Picnics and Outdoor Reading

We had perfect weather to talk about picnics today and play outside.  We had a great time in the backyard exploring the sandbox and play house as well as the rock climbing wall.

 We learned the letter Y and talked about the numeral 1.  We did all of our lessons outside except for writing/drawing.  At that point the kids were tired and hot so we came in for a nice calm end or our day.

 This afternoon we spent the whole day outside.  The kids love the spring weather and it is so much nicer to review sight words and practice reading on a porch swing.

 I was able to read with almost every child individually, introduce them to their new sight words and check to see which ones they're still struggling with from past lessons.  We're continuing our guided reading lessons that are focusing on developing fluency in reading CVC (consonant, vowel, consonant) words.

Preschool 3/25

It was a surprise to have snow this morning!  What a fun way to talk about weather.  I had planned on going out in the rain but since it was awful cold snow instead we stayed inside.  We talked about the different types of weather and how it changes from day to day.  We talked about how weather changes with the moving air which can be hot or cold.  We practiced our letter W beginning reader and drew pictures of our favorite weather.  We even started exploring the idea of writing words to match our pictures in our journals.  We learned about quarters today to finish out our unit about money and had a great time practicing our songs in music. 

This afternoon we started off with puzzles and worked through a few last Ready2Read pages and our guided reading groups.  Many of the kids are ready to start a new unit on Monday.  Yay!  We're currently reading the "Now I'm Reading" series of books that utilize short vowel words so we can be successful in reading.  We also continued our discussion of place value and counted to 100.  I had each child write their numbers as high as they could to assess where any misconceptions were. 

Wind and Insect Release

What a great day to start talking about wind today!  There were gusts of strong wind and some mild wind throughout our class time. We made kites, talked about the letter W and read books about wind.  We learned that wind is made by the hot air going up and the cold are coming underneath it. We played outside flying our kites and running around until the sandbox was just too tempting to stay away from.  We headed inside and learned all about dimes and practiced our songs for our upcoming end of year celebration.

This afternoon we started our day by observing and writing about our now full grown butterflies.  We completed our regular reading lessons and then headed outside to release ladybugs and butterflies.

 We had a great time watching them and holding them, catching the ladybugs again after they flew off our hands and trying to keep them from crawling down shirts, up pants or in hair :).  We spent tons of time with one butterfly who enjoyed a nice long snack of grape juice and everyone that wanted to was able to hold the butterfly on the grape.  It was wonderful!  I'd highly recommend cutting a grape in half and then scoring the inside to see if you can hold the butterfly for a while when releasing.  The other 3 butterflies weren't interested, so it may not work, but we had a good 10 minutes of passing around this one butterfly.

In math today we counted all the way up to 100, but we didn't count normally.  We said each number according to place value.  So we'd say "Six tens, three units. Six tens, four units." and so forth.  I even drew the unit house the tens house on top of the plastic on the hundreds chart occasionally.  I think we had a break through lesson today and I can see the place value number sense kicking in!

Animals in Spring

This morning we had a great reading lesson about stretching out sounds to write words.  We're working on the -in family today.  We did some work on rhyming words and made a list of as many -in words as we could.  Each time we'd "grab" the word from the air and stretch it out (sound it out slowly) to figure out what letter to write down and then repeat to find the next letter sound.  We read tons of books about spring and animals in spring.  We also sang the song "Popcorn Popping" and did fun popcorn art. 

 After art we learned all about the nickel and continued with our "Which coin is in my pocket?" song that we learned on Monday.  We just switched it up now to talk about the nickel and how it's worth 5 cents.  After math was the best part of the day.  We took turns holding the chicks and feeding them their snack.  Most kids were okay with holding them in some manner and all kids were really excited to feed them when they were back in their brooder (sounds better than cage, yes?).

This afternoon we worked in our guided reading groups and then read a book called "Very Special Friends".  We got to draw a favorite part from the story or about our own very special friends in our journals and then share them with Miss Amanda.  We sang about spring (see popcorn song above) and made popcorn tree art as well.

 We also got to play with the chicks this afternoon.  It's always interesting to see the different reactions to being able to hold the chicks.  It is the most wonderful thing for some and the most horrifying thought for others.  After we played with the chicks we worked on piecing together the number 1-20 on the 100 board.  We're still getting 16 and 19 upside down so we have 61 and 91.  We'll continue talking about the place value importance and hopefully it'll stick soon!

St. Patrick's Day

What a great St. Patrick's Day celebration we had in school today!  We scooped and dumped green rice while listening to stories about St. Patrick's Day.  We made shamrock art out of heart shaped stamps and made green paint from yellow and blue.

 We had green smoothie muffins for snack and then sorted and counted the different pieces of Lucky Charms cereal.  At the end of the day we learned all about the Penny.  We sang this song:

"Which coin is in my pocket, pocket?

What's in my pocket worth one cent?

It's a shiny penny, penny.

It's a penny, worth one cent."

to the tune of "Shortnen' Bread"

 This afternoon we moved our caterpillar chrysalis' to the butterfly home and inspected how they had changed.  We also got a good look at ladybugs that had turned into the pupa stage and some that had hatched out as beetles.  We even saw two hatch out as yellow beetles.  Did you know that many varieties of ladybugs start off yellow and then become red with spots within hours?

 We also got our hands all covered in paint and made shamrock handprints with those painted hands.  We sorted and counted Lucky Charms, worked on our numbers up to 20 and read tons of stories about St. Patrick's Day.

Trains

 We had such a fun day learning all about trains.  Preschool A played with trains, acted like conductors and practiced reading their train game.  They also learned all about the cylinder shape.  Preschool B also played with trains and read about them.  In addition, we observed caterpillars and wrote all about them in our journals.  We tried to write the numerals 1-20 today also.

Circus and Insects

We had a blast learning the letter E with our Elephants and Circus theme this morning.  We started by playing with blow up elephants, a circus tent, and Starfall on the SmartBoard.  Each child got a turn to get their face painted and had the opportunity to pick through different designs to get one that matched what they wanted.  I love how they all turned out.

 We read books about the circus and choral read "Hiccups for Elephant".  There are many words in that book that your little reader should be able to read to you.  We practiced lifting weights like the letter E and saying /e/.  We did a dot-to-dot alphabet page and learned all about the cone shape.

 This afternoon we started our investigations of the insects we're raising in preschool.  We learned what insects are are pretended to use our finger antenna to smell just like insects.  We read a few books, did some observation of the live insects and then drew pictures and wrote words to match.

 We did our baggy book reading and finished our math booklets.  We drew pictures to represent quantities up to 20.  We also practiced sorting out the first two rows of the 100 chart.  Eventually we'll be able to take all the cards out of the chart and put them back in order!