we will ever actually get to so there is often a great idea within the plans that you can share with your child to extend their learning. You can find all of my toddler and preschool lesson plans here: http://www.teachersnotebook.com/shop/LittleAdventuresPreschool

Find the year long theme calendar {here} and follow along with us!

Tot packs are about 20 pages in length. They each have 2 pages of activity ideas, book suggestions, and links to the materials I use. You can certainly use all or part of the lesson plans.  The printable pages include songs, matching games, drawing games and other activities. Tot packs are designed to be a first introduction to math concepts, letters, shapes and colors. They are not meant to obtain mastery in any subject. Let them be a guide for educational play between you and your child.

December Preschool Packs

Find the Year Long Theme Calendar here and follow along with us!

The preschool curriculum that is all inclusive and provides hours of fun and engaging learning!  The "December Preschool Packs" contain 7 theme based lesson plans, a total of 205 pages of lesson plans and activity printables.  My preschooler has begged to do his "homework" because it's a wonderful time that we spend together learning age appropriate concepts!  These plans are intended to be taught in a 10 month sequence from Aug-May, though may be adapted to use individually. 

You can now download the bundle of December Preschool Packs HERE, or get them individually by following the links below. 

27. Sharing and Manners {Download}

What can possibly be better than starting the holiday season with a good dose of sharing and manners review?  Start the month off on the right foot with the fun games, activities, books and lots of learning in the Sharing and Manners Preschool Pack.  We'll practice the letters and words that have been introduced already this school year and continue talking about syllables.  Work together to create a paper chain and start a study about graphing.  Continue your conversation about super friends and how they share! 

28. Gingerbread Friends {Download}
The gingerbread theme is one of my favorites to teach.  We have so much fun on gingerbread day.  It's filled with baking, sorting, graphing, syllables and ideas for Gingerbread based learning that leaves everyone happy!  Preschoolers will practice writing their letters, play with puzzles and size sequencing, read a fun position words book and explore graphing!

29. Snow {Download}
The Snow Preschool Pack continues our learning about syllables and graphing.  The letter F is introduced, don't you say /fffff/ when you're freezing?  There is so much fun to be had with different tracing pages, activities about symmetry, patterning, individuality of snowflakes and people, Tic-Tac-Toe, a spinner counting activity and a play-dough mat!

30.  Polar Express {Download}
I am thrilled with the (now 2nd) remake of the Polar Express Preschool Pack.  You'll find word family bells to practice reading all the letters that we've learned thus far. There are counting pages and a Do-A-Dot train.  You'll also find a hop along the path large motor game (one of our favorites to play at Little Adventures Preschool).  It's been introduced before as a jumping game, but now we'll start making it more challenging by adding dice. There is a pattern block train as well as patterning pages. You will practice making tally marks and discus comparison words like larger, smaller, fatter, skinnier.  There is a train for standard and non-standard measurement and a short path game with a spinner.  There are also train cards with sight words that we've learned this year for a game of Matching, Go Fish, or Memory.  You'll also find beginning sound clip cards with all the letters we've learned thus far and a few extras for an extra challenge!  

31. Ocean Animals {Download}
The Ocean Animals Preschool Pack introduces the letter J with a focus on phonemes (specifically initial phonemes).  We continue graphing with goldfish crackers and a cut and paste activity.  There is Sea Star Bingo, a play-dough mat, a beginning reader book, size sequencing activities, color matching games and a mini lesson on the different ways we can observe Ocean Animals since they live under water and we live on the ground!

32. Winter Holidays {Download}
December is considered the holiday season because there are so many holidays that we celebrate.  Different families from different cultures and backgrounds celebrate the holiday season in different ways.  This theme gives a few tidbits from a few of the December holidays.  You'll find beginning sound presents, a letter to Santa and a Santa paper doll, New Year's activities and countdown chain toppers!

33. Thank You Notes {Download}
This is a nice little set of plans to remind us to teach the importance of writing thank you notes.  There are a few letters that are set up as tracing templates to add details and write thank you notes.  We review counting the quantity of items, read a few beginning reader books, practice our graphing, play Go Fish and match uppercase to lowercase letters, and even cut out our own envelopes and practice folding it and a note card.

**Preschool packs are lesson plans intended for a small preschool classroom or homeschool.  They are not to be used individually as they follow a year long curriculum that builds upon itself.  The themes specify what the underlying topic is that we'll be talking about with literature, in our art, and any science or social studies activities.  Reading and Math activities most often do not relate to the theme and these lesson plans are heavy in the reading and math department.  Printables expand on what we're able to cover in our 2.5 hours allotted to learn the materials and are often used as homework practice. The reading lesson plans are designed to be used with all the materials from the Amazing Action Alphabet and have been proven to teach children to be successful readers.

**Each preschool pack has 3 pages of lesson plan ideas.  Each child should be introduced to activities that don't involve something you can print from a computer, such as building blocks or painting.  These first 3 pages of lesson plans have all of the ideas that match the theme in one easy spot.  The lesson plans pages are organized by subject for easy referencing.  I've linked many of the materials listed to Amazon.com to provide you with more information about products you might want to consider using.  These packs have a lot of research behind them as I am a licensed teacher with experience teaching PreK-2nd Grade for 10 years.  

December Tot Packs

Find the year long theme calendar {here} and follow along with us! This post gives details and pictures of all December Toddler Packs. Be sure to scroll down to see all of them.

Tot Packs 16-19 Tot packs are about 20 pages in length. They each have 2 pages of activity ideas, book suggestions, and links to the materials I use. You can certainly use all or part of the lesson plans.  The printable pages include songs, matching games, drawing games and other activities. Tot packs are designed to be a first introduction to math concepts, letters, shapes and colors. They are not meant to obtain mastery in any subject. Let them be a guide for educational play between you and your child.

December
{Download all 4 December Tot Packs}

16. Gingerbread Friends {Download}
I love teaching the Gingerbread Friends theme.  It is full of fun smells, textures and tastes!

  Printables in this pack include:

• Gingerbread Body Parts
• Letter Review M T A S B H C I L P

Sequencing the Gingerbread Man

Matching Gingerbread Men

Lacing Gingerbread Men

Gingerbread Man Puzzle

Gingerbread Cutting

Gingerbread Girl and Boy Sorting

• Comparing Gingerbread Kids (attribute opposites)

17. Polar Express {Download}

Printables in this pack:

• Letter Bell Spinner
• Sorting People and Bells
• Graphing Christmas Bells

• Shadow Matching (You can also use the pieces to retell the story.)

• Snowflake Capital and Lowercase Letters

• Letter F

• Pre-Writing

• Polar Express Grid Game

18. Winter Holidays {Download}
The winter holidays tot pack is designed to give an introduction to Christmas, Hanukkah, Kwanzaa, Winter Solstice, and New Year.  There is a page of informtion about the origins of each holiday as well as activities for all the holidays.  Books are listed according to each holiday as well.

Printables in this pack include:

• Menorah Lighting

Letter J

Kwanzaa

Christmas

Natvitiy Character Matching

New Year's Prewriting

New Year's Earth Rotation

19. Thank You Notes {Download}
Help your child understand about thankfulness by writing thank you notes.  This pack contains ideas for writing thank you notes, books that match the theme and a few thank you games to play.